0:00:03 – All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together.
0:00:05 We gotta talk about it.
0:00:07 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:10 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:13 ♪ I put my all in it like no days on ♪
0:00:14 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:16 – We just lived in a house for a weekend
0:00:20 with 25 other founder entrepreneur types,
0:00:23 probably five to 10 of them were billionaires,
0:00:25 a bunch of others were close,
0:00:28 and we didn’t just like talk or hang out,
0:00:31 we literally like slept under one roof,
0:00:34 sat and saw us together, played basketball together,
0:00:36 went to Walmart together a bunch of times.
0:00:40 – My Airbnb had bunk beds, so we bunked bed together.
0:00:42 – It’s as close as two men can get.
0:00:47 So we had an experience and I have in front of me
0:00:51 several sticky notes of golden lessons learned
0:00:53 and I phrased each of them, I don’t know if you do this,
0:00:56 but I phrased each of them to make it fun
0:00:58 because nobody wants to hear your vacation story,
0:01:00 that’s one of the great rules of storytelling,
0:01:02 is just never tell a vacation story
0:01:03 ’cause it’s so fun for you, but they weren’t there,
0:01:04 nobody cares.
0:01:07 But I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned
0:01:09 with the story that backs them up,
0:01:12 so it’s real, not just a generic lesson.
0:01:14 And I phrased all of mine like it’s Confucius,
0:01:18 like Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear.
0:01:18 – Yeah, I dig that.
0:01:20 And to give the background basically,
0:01:22 I think like three years ago you tweeted out,
0:01:24 “I wanna play basketball with interesting people.”
0:01:27 I think Mr. Beast like DM’d you and you’re like,
0:01:28 “Wait, is this real?”
0:01:30 You ended up phoning him and he was like,
0:01:33 “Yeah, come to my place, I wanna meet interesting people.”
0:01:36 The first year it was like you and Ben organized it,
0:01:39 it was like 19 of us in an Airbnb
0:01:40 and we were like, “What are we gonna do?”
0:01:41 So we played basketball.
0:01:44 The second year you organized it a little bit more
0:01:45 and you had like an itinerary.
0:01:48 This year you guys killed it, it was awesome.
0:01:50 It was an amazing event.
0:01:52 – I do like meeting interesting people
0:01:54 when I go to conferences or events.
0:01:56 I just hate conferences or events.
0:01:59 Like I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go.
0:02:00 And I know it’s good for me
0:02:03 and I know in the end I’ll meet some cool people.
0:02:05 I just hate the format, I hate the structure.
0:02:08 So it was like, well, instead of just complaining about it,
0:02:10 what’s the structure I would like?
0:02:11 It’s like, well, I don’t know.
0:02:13 What if it was just doing the thing I love,
0:02:15 I was playing basketball with those people.
0:02:18 We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night.
0:02:21 And that was the core idea is to use basketball
0:02:22 as the icebreaker.
0:02:24 And you broke your knee in the first two hours.
0:02:25 – Yeah, yeah.
0:02:29 So this was an event where you could tear up your knee
0:02:31 and be done in the first hour.
0:02:32 And I still had a good time.
0:02:34 That means it must have been a good event
0:02:36 ’cause normally that’s pretty brutal.
0:02:37 I did have a little pity party for myself,
0:02:38 but I feel better now.
0:02:40 – Are we allowed to say who was there?
0:02:42 – Yeah, I think we can say some of the people
0:02:43 that were there.
0:02:44 Yeah, let’s go for it.
0:02:47 – So MrBeast, who like, everyone knows him
0:02:48 as the guy on YouTube with hundreds of millions
0:02:49 of subscribers.
0:02:51 I think he’s a paper billionaire.
0:02:52 I think that’s public.
0:02:54 – Yeah, he’s one of the youngest billionaires in the world.
0:02:56 I think he’s 26 years old
0:02:57 and he’s worth a few billion dollars.
0:02:59 He’s one of the most famous people also in the world,
0:03:02 one of the most recognized entertainers in the world.
0:03:03 And when you hang out with him,
0:03:07 he’s also one of the like most intense fund to be around.
0:03:10 You know, just wants to play all in.
0:03:12 Like somebody said this once about Elon, they go,
0:03:16 he’s playing life as if the simulation theory is true.
0:03:18 You know, Elon has a simulation theory.
0:03:20 It’s gonna just be one of many simulations.
0:03:23 And so he therefore just goes all in cause, okay, whatever.
0:03:25 Let’s make this the most entertaining version
0:03:26 of that simulation.
0:03:28 I think that’s how Jimmy plays life too.
0:03:29 – So we are with him.
0:03:33 It was one of the founders of Airbnb who like on paper,
0:03:35 like according to Forbes is like the hundredth
0:03:37 or 90th richest person in the world.
0:03:40 It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors
0:03:41 in Tesla and SpaceX.
0:03:43 It was the founder of Reddit.
0:03:45 It was Jesse Itzler who’s on the podcast.
0:03:49 You, me, Al Dohn who runs like a quilting company
0:03:51 that does nine figures a year.
0:03:52 – Tons of people.
0:03:53 – David Perel and Nick Huber.
0:03:54 It was awesome.
0:04:00 – All right, so when I ran my company, The Hustle,
0:04:02 I think we had something like two million subscribers.
0:04:04 And we made money through advertising.
0:04:06 We didn’t actually make that much money per person
0:04:08 reading the newsletter because advertising in general
0:04:10 is kind of a crappy business model.
0:04:12 And so I remember sitting down and I’m like,
0:04:15 what are all the different ways that I can make money
0:04:17 off The Hustle that aren’t advertising?
0:04:19 And so to make sure that you don’t make this mistake,
0:04:21 Sean, me and the Hustle team,
0:04:23 we went and looked at a bunch of different ways
0:04:25 to monetize your business.
0:04:29 And we put it all together in a really cool document
0:04:31 where we laid it all out along with our research.
0:04:33 And we call it, very appropriately,
0:04:36 we call it the business monetization playbook.
0:04:38 Go to the description of this episode
0:04:39 and you’re gonna see a link to that
0:04:41 business monetization playbook.
0:04:42 It’s completely free.
0:04:43 You just click the link and you can see it
0:04:44 back to the episode.
0:04:51 – You wanna start first?
0:04:52 – Yeah, let’s do it.
0:04:53 All right, I got one for you.
0:04:55 Here’s one of the lessons I picked up.
0:04:57 And this is about the business ideas
0:04:59 that these guys were thinking about.
0:05:01 So if you’re out there and you’re wondering kind of like,
0:05:02 where’s the opportunity?
0:05:04 What should I be working on?
0:05:06 Here’s what I picked up from some of the most successful
0:05:07 people in America.
0:05:10 And it says, fish were the fish swim,
0:05:13 not where the fishermen stand.
0:05:14 Confucius, AKA me.
0:05:16 – Did you just make that up?
0:05:18 – You saw me writing these five minutes before we went live.
0:05:19 – I thought you had heard that.
0:05:21 Did you hear that somewhere else?
0:05:23 – There’s a scratch out on it, right?
0:05:24 – But did you get like Chinese food last week
0:05:27 and that was like a fortune cookie?
0:05:29 – Dude, I’ve had my share of Kung Pao Chicken.
0:05:31 All right, let me just tell you some of the ideas
0:05:34 that I heard from people who were in, at this event.
0:05:36 So you mentioned Jesse Itzler.
0:05:39 And I think one of the public things that he’s done is,
0:05:43 he got really into racing, like running endurance races.
0:05:45 So he just followed his curiosity.
0:05:46 – 100 mile races.
0:05:47 – 100 mile races.
0:05:48 He started to do 100 mile races.
0:05:49 While he’s doing 100 mile races,
0:05:52 he notices that the runners that are trying to do
0:05:55 these amazing physical feats are drinking coconut water.
0:05:56 And coconut water was a big,
0:05:59 like a big part of that niche, super niche community.
0:06:02 And he became a believer and spent time hunting down
0:06:04 what he thought would be the best coconut water company.
0:06:07 He ends up finding Ziko coconut water, partners with them.
0:06:09 And Ziko now is a big success.
0:06:10 They ended up selling, I think, to Coke.
0:06:12 And they’re in Whole Foods or they’re, you know,
0:06:14 it’s one of the big coconut water brands.
0:06:17 And he found it when he was small and just like,
0:06:20 just exploring these uncharted territories.
0:06:22 So here’s some other ones that I heard.
0:06:24 There was somebody there who’s making hundreds
0:06:28 of millions of dollars a year selling board games.
0:06:30 I’d never even had that on my bingo card.
0:06:31 I didn’t even know that was an option.
0:06:33 I did not even know that you could do that.
0:06:36 There was somebody there that was investing
0:06:38 millions of dollars into women’s sports.
0:06:41 Like, you know, not even just women’s sports,
0:06:43 like they’re trying to do things now
0:06:46 where you just buy a piece of a college program.
0:06:47 I didn’t even know you could do that.
0:06:49 Like that’s for sale.
0:06:51 What is that for sale?
0:06:52 Where is this listed?
0:06:53 It’s not listed, right?
0:06:55 – I went to a talk recently with this billionaire
0:06:58 who owned like the Timberwolves Mark Lazarie or something.
0:07:00 And he was talking about the box.
0:07:03 And he was talking about how he’s trying to buy college.
0:07:04 Do you buy the rights?
0:07:06 – They’re going to like the University of Alabama
0:07:07 or whatever, and they’re just like, cool,
0:07:11 we’ll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program.
0:07:12 We want to own 51%.
0:07:15 – But it’s like, do they buy the future earnings?
0:07:16 Is that what it is?
0:07:18 – They’re basically, I think what’s going to happen is,
0:07:20 again, it’s uncharted territory.
0:07:21 You don’t know exactly how this is going to play out,
0:07:23 but I think the short version is
0:07:25 the college will spin out the program,
0:07:28 their athletics program as its own business entity.
0:07:30 They’ll sell equity in it.
0:07:33 They’ll use that equity to finance all of their sports,
0:07:34 like women’s lacrosse,
0:07:34 like things that aren’t going to be
0:07:35 the big revenue generators.
0:07:38 So they use it to fund all their programs
0:07:40 and maybe even school stuff.
0:07:43 And then those, and then the costs now are born
0:07:44 by the private equity person.
0:07:47 But now it’s this asset that didn’t even exist before,
0:07:48 like these college programs
0:07:49 could make a lot of money,
0:07:51 media rights and all the stuff,
0:07:52 but they weren’t even for sale.
0:07:53 Somebody was doing that.
0:07:55 There was somebody there that was like,
0:07:57 yeah, seven years ago,
0:08:00 I just got really obsessed with water.
0:08:01 I’m like, yeah, me too.
0:08:02 I thought my whole life is like, no, no, no,
0:08:03 like I got really obsessed.
0:08:05 Like, do you know what kind of water you’re drinking?
0:08:09 And I was like, no, like is this bad with microplastics?
0:08:10 What’s going on?
0:08:12 And he was just like, yeah, like I got obsessed.
0:08:13 And so I just started studying,
0:08:14 where’s the cleanest water from?
0:08:16 Where’s the healthiest water from?
0:08:18 And I realized that water was gonna become like oil,
0:08:20 that people were gonna more and more be drinking,
0:08:22 not tap water, but they wanted,
0:08:24 they’re gonna want basically bottled water,
0:08:25 canned water, things like that.
0:08:27 And that water is gonna have to come from somewhere.
0:08:30 And I wanted to find the best sources of water.
0:08:32 And so I went to West Virginia
0:08:34 and I bought this aquifer, this spring,
0:08:37 I bought this giant water source.
0:08:38 And he was like, you see that drink you’re drinking right there?
0:08:40 It’s like some popular brand.
0:08:42 And he’s like, that’s our water and they use our water.
0:08:44 So that’s good water.
0:08:45 And I was like, what?
0:08:47 This was just a side quest that he went on.
0:08:49 And again, it was curiosity driven.
0:08:50 – Was this one of the billionaires?
0:08:52 – Yeah, I mean, not billionaire,
0:08:54 but yeah, like whatever, close, close enough.
0:08:55 There’s a guy there, Al,
0:08:59 who started a quilting company with his mom
0:09:01 in Missouri Star Quilt Company.
0:09:04 And they sell fabrics for people who wanna make quilts.
0:09:06 His co-founder is his mom.
0:09:07 – I have a planned vacation.
0:09:09 So he owns this thing.
0:09:11 The company’s called Missouri Quilting Company.
0:09:13 And he basically bought,
0:09:15 he did a podcast three years ago with us
0:09:18 where he explained where he bought a town.
0:09:19 Is it Hamilton, Missouri?
0:09:21 He bought like an 1800 person town
0:09:22 where they own every building
0:09:24 and they’re building the Disneyland for quilting.
0:09:25 – Dude, just the thought of that.
0:09:27 So the first to go into quilting,
0:09:30 smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business,
0:09:31 goes into quilting.
0:09:32 – It’s like, what are you doing, man?
0:09:34 You’re throwing it all the way on quilting?
0:09:36 – Does a business with his mom, right?
0:09:38 Like again, independent thinking,
0:09:39 not just following the herd.
0:09:41 So then starts the business.
0:09:42 His mom does the YouTube channel.
0:09:44 He does the business side of it.
0:09:45 Business keeps growing.
0:09:47 And then it’s like, you know what we could do?
0:09:50 We could create the Disneyland for quilting.
0:09:52 And he literally goes and buys a town.
0:09:53 Again, who’s, is that for sale?
0:09:54 Can you do that?
0:09:55 How do you do that?
0:09:56 And that just kept happening,
0:09:59 which was like people who were playing games
0:10:00 that didn’t even seem popular.
0:10:03 Another lesson there is there was a person there
0:10:06 who had sold a piece of their company to Churnin.
0:10:09 And Churnin is now kind of known.
0:10:11 I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago.
0:10:15 And Churnin is this really interesting investment work.
0:10:16 – They’re most famous for–
0:10:17 – PCG.
0:10:21 – Yeah, Peter Churnin was the CEO of Fox.
0:10:22 So he’s like a big swing and dick.
0:10:23 He’s been a baller for years.
0:10:26 But they’re most famous amongst like normal people
0:10:28 because they bought Barstool when it was nothing
0:10:29 and helped make it something.
0:10:30 – Correct.
0:10:32 And they just had this, again, independent thinking
0:10:33 where they were like, hey, I think these things
0:10:36 that other people see as small kind of toys,
0:10:38 things that aren’t gonna make a lot of money,
0:10:42 you know, media brands, blogs, YouTube channels,
0:10:44 I think these things are gonna be big.
0:10:45 I think basically, and they had this thesis
0:10:48 which was content to commerce.
0:10:50 It’s like, I think if you’re kicking ass at content,
0:10:52 you’re gonna be able to, instead of just making your money
0:10:54 through ad revenue and sponsorships,
0:10:56 you’re gonna be able to sell stuff to those people.
0:10:58 And they had this content to commerce thesis
0:11:00 and they go and they buy Barstool.
0:11:03 Content ends up being this juggernaut with commerce.
0:11:06 They buy, they bought Exploding Kittens
0:11:10 and they bought Meat Eater and they bought Surfline.
0:11:11 All these niche content brands.
0:11:13 We had a guy on the pod, the plant daddy.
0:11:15 – I met with them a couple of times.
0:11:18 There was like early discussions, well, you know,
0:11:20 three meetings that I had with the hustle
0:11:23 and I was like, what the fuck do you guys know?
0:11:24 Didn’t get that one right.
0:11:26 (laughing)
0:11:29 Turns out they know a lot.
0:11:30 They know a lot.
0:11:33 – Did he just like slide a P and L across the table
0:11:35 and he’s like, I’ll leave you three minutes alone with this.
0:11:36 – Like they told me this story
0:11:38 and I was like, you’re full of shit.
0:11:39 You don’t know what you’re talking about.
0:11:43 Like, you’re talking about my company, right?
0:11:44 It’s like, you know, like…
0:11:47 (laughing)
0:11:49 Like, but they were right.
0:11:51 I think what the premise was correct.
0:11:54 But yeah, I didn’t have that confidence
0:11:55 that we’re talking about now.
0:11:56 – And dude, they’re made a fortune
0:11:59 ’cause the market overlooked these brands.
0:12:02 These brands were not valued like high-flying tech companies
0:12:05 but they became, you know, multi-hundred million
0:12:06 dollar brands.
0:12:08 I really admire what TCG did.
0:12:09 – Yeah, they’re the best.
0:12:12 – There’s so many investors that all love
0:12:13 to sound like they’re smart and contrarian
0:12:16 and they’re all just, what’s your thesis?
0:12:19 AI, you know, AI is gonna be the future of everything, right?
0:12:21 It’s like, okay, you’re not wrong in that,
0:12:23 but like, there’s something really impressive
0:12:26 about somebody who looked at just like this magazine
0:12:27 or this blog or this YouTube channel.
0:12:29 – They did it with Doug DeMauro who was on our pod.
0:12:30 We’ve actually probably had three or four people
0:12:33 who sold their company on the pod to those guys.
0:12:34 – Right, right.
0:12:36 – And they’ve been right and they’ve been right
0:12:38 in a very, very big way.
0:12:39 So I’m very impressed by them.
0:12:40 So to me, that’s the principle.
0:12:42 Fish where the fish swim.
0:12:43 So fish where the real opportunity is,
0:12:45 not where the fish are understanding,
0:12:47 not where everybody, all the entrepreneurs are huddled up.
0:12:52 This, this Portuguese says, man does not sell chocolate.
0:12:54 He must become chocolate.
0:12:56 Okay, so what does this mean?
0:12:59 Three years ago when we did the first version of this event,
0:13:03 Jimmy, AKA Mr. Beast had launched his chocolate brand,
0:13:04 Feastables.
0:13:08 And it was like, okay, selling chocolate to little kids.
0:13:09 I had the opportunity to invest.
0:13:13 I think at a $40 million valuation was like the series A.
0:13:18 And I passed in like the beast empire or chocolate.
0:13:19 – No, in Feastables itself.
0:13:22 So it’s kind of thought about it.
0:13:23 I was like, I don’t really get it.
0:13:25 I didn’t really know much about the chocolate industry.
0:13:27 I thought his involvement was going to be like this.
0:13:31 Normal influencer brand is, I’m doing my thing.
0:13:31 I create my content.
0:13:33 Oh, my manager hands me this.
0:13:38 Hey, buy this, smile, ding, put it down, move on with life.
0:13:40 So I thought he’s just going to influence it.
0:13:42 I thought he’s just going to hold it up and buy it.
0:13:44 I didn’t, what I didn’t realize is that this guy
0:13:46 was going to go so deep into the world of chocolate
0:13:48 and end up knowing everything about chocolate
0:13:53 and running this company like an absolute maniac founder.
0:13:55 If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring
0:13:57 his full intensity at this,
0:13:58 I probably would have thought about it differently.
0:14:00 I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar
0:14:02 and see how many people clicked the link.
0:14:03 I was dead wrong.
0:14:05 So I want to tell a quick story.
0:14:07 You were there for one of the Walmart runs, right?
0:14:09 No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories.
0:14:12 So we’re sitting there, we’re about to record.
0:14:14 He walks in, he’s like, hey, before we do this,
0:14:16 you guys want to go to Walmart?
0:14:17 Which I realized like at the time
0:14:18 sounded like a sort of a strange request.
0:14:21 Nobody’s ever asked me on a mandate to Walmart.
0:14:26 We walk in and he takes us to the chocolate aisle
0:14:30 and basically gives a like 10 minute masterclass
0:14:32 on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle.
0:14:34 And while he’s doing it, he’s not just like explaining
0:14:35 like, well, this is how it works.
0:14:36 This is how we do.
0:14:38 There’s our revenues, this whatever.
0:14:41 He’s also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle.
0:14:43 Like he pulled the cartons up to the front
0:14:45 ’cause they were like three inches recessed.
0:14:46 They were pushed back too far.
0:14:48 Some of the bars had followed over, they were crooked.
0:14:49 He straightens every single one of them out.
0:14:51 He puts the right flavors in the right spots.
0:14:53 If a bar was crinklier or broken,
0:14:54 he’d throw it to his chief of staff.
0:14:55 He’d be like, hey, can you buy this?
0:14:56 I want to have like, we should only have good bars.
0:14:57 No broken bars up front.
0:15:00 And he would basically restock the thing,
0:15:01 but his hands were moving at a speed
0:15:02 which showed you this is not the first time
0:15:03 this guy’s done this.
0:15:05 So he restocks it.
0:15:07 And one of the popular flavors was out.
0:15:09 And so he takes out his phone and he’s like,
0:15:10 oh, I have a badge.
0:15:12 And so he just badges into the back of Walmart
0:15:16 and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it.
0:15:18 And I was like, does any vendor get to do that?
0:15:19 And he was like, no, not exactly.
0:15:22 But they know like, I just do this, I really care.
0:15:25 And two things stood out to me.
0:15:28 The first was obvious, which was when high intensity,
0:15:31 obsessive people want to win,
0:15:33 they do the same things that the rest of us do
0:15:35 with the knob dialed up to 12.
0:15:37 Like they just take the knob and they just crank it past
0:15:38 even where you think it could go.
0:15:41 And for example, he was like,
0:15:41 I think you were there.
0:15:43 He was telling the story about like missing a flight
0:15:44 or something like this.
0:15:48 He like told the story about how apparently he flew to DC
0:15:50 and had a connecting flight to North Carolina
0:15:51 or something wherever he lived.
0:15:53 And he was like, you know what, screw it.
0:15:56 I’m driving from DC to Greenville, North Carolina.
0:15:58 It’s normally like, I don’t know, a three hour drive
0:16:00 or something, but I noticed that there’s 14 Walmart’s
0:16:01 in between on that route.
0:16:04 I’m gonna stop at every single one of them to learn.
0:16:06 And it turns like a three hour drive into like,
0:16:08 you know, a 20 hour drive.
0:16:11 And he told me at one point he goes, I have scanned.
0:16:14 I guess he’s got some app where you scan things in Walmart
0:16:16 and it teaches you about each skew.
0:16:18 He said he scanned every single product in Walmart.
0:16:20 And I don’t know if he was like, if someone said,
0:16:21 oh no, I’ve scanned all of them.
0:16:23 You’d be like, oh, so it’s like saying
0:16:25 it’s a thousand degrees outside, you’re just exaggerating.
0:16:27 But with him, I was like, oh, I bet you
0:16:29 you literally have scanned every single one of them.
0:16:31 – In the podcast we did, he was like, yeah, like, you know,
0:16:33 we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart
0:16:35 for somebody in a video.
0:16:37 And he’s like, you know, but it’s $16.2 million.
0:16:41 It’s like, he knew the actual cost of the total inventory.
0:16:42 If you bought one of everything in Walmart,
0:16:44 like what it costs, I forgot what the number was.
0:16:46 But so, but I don’t want to make this just a jibby left fest
0:16:51 because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target.
0:16:53 – Yeah, man, I heard him nerding out.
0:16:54 It was wild.
0:16:55 – He took us to this shelf and he was like,
0:16:58 this shelf right here, he’s giving us a tour of Target.
0:17:00 And it shows you how the store works.
0:17:01 He’s like, this shelf right here
0:17:04 is the most profitable shelf in Target.
0:17:05 Is the highest profit per square inch,
0:17:08 which is how Target measures, you know, success.
0:17:10 And he’s giving us this Target Masterclass.
0:17:11 And we were like, are you also in Walmart?
0:17:12 He’s like, yeah, we’re in Walmart,
0:17:14 but we’re not doing so well.
0:17:16 I asked him, what’s exciting for you coming up?
0:17:18 And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company.
0:17:21 I assumed he was just gonna say,
0:17:23 I’ve got some board meetings to line up.
0:17:26 I’m taking the family to the Aspen.
0:17:29 And he goes, actually, I’m working the next three weeks
0:17:31 as a Walmart associate.
0:17:33 I was like, what?
0:17:35 And he goes, yeah, I’m gonna be,
0:17:37 he goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target.
0:17:39 And I’ve been trying to figure out why.
0:17:41 What I found remarkable is that you expect
0:17:44 the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished,
0:17:48 the most high net worth to be above these tasks.
0:17:50 Jimmy restocking the SKUs himself.
0:17:53 This other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three
0:17:55 weeks, you know, they don’t have to do any of this,
0:17:56 but they’re gonna do it anyways.
0:17:57 They’re not just doing it now.
0:18:00 Now that they’re successful, that’s how they got here.
0:18:03 And so that was the first really big takeaway
0:18:05 from this whole thing was the intensity
0:18:08 with which certain people play the game of business
0:18:10 and how that leads to success.
0:18:12 – That guy who you’re referring to
0:18:14 was the quietest person there, her one of.
0:18:16 And there was a point where I was hanging out with him.
0:18:18 He goes, can I get your guys’s opinion?
0:18:22 You know, I think in, I’m thinking about potentially
0:18:24 like making some type of business move,
0:18:26 which would value us at this valuation.
0:18:28 And we were like, what valuation?
0:18:30 And it was like in the billions.
0:18:33 And we were like, do you know who we are?
0:18:34 Why are you asking us this question?
0:18:37 Like, what are you talking about, man?
0:18:40 Like you, I don’t know who you asked this question to,
0:18:45 but not like, he was the most like humble person there.
0:18:47 And he was crazy successful.
0:18:50 It was pretty wild, that guy who you’re talking about.
0:18:51 All right, I have one.
0:18:54 Confidence beats IQ.
0:18:56 So, you know, there are a lot of
0:18:58 like really successful people out there.
0:19:00 Like when I read Warren Buffett’s biography,
0:19:03 he does the opposite where he was like,
0:19:04 oh, you know, I’m just this guy.
0:19:06 And it’s like, dude, you’re, you’re a bona fide.
0:19:08 – Aw shucks downplaying them.
0:19:10 – Yeah, it’s like, you’re a baby genius.
0:19:11 Like he was like, when he was like four,
0:19:15 he was like making 10 grand a month selling Pepsi.
0:19:18 But in general, the group of people who we had there,
0:19:22 there were some people for sure who are genius.
0:19:23 I think Jimmy is one of them actually.
0:19:26 I think when you talk to him, you know, he’s like brilliant.
0:19:29 But, and like Mario from Oscar was one of them.
0:19:32 Mario co-founded a company called Oscar,
0:19:33 which is a health insurance company,
0:19:34 which is one of the hardest things ever to do.
0:19:37 It’s worth publicly traded $4 billion.
0:19:38 So he’s like the man,
0:19:40 and he doesn’t even speak English or he does.
0:19:41 That’s a second language.
0:19:43 So like, you know, he’s from Germany.
0:19:45 – He’s genius.
0:19:46 – Dude, imagine going to Germany
0:19:48 and revolutionizing the German healthcare bar.
0:19:49 You know what I mean?
0:19:50 Like it’s pretty wild.
0:19:52 – Extra degree of difficulty.
0:19:52 – Yeah.
0:19:54 – Just go to someone else’s motherland and fix their shit.
0:19:56 – Yeah, which is wild.
0:19:57 But, you know, he was a genius.
0:20:00 But in general, dude, the wealthiest people there,
0:20:03 I noticed we’re not even close to the smartest.
0:20:05 And here’s an example.
0:20:07 One of the billion there guys was there.
0:20:09 He goes, man, AI is just gonna change the world.
0:20:10 You guys, I don’t think you guys get it.
0:20:12 Like I use it every day.
0:20:14 And I was like, how do you, how do you use it?
0:20:15 He goes, I can show you right now.
0:20:18 And he pulls out his phone and he talks to chat GBT.
0:20:22 And he goes, hey, chat GBT, you know, I have a question.
0:20:24 And he like starts like reading a question to it.
0:20:26 And then he’s like, now watch how amazing it is.
0:20:28 And he like, it repeats the answer.
0:20:31 And I’m like, oh, so you’re saying
0:20:33 that you just use chat GBT like all the time.
0:20:34 Like, yeah.
0:20:36 And I was like, well, like, have you like trained it?
0:20:39 He goes, train, you can train it?
0:20:42 Like, like he didn’t know that you could do these things.
0:20:43 And this particular guy, I read a company
0:20:45 doing billions of year in revenue.
0:20:49 I guess what I mean is like the percentage
0:20:52 of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there
0:20:55 versus impact or net worth was not like that.
0:20:58 It wasn’t core totally agree with that,
0:21:00 which is that when you sit in a room like this,
0:21:01 two things happen.
0:21:04 One, you just get to sample like it’s Costco
0:21:05 and it’s new net Costco.
0:21:07 And you’re just getting to sample different life.
0:21:08 Oh, what do you do?
0:21:10 Oh, wow, you seem kind of stressed out.
0:21:13 Gotcha, like not interested in going down that aisle.
0:21:14 You seem like you’re having a lot of fun.
0:21:15 What do you do?
0:21:16 How do you think about this?
0:21:17 You got kids too.
0:21:18 How are you doing both, right?
0:21:20 And you get to sample people’s lifestyle
0:21:21 when you’re hanging out with them like this
0:21:23 for like, you know, 48 hours straight.
0:21:28 On top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing,
0:21:30 which kind of sucks ’cause you’re measuring yourself
0:21:32 against like some of the most creative,
0:21:34 successful, ambitious people in the world.
0:21:35 But a big part of it is you’re trying
0:21:37 to figure out the diff, right?
0:21:40 It’s like those little children’s games is two pictures.
0:21:42 What’s the difference between these two pictures?
0:21:45 And on one side is me and the other side is them.
0:21:47 And I’m always looking at what’s the difference.
0:21:48 And sometimes if it’s like a Mario or whatever,
0:21:49 it’s like, oh, cool.
0:21:52 Like his brain has an extra library in it.
0:21:54 There’s an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain.
0:21:55 All right, cool.
0:21:57 Like I can live with that.
0:21:58 I can sleep easy.
0:22:00 But there were other people where it was like,
0:22:02 oh, it just seems like they didn’t limit themselves.
0:22:03 That’s what I mean.
0:22:04 They just kind of went for it.
0:22:07 Or their courage was just on a little bit higher supply
0:22:07 than mine.
0:22:09 And you’re right that when you look at the diff,
0:22:10 very, very rarely was the diff.
0:22:12 These people are smarter than me.
0:22:15 Or they had some advantages I didn’t have coming up, right?
0:22:17 It’s like, in fact, there’s usually the opposite.
0:22:19 It’s like, damn, they had this huge chip on their shoulder
0:22:20 because their dad wasn’t around.
0:22:22 And because of this happened and they were dyslexic.
0:22:24 There’s a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic.
0:22:25 – I wish I was dyslexic.
0:22:26 – Yeah, I know.
0:22:27 – Man, all these guys.
0:22:28 – Autistic was the goal.
0:22:28 – Dude, dyslexic.
0:22:30 – Dude, every dyslexic guy there,
0:22:33 somehow was a good freestyle rapper.
0:22:34 Did you notice that?
0:22:37 – Like not only rich, but also cool in a group
0:22:39 of men held all around together, right?
0:22:43 – Yeah, I wish I was charismatic, like a dyslexic guy.
0:22:44 Like, that’s crazy.
0:22:50 It’s like if you’re blind, you’re a good like piano player.
0:22:51 And if you’re dyslexic,
0:22:53 you’re like the most charismatic guy on earth.
0:22:54 – Yeah, exactly.
0:23:00 – All right, let’s take a quick break.
0:23:02 ‘Cause I gotta tell you about a friend of the pod
0:23:03 who’s got their own podcast.
0:23:05 If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend.
0:23:06 She’s been on MFM many times.
0:23:10 And she’s got her own podcast called the A16Z podcast.
0:23:11 And it’s all about technology.
0:23:14 If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy.
0:23:16 I mean, I grew up in the ’90s.
0:23:18 I had CDs, phones had cords.
0:23:20 You couldn’t use the internet if your mom was on the phone.
0:23:22 And now there’s like 3D printers
0:23:25 and there’s rockets that can go up into space, AI.
0:23:27 There’s so much crazy stuff going on.
0:23:28 And you gotta have a place
0:23:30 that helps you stay ahead of the curve.
0:23:32 And that’s what the A16Z podcast is trying to do.
0:23:35 It’s a podcast from the VC firm, Andres and Horowitz.
0:23:36 And it’s trying to give you an inside look
0:23:38 at the trends that are shaping our future.
0:23:41 They’ve had guests like Mark Cuban and Neil Stevenson
0:23:43 on and they talk about topics like Deep Fakes
0:23:46 or the science behind GLP1s or Autonomous Drones.
0:23:48 No small boy stuff at all.
0:23:48 Steph is the host.
0:23:49 She’s awesome.
0:23:50 I think you’ll enjoy the podcast.
0:23:51 So check it out.
0:23:53 It is the A16Z podcast.
0:23:54 And I like this tagline.
0:23:56 They say it’s like eavesdropping on the future.
0:23:56 That’s pretty cool.
0:23:57 That’s a good tagline.
0:23:58 So check it out.
0:24:01 The A16Z podcast wherever you get your podcast.
0:24:07 I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words.
0:24:08 I don’t know if you can read this.
0:24:09 I am.
0:24:10 I am.
0:24:13 So my trainer has like a clothing brand that he creates.
0:24:14 It’s called Super Conscious Cup.
0:24:16 So one of the shirts he gave me from Super Conscious Cup,
0:24:20 my favorite shirt, it just on the side, it just says I am.
0:24:23 And then it’s underneath it says,
0:24:25 the two most important words in the English language
0:24:28 for whatever comes after them will define your life.
0:24:30 If you think you are destined for greatness,
0:24:33 if you think you belong at that table,
0:24:34 you’ll make different decisions along the way.
0:24:36 And then it becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right?
0:24:38 You’ll work at a different speed.
0:24:39 You’ll take different risks.
0:24:41 You will go for it in a different way.
0:24:43 Several conversations I had at this event
0:24:48 where I realized, damn, a lot of the downstream decisions
0:24:50 start with the little voice in your head,
0:24:54 the little director of your movie who’s deciding like,
0:24:55 what kind of movie is this?
0:24:57 Is this like an indie budget?
0:24:58 Is this a tragedy?
0:24:59 Is this a comedy?
0:25:00 Are you a joke?
0:25:03 Or is this a Marvel movie?
0:25:04 Are you the hero saving the world, right?
0:25:06 And like, I’m not saying one is better than the other,
0:25:08 but you get to decide what that little voice
0:25:09 in your head is gonna tell you.
0:25:11 ‘Cause the director says, you know,
0:25:13 what happens in the story, where you stand,
0:25:14 what you say, all of those things.
0:25:17 And I thought, damn, a lot of what I’m seeing
0:25:18 in how people are living their lives
0:25:20 and what they’re doing differently,
0:25:22 comes from the little voice in their head
0:25:24 just has a different script in mind
0:25:26 for what their life is all about, the “I am” statement.
0:25:28 – Or like, here’s a small example.
0:25:30 How about Jesse bringing his sauna?
0:25:31 Jesse, it’s like brought his sauna.
0:25:33 And he had two guys and I was like, what do you guys do?
0:25:36 He’s like, oh, we bring these saunas.
0:25:37 Like, whenever he wants to go-
0:25:38 – We keep the sauna hot.
0:25:39 – Yeah, he’s like, whenever we go,
0:25:41 when he wants to go to like a conference or something,
0:25:42 like this sauna is like a really cool way
0:25:44 to like create a bonding experience,
0:25:46 which it was, by the way, just chilling in the sauna.
0:25:47 It was freaking awesome.
0:25:49 And I was like, wait, Jesse, you got these two guys
0:25:52 who’s just like jobs like trail around this like sauna,
0:25:54 like across the country to bring to events.
0:25:55 That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.
0:25:56 He’s like, yeah, isn’t it great?
0:25:57 We get to hang in the sauna.
0:25:58 I was like, yes.
0:26:01 And that’s like another example of like intensity,
0:26:03 but like on a more relatable scale.
0:26:04 – Right.
0:26:05 – All right, I have one.
0:26:08 You could take your billions and shove it up your ass.
0:26:10 (laughing)
0:26:11 – Is that Seneca?
0:26:15 – Yeah, put that on one of those inspirational posters
0:26:16 that you’ve seen in your office.
0:26:20 There is this one guy who was one of the first investors
0:26:22 in a variety of Elon companies.
0:26:26 And presumably a billionaire,
0:26:29 like, you know, investing in Tesla
0:26:32 at a $60 million valuation or $100 million valuation.
0:26:34 You know, I don’t know what that,
0:26:37 is that like, is that like a hundred thousand times?
0:26:38 So something like that.
0:26:39 – We don’t do public math.
0:26:40 – Yeah, like a lot.
0:26:42 – It’s now a trillion dollar company.
0:26:44 – Yeah, so it’s a big deal.
0:26:48 You know, there was this funny story
0:26:51 where this guy was telling a story about working really hard.
0:26:54 And like he was grinding and his kid was sick
0:26:55 and he’s like, I had to take a week off
0:26:56 to like go and help my kid.
0:26:58 And you know, that was a big deal
0:26:59 ’cause I was working so hard.
0:27:01 And then this other guy came and he goes,
0:27:02 do you know how you guys are all talking
0:27:06 about working 16 hours a day on your companies?
0:27:10 Right now I’m doing that as well,
0:27:11 but my company is my family.
0:27:14 And I have retired from business
0:27:19 and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family.
0:27:25 And when he said that, I was like, this is awesome.
0:27:27 And I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit
0:27:31 ’cause I imagine he still does some type of deal making
0:27:32 or something like that.
0:27:34 You know, I don’t know him well enough to know,
0:27:37 but I thought it was so cool when he said that.
0:27:39 And I thought like you have it figured out.
0:27:41 Same with Jesse Itzler.
0:27:44 These two guys, I can’t say the first guy’s name,
0:27:46 but Jesse also had the same energy
0:27:49 where I was like, this is the way,
0:27:52 and this is all personal preference.
0:27:55 You know, Jimmy wanted to be Elon cool, go do that.
0:27:57 But when I heard this other way of talking,
0:28:01 I was like, you know, after, this is easy to say
0:28:03 because everyone was wealthy, but after some number,
0:28:05 I don’t know what that number is, 10, 20, 30,
0:28:09 some millions of numbers, not a lot of it really matters.
0:28:11 And just like having a good time with your family
0:28:12 is something I really admired.
0:28:15 And I thought it was really cool that that guy said that.
0:28:18 And it made me realize that I was getting sucked
0:28:20 in this vortex of like money, money, money
0:28:23 and achievement, achievement, whatever.
0:28:26 But when I saw these guys talk and their energy,
0:28:29 I was more drawn to that than anyone else there.
0:28:30 Do you agree?
0:28:31 – Yeah, 100%.
0:28:33 I think when I go to events like this,
0:28:36 my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win?
0:28:37 Oh, how do you win?
0:28:38 How do you win?
0:28:40 What tactics, what techniques, what strategies,
0:28:42 what approaches work?
0:28:44 And instead, the better question almost every single time
0:28:46 is what game are you even playing?
0:28:49 And picking the right game matters way more
0:28:52 than figuring out how to win the wrong game.
0:28:54 – Dude, there was people there who were like
0:28:57 mini Genghis Khan’s where it’s like they want to dominate.
0:29:01 Like they get joy out of war and domination.
0:29:04 – They wanna build cities, they wanna dominate industries,
0:29:05 they wanna do that.
0:29:06 And that’s one game you can play.
0:29:08 And by the way, no judgment, great.
0:29:09 Do whatever game you wanna play out.
0:29:12 I just wanna know what the games are so I can pick.
0:29:13 And other people were like,
0:29:15 I wanna be CEO of my family full time.
0:29:17 And I’m like, eh, I’ve done a four hour stretch
0:29:20 with my kids like, I think I’m more of a 45 minutes a day,
0:29:23 45 minutes at a time, four times a day, that’s my ideal.
0:29:25 It’s okay, I’m not gonna be CEO of my family
0:29:27 ’cause I would actually be miserable
0:29:30 if I was a full time stay at home dad personally.
0:29:32 But okay, that’s a game I could play.
0:29:33 Then I talked to Jesse and I was like,
0:29:34 Jesse, what do you do?
0:29:35 Like what do you do every day now?
0:29:37 I’m training for races
0:29:39 and I’m coaching my kids sports things.
0:29:42 I do public speaking ’cause I feel like it keeps me sharp
0:29:43 and I get excited to get up on stage
0:29:45 and say some shit that lights people up.
0:29:47 He’s like, I’m selling calendars.
0:29:48 He’s like, it’s not gonna, he’s like,
0:29:49 I’m not making it a fortune.
0:29:53 I’m like, these guys, they’ll do that in a day or two a week
0:29:56 or we’ll do in a year, but I don’t know, I like doing it.
0:29:58 I’m doing what I wanna be doing.
0:30:01 And he was very at ease with that, he’s at peace with that.
0:30:03 And I think obviously some of that comes from maturity
0:30:06 but a lot of it comes from, it’s easy to be at peace
0:30:08 when you’re actually doing the thing that puts you at peace
0:30:10 when you’re doing the thing you like.
0:30:13 And if you’re kind of, I don’t know,
0:30:14 like masquerading around trying to just do
0:30:16 what you think you should be doing,
0:30:17 I think that becomes very exhausting.
0:30:20 And so I’m with you that figuring out what game to play
0:30:22 seems like the much more important question
0:30:23 at every phase of your life.
0:30:25 And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different
0:30:27 than the one I’m playing currently in my 30s.
0:30:28 It’s probably gonna be different
0:30:30 than what I play in my 40s and 50s.
0:30:33 And I just gotta kind of reinvent myself.
0:30:33 – Dude, there was one guy there
0:30:34 he said he worked with Elon.
0:30:38 And apparently he had to do a meeting or something
0:30:42 with Elon and like the secretary told him like,
0:30:43 all right, you’re gonna do this meeting
0:30:47 but I need you to know that Elon makes,
0:30:51 his companies make $20 million every one hour.
0:30:54 So this better be a $20 million meeting.
0:30:56 – I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him
0:31:00 that he was like, Elon would have a meeting
0:31:03 but there would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting.
0:31:07 And the reason why was not because that makes
0:31:08 for a more effective meeting,
0:31:10 but because it was like, if the right,
0:31:13 if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room,
0:31:16 it’s such a colossal waste of his time
0:31:18 that we’ll just fly everybody here
0:31:21 and we’re gonna have this, you know, 45 minute block.
0:31:23 And that way everybody’s here
0:31:24 because all of your time collectively
0:31:26 is not worth as much as his, his hour.
0:31:28 (laughing)
0:31:30 It’s just like such an absurd.
0:31:33 – Like it’s hard to, it’s hard to fathom this.
0:31:35 Let me tell you a really quick one
0:31:38 which is hard to work amongst this group, not universal.
0:31:41 So there was one guy, you weren’t there.
0:31:44 You were, Sean like busted his knee in the second hour
0:31:46 or something like that and had to stay at home
0:31:48 for like this whole, one whole session.
0:31:49 And there was this guy there
0:31:51 who was explaining how hard he grinds.
0:31:53 And then there was this other guy
0:31:55 who was one of the more successful guys there.
0:31:58 He was like, I work like 20 hours a week.
0:32:00 He’s like, once my companies got to be
0:32:04 like some type of like predictable, stable, like,
0:32:06 all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years,
0:32:10 we’re gonna grow 50% a year, hopefully like it’s gonna,
0:32:12 whatever, he was like, I started to work in 20 hours a week.
0:32:15 And he’s like, I wouldn’t work Fridays.
0:32:17 And it was really interesting to see
0:32:19 that not everyone worked hard.
0:32:21 Did you get that sense from people?
0:32:23 – The thing I pulled from it was
0:32:26 some people were basically operating like monopolies
0:32:29 and other people were not.
0:32:31 Meaning there were some people playing a game
0:32:33 where the competition is so vicious.
0:32:36 Like, you know, like an easy example is YouTube.
0:32:41 If you stop uploading, the game stop, the music stops.
0:32:42 – There’s literally a million other businesses
0:32:45 in that same exact space to the exact same exact thing
0:32:46 who are ready to eat lunch.
0:32:48 – And every idea you put out there in a video,
0:32:50 somebody else is gonna copy.
0:32:52 And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does
0:32:53 and the exact script.
0:32:55 It’s all public information.
0:32:56 It’s all super competitive.
0:32:57 There’s no gatekeeping.
0:32:59 And then there’s other people who were like,
0:33:02 yeah, all we had to do was get to this.
0:33:04 Like, we just had to get this shelf space.
0:33:07 Like, there was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target.
0:33:10 And he was like, basically seven years of the company
0:33:13 was just like hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf.
0:33:15 But once you’re on the shelf,
0:33:17 it’s almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf.
0:33:19 All we have to do now is stay on the shelf.
0:33:20 By the way, this shelf right here,
0:33:22 like this little rack you’re looking at,
0:33:24 this is $300 million a year.
0:33:27 And you’re just looking at it, you’re like, oh, damn.
0:33:32 Like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target
0:33:35 is like the entire revenue streams
0:33:36 of like these online only companies.
0:33:38 But you’re extremely defensible
0:33:41 compared to other businesses where
0:33:43 the moment you take a break,
0:33:46 you have the entire internet competing with you
0:33:47 on that same thing, you know what I mean?
0:33:51 – Yeah, yeah, that was an interesting thing.
0:33:52 Do you have-
0:33:54 – I have a quick one.
0:33:55 Health is wealth.
0:33:58 In a room full of very wealthy people,
0:34:00 how many fancy clothes did you see?
0:34:02 How many fancy watches did you see?
0:34:05 How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about?
0:34:07 – Everyone, but Joe Gebbia looks shleppy.
0:34:09 – Joe Gebbia looked great, even in-
0:34:10 – Fantastic style.
0:34:11 – Even in workout gear.
0:34:13 He was wearing some nice shirts.
0:34:15 – He looks like he should be in like a Taylor Sheridan show.
0:34:18 Like if he made an appearance on “Landman”,
0:34:20 I wouldn’t even blink.
0:34:21 – Everyone besides him.
0:34:23 Dude, do you know he’s on the board of Tesla?
0:34:24 I didn’t know that either.
0:34:26 Like he does a lot of interesting stuff.
0:34:31 Everyone besides him looked like we’re at a slumber party.
0:34:33 – Yeah, well, we were also.
0:34:35 – Yeah, but during the day.
0:34:37 – Yeah, that should be the title of the slumber party
0:34:38 with billionaires.
0:34:45 – So I’m obsessed with being transparent about money,
0:34:47 particularly with ultra high net worth people.
0:34:50 The reason being is that there’s not a lot of information
0:34:51 on this demographic.
0:34:53 And so because I own Hampton,
0:34:54 which is a community for founders,
0:34:57 I have access to thousands of young
0:34:58 and incredibly high net worth people.
0:35:00 We have people worth hundreds of millions
0:35:02 and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton.
0:35:03 And so every year we do this thing
0:35:05 called the Hampton Wealth Report
0:35:07 where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs
0:35:09 and we ask them all types of information
0:35:11 about their personal finances.
0:35:13 We ask them about how they’re investing their money,
0:35:15 what their portfolio looks like.
0:35:17 We ask them about their monthly spend habits.
0:35:18 We ask them how they’ve set up their estate,
0:35:20 how much money they’re gonna leave to charity,
0:35:22 how much money they keep in cash,
0:35:23 how much money they’re paying themselves
0:35:24 from their businesses.
0:35:28 Basically every question that you wanna ask a rich person,
0:35:30 we went and we do it for you
0:35:32 and we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people.
0:35:34 So if you wanna check out the report,
0:35:35 it’s called the Hampton Wealth Report.
0:35:37 Just go to joinhampton.com, click our menu
0:35:39 and you’re gonna see a section called Reports
0:35:40 and you’re gonna see it all right there.
0:35:41 It’s very easy.
0:35:43 So again, it’s called the Hampton Wealth Report.
0:35:46 Go to joinhampton.com, click the menu
0:35:47 and then click the report button.
0:35:49 And let me know what you think.
0:35:54 – So, but the health is well thing was very real.
0:35:58 There was a lot of flexing on stuff you’re doing
0:36:00 for your health, what you’re eating and not eating,
0:36:02 how much, who’s your doctor?
0:36:04 Who’s your, what’s your protocol?
0:36:05 – But dude, no one was like–
0:36:08 – That Jack or Rip or anything, were they?
0:36:09 Other than Joe?
0:36:12 – Yeah, I thought people were in pretty good shape.
0:36:14 If you go to other industries, non,
0:36:16 kind of like tech, internet, not our bubble, right?
0:36:18 But like, go to like a conference
0:36:22 with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever,
0:36:25 like pick any industry, their body shape looks a lot different.
0:36:29 – No, everyone, they looked like a healthy 55 year old.
0:36:31 – Dude, basically our day was go play basketball
0:36:35 for three hours, like an intense basketball game, come home,
0:36:37 go into a 250 degree sauna.
0:36:40 Then when you’re tired of the sauna, go into this pond
0:36:42 that was like freezing cold in North Carolina
0:36:43 and go plunge for three minutes.
0:36:46 So then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge.
0:36:48 Then there’s like a masseuse doing body work
0:36:49 and myofascial release for you.
0:36:52 Then you’re eating and everybody’s gonna be cleaning.
0:36:54 Every single person’s eating clean while we’re there, right?
0:36:56 It’s like, dude, that was the norm.
0:36:57 That is not normal.
0:37:00 If you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle,
0:37:03 it’s like basically doing heroin at this event.
0:37:06 – Dude, me and Nick Huber got Taco Bell at midnight.
0:37:08 – It’s secrecy.
0:37:11 – Yeah, like we didn’t want to tell anyone.
0:37:12 – Secrecy.
0:37:15 Dude, I took like a feastable bar in my like,
0:37:17 I like hid it in my hoodie and it crouched over to my bedroom
0:37:19 and ate it like in shame over there
0:37:20 because what am I gonna do?
0:37:23 Sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men.
0:37:26 He’s just 52 years old and ripped.
0:37:26 – Yeah, he looked great.
0:37:27 – I was like, wow, this guy is, you know,
0:37:31 on the Forbes, you know, self-made billionaires list
0:37:34 and also just ripped for fun as a side quest.
0:37:36 – Dude, yeah, yeah, I mean, he looked great.
0:37:37 And then–
0:37:40 – Jesse’s 56 and runs 100 mile races.
0:37:41 How many 50 year olds are ripped
0:37:42 and run 100 mile races?
0:37:45 Nobody does that shit, especially successful guys.
0:37:47 – Jimmy wanted to do like a taste test.
0:37:49 He had everyone like gather around to do a taste test
0:37:51 of like Hershey’s versus his stuff.
0:37:54 And like I like pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy,
0:37:55 your stuff is great.
0:37:56 I’ve never had this before,
0:38:00 but like at every Airbnb in the kitchen,
0:38:02 did you see this at every Airbnb?
0:38:06 It was like literally 100 candy bars.
0:38:11 And I literally had 2000 calories per night of his candy.
0:38:13 I ate so much of it.
0:38:15 I could tell you about all of it.
0:38:18 Like I could, I did, I didn’t need a taste test.
0:38:20 I could tell, I’m already an expert on,
0:38:22 I could tell you about all the flavors,
0:38:24 the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones.
0:38:26 – You don’t have to lick the wrapper for the taste tests.
0:38:28 Like, no, no, no, no, this is just how I’m thorough.
0:38:30 – Like I’ve already, I’m like, Jimmy, I already know.
0:38:32 Like I’ve eaten all of them.
0:38:35 And I had M&M’s and Hershey bars on the plate
0:38:36 on the way here.
0:38:37 Like I could tell you about–
0:38:39 – The hilarious thing is when he’s hanging out
0:38:42 with like the upper echelon of the group,
0:38:44 he’s just like, I just tried a piece of this one.
0:38:45 You don’t have to eat the whole thing.
0:38:46 But like, you know, it’s more for younger people,
0:38:47 but like whatever.
0:38:48 And I was like, it’s for kids.
0:38:49 – It’s for kids.
0:38:51 And he’s like, he’ll give you like the dark chocolate flavor.
0:38:52 – Yeah, I was like, dude–
0:38:54 – And I’m sitting there with like cookies and cream
0:38:54 all over my face.
0:38:55 And I’m like, I like it.
0:38:57 I like the cookies and cream one.
0:39:00 (laughing)
0:39:01 – It’s like my daughter just learned that.
0:39:02 – It was my favorite, Jimmy.
0:39:03 You have more of this one?
0:39:05 – Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more.
0:39:09 But I feel like this, more, more, more.
0:39:10 – Momo, Momo, this one.
0:39:12 – I was doing this all the time, more, more, more.
0:39:15 (laughing)
0:39:18 – Can I give you some of the negative ones?
0:39:20 – How about the guy who goes,
0:39:21 at that point, I was broke.
0:39:23 I think I only had like $20 million.
0:39:24 (laughing)
0:39:25 – Yeah, he’s telling some story.
0:39:27 Well, there was a hilarious conversation about prenups,
0:39:30 which is, you know, nothing more can be said
0:39:32 except for there was an incredible conversation
0:39:33 about prenups.
0:39:34 – I wasn’t about to go outside.
0:39:37 Me and someone else were gonna go outside of the sauna.
0:39:39 And someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about prenup?
0:39:42 And we were like, oh, let’s just sit right here.
0:39:44 I just want to listen.
0:39:45 Let’s just listen.
0:39:48 That like next three hours was one of the most entertaining
0:39:48 three hours of my life.
0:39:52 Like I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in five, 10 years.
0:39:54 Like I was literally like belly laugh crying.
0:39:57 – Some shocking set setups.
0:40:01 People are billionaires are not like you and me.
0:40:03 If you’re listening to this, billionaires exist
0:40:04 and they’re not like you.
0:40:05 They’re not like you.
0:40:09 – I would say is the mid-wit meme was in full effect.
0:40:10 I’ll give you one example.
0:40:12 So the way we played our basketball tournament
0:40:15 was three teams and we played
0:40:16 and then it was supposed to be
0:40:19 the top two teams play for the finals.
0:40:21 But all the teams finished the same record.
0:40:22 We all had one win, one loss
0:40:24 after everybody played each other.
0:40:25 So it was like, okay, well,
0:40:26 which two teams advanced to the finals?
0:40:28 And so I, but everybody’s getting tired.
0:40:29 So I had to make something up.
0:40:30 So I was like, all right,
0:40:31 we’re gonna do like a penalty kick shootout.
0:40:34 So what’s the most exciting thing in sports
0:40:36 is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout.
0:40:38 And it’s not gonna take up a bunch of energy
0:40:40 ’cause like we’re old guys and people are getting hurt.
0:40:41 We got to like, we can’t play an extra game
0:40:43 to figure out who’s gonna go.
0:40:45 So we said, all right, everybody step up to,
0:40:47 every team, each team pick five guys,
0:40:48 they’re gonna shoot a free throw
0:40:50 and then the team that makes the least,
0:40:52 like pressure’s on, everybody’s watching you.
0:40:53 So it was interesting.
0:40:56 One team, my team was like, this is a dictatorship.
0:40:59 Like, y’all are the five best to the other guys.
0:41:00 They’re better than you.
0:41:01 These five are shooting.
0:41:03 – Who was the dictator?
0:41:04 – Well, I was a dictator.
0:41:06 I didn’t even think there was another way.
0:41:08 I was like, of course we’re just gonna pick our five best
0:41:09 and do this.
0:41:10 Like, honestly, I didn’t even consider another method.
0:41:11 And I was the coach of my team
0:41:13 ’cause I had gotten injured, I’m on crutches.
0:41:14 And I was like doing that.
0:41:17 The second guy, the second team did merit-based.
0:41:19 And the third was like kind of like
0:41:22 a volunteer voting system or whatever.
0:41:23 And in the merit-based thing,
0:41:25 a funny thing that happened was,
0:41:27 one of the guys was probably less good at basketball
0:41:30 overall, made it in the practice shot.
0:41:31 And one of the guys who was one of their better players
0:41:33 on the team just happened to miss.
0:41:35 So I was like, damn, are y’all really gonna
0:41:37 not have one of your best players shoot
0:41:38 and have this other guy shoot?
0:41:39 I was just watching, I’m like,
0:41:40 I just wanna see what happens here.
0:41:42 I wanna see what happened with the egos.
0:41:44 I just need to know, I need to see this.
0:41:45 The guy was like, you sure?
0:41:46 You wanna do it?
0:41:47 He’s like, no, no, no, you should do it.
0:41:48 You made it.
0:41:49 If you want to, I’ll do it.
0:41:51 And then the guy’s like, no, I mean, I don’t know.
0:41:52 I think I’m gonna do it.
0:41:53 He’s like, okay, go ahead and do it.
0:41:57 So the guy steps up and he shoots and he makes it.
0:41:59 The guy who’s probably like, you know,
0:42:01 one of the weaker basketball players makes it,
0:42:03 clutched it up and has this awesome moment
0:42:05 and his team advances to the finals.
0:42:06 And I feel so happy for this guy.
0:42:07 And I’m like, that was amazing.
0:42:09 I’m like, I’m glad that they kind of honored it.
0:42:11 – Real Rudy moment.
0:42:13 – He had his Rudy moment, he honored it, he made it.
0:42:14 Good for him.
0:42:15 That was awesome, under pressure.
0:42:17 I love, I wanted everybody to have like gold moments
0:42:19 during the, during the event.
0:42:21 But then after the final and this,
0:42:23 their team goes on, wins the finals.
0:42:25 Happy, they’re holding the trophy, it’s all good.
0:42:28 Afterwards, we’re all like packing up to leave.
0:42:30 And he’s like, he goes up to that guy,
0:42:32 the other guy who sat out.
0:42:34 And he’s like, hey, I want,
0:42:36 can you with me go shoot free throws?
0:42:38 I want to know if that was the correct,
0:42:40 like EV decision, statistically.
0:42:42 And the guy’s like, oh man, you already made it.
0:42:43 Like you already made it, we already won.
0:42:45 Like you’re good, did you did it?
0:42:47 He’s like, no, no, no, I need to know.
0:42:48 I need to know.
0:42:52 And he’s like, no, like it’s like, honestly, it’s done.
0:42:52 I’m glad you did it.
0:42:53 You made it.
0:42:54 He’s like, I need to know.
0:42:57 And he’s like, all right, so they go and they shoot.
0:42:59 And of course the guy who’s played basketball his whole life
0:43:01 makes more of the free throws in like the,
0:43:03 with the larger sample size.
0:43:05 And then the other guy was like kind of head down for like,
0:43:07 he’s kind of bummed out about it for a second.
0:43:10 And I was like, what a,
0:43:13 what an intelligently stupid thing to do, right?
0:43:14 Like he wanted to know, like,
0:43:16 was this a positive EV decision?
0:43:17 What’s statistically the correct move?
0:43:19 – What does EV mean?
0:43:20 – Expected value.
0:43:22 It’s like, if you’re playing poker, you can,
0:43:24 you bet your chips and even if you lose,
0:43:26 you’re still happy because you made the right decision.
0:43:27 Even if the result didn’t pan out.
0:43:28 – That’s so funny.
0:43:29 – There’s chances.
0:43:33 And so I was like, way to snatch,
0:43:36 like way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
0:43:38 And there was so many of these little moments where like,
0:43:40 there’s this guy there who’s like, he’s a total catch.
0:43:42 He’s like smart, he’s good looking, he’s ripped,
0:43:45 he’s successful, all these things.
0:43:47 And he, I just thought a guy like this
0:43:50 could walk into a coffee shop and like,
0:43:52 the cute barista would want him to talk to her.
0:43:54 There’s a, I’ve always wanted to be that guy.
0:43:56 You know, like, this guy could have been that guy.
0:43:58 He could have been, it could be so easy for him
0:44:00 to just meet someone amazing.
0:44:02 And instead, do you want to describe?
0:44:05 – So all right, I think what he did,
0:44:06 what did he scrape?
0:44:09 He built a program that scraped LinkedIn.
0:44:10 – Start with the desired result.
0:44:14 He’s like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman
0:44:15 or something like that.
0:44:15 I wasn’t there for the whole thing.
0:44:18 – Whatever, someone who fit his like heritage.
0:44:19 – So he was like, cool.
0:44:21 So he built an AI bot to crawl LinkedIn
0:44:24 to then scrape all the like successful, beautiful,
0:44:26 like trained on images of women
0:44:27 that he thought were beautiful.
0:44:31 – Like every woman who was like of a certain like look
0:44:34 in New York who was between, you know, whatever,
0:44:37 22 and 30 or whatever, he had like a date of,
0:44:39 he had binders of women.
0:44:41 – He had binders of women, it was hilarious.
0:44:42 And then he had this like whole system
0:44:45 for how we could reach out to them with like, it was amazing.
0:44:47 I don’t want to go into all the details, but like-
0:44:49 – Dude, he had a dedicated iPhone there.
0:44:51 He goes, this is my iPhone.
0:44:54 And I, he goes, I have two full-time engineers
0:44:58 who have built this program that auto DMs them,
0:45:00 this particular DM on Instagram.
0:45:02 Let me send her a voice note.
0:45:03 I go, you send her voice notes.
0:45:05 He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better.
0:45:08 And like he like showed me the voice note.
0:45:09 – As he told this whole system is like,
0:45:11 what’s that thing called the Rorschach test or whatever?
0:45:12 Where you see the blot and it’s like,
0:45:14 you either see like a killer or an angel or whatever.
0:45:16 His, it was like, some people were like,
0:45:18 this is the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.
0:45:20 And then some people like the married guys
0:45:23 who were like, you know, 50, 40s and 50s were like,
0:45:26 brother, you’re, you’re, it’s too much.
0:45:27 You’re doing too much here.
0:45:31 You gotta just like, just see a cute girl and go talk to her.
0:45:31 It’s okay.
0:45:33 Let it, let it roll organically, baby.
0:45:34 It’s going to work better that way.
0:45:36 And I just thought it was hilarious.
0:45:36 I’m really late.
0:45:37 I got to go.
0:45:38 I’m supposed to be speaking at something right now.
0:45:39 I got to, I got to jet.
0:45:40 I just realized I’m way over.
0:45:41 – That’s it.
0:45:42 That’s the pod.
0:45:44 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:45:47 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:45:49 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:45:53 ♪ On a road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:45:57 – Hey, Sean here.
0:45:59 I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvy story.
0:46:01 One of the great ad men.
0:46:03 He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron.
0:46:04 She’s your wife.
0:46:06 You wouldn’t lie to your own wife.
0:46:08 So don’t lie to mine.
0:46:08 And I love that.
0:46:09 You guys, you’re my family.
0:46:11 You’re like my wife and I won’t lie to you either.
0:46:15 So I’ll tell you the truth for every company I own right now.
0:46:18 Six companies, I use Mercury for all of them.
0:46:19 So I’m proud to partner with Mercury
0:46:21 because I use it for all of my banking needs
0:46:24 across my personal account, my business accounts.
0:46:26 And anytime I start a new company,
0:46:27 this is my first move, I go open up a Mercury account.
0:46:29 I’m very confident in recommending it
0:46:30 because I actually use it.
0:46:30 I’ve used it for years.
0:46:33 It is the best product on the market.
0:46:34 So if you want to be like me
0:46:37 and 200,000 other ambitious founders,
0:46:39 go to mercury.com and apply in minutes.
0:46:42 And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company,
0:46:44 not a bank, banking services provided by Choice Financial
0:46:47 Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
0:46:48 All right, back to the episode.