What It’s Like to Spend 24hrs with a Billionaire Who Plays Full Out

0:00 I have felt like uh a little bit of a like pinch me moment where I've realized Don't hit me. Don't say that one. Pinch me. I will pinch you if you ever say that again. And I'll just say, ow. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my day song. On the road less travel, never look at it. What's going on over there?

0:29 What has been going on? We haven't seen each other in seven days and we've both talked to a bunch of interesting people. Have you enjoyed your time away? I have. By the way, people are like Why do they do these separate? And it's like, dude, we live on the other side of the country. I live in California. Sam lives on the far east coast.

0:48 And so for us to do an in person recording, it's like, Hey, would you like to fly across the country for This day today, just to record this podcast. And both of us have little kids, but neither of us want to do that. So if you see us doing one on one interviews with people Don't worry, me and Sam are still good. We just we live really far apart. Okay, so here's the deal.

1:06 In the last ten days, both you and I have gone and did podcasts that have not come out yet. I think this will come out before those with guests who are incredible. So I think all I think all of them are either billionaires or soon to be billionaires, but that's The bun the money is almost the least interesting thing about each one of them. Like what they did and how they how they roll, how they live is more interesting. And we did them In person.

1:27 So for example I went to Las Vegas, I went to Tahoe and I'm basically staying at the person's house. And I'm hanging out with them all day. And then the podcast is just kind of like a one or two hour recording. In the middle of that day. But I'm spending twelve, twenty four hours with this person. And

1:44 When you do that, you pick up a lot. And neither you or I have talked and both but both you and I are kind of Students of the game of life. And one of the ways you be a student of the game of life is you don't just try to do all the experiments on yourself, right? That's a pretty slow and painful way to do things. A faster, easier way is to go and get a little Costco sample.

2:05 I've never had a fig before. Let me try go let's go try a fig. Oh, almond butter. Is this something I like? Am I an almond butter guy? And so I went and sampled these people's lives, and you did too. And so what I wanted to do If you're down for it is. I think we each have three names of people we hung out with and I wanna take

2:23 The one thing that stuck with you that was not in the podcast. Man, we get to hang out with so many uh amazing people and it It absolutely wears off on you. I our world is business, but frankly I find like just the money part to be a little bit empty and I think you agree with life is mo more more rich than just money, but it just so happens that

2:42 We like being people who are experts at their field and the field is business. And so we've there's probably only thirty five hundred or forty five hundred billionaires in the world. And I feel like every year we get to hang out with like thirty of'em. And again, the the the money is not the important part, but the fact that it's just like so that there's only forty five hundred people of all the people on earth who are in this category, it's pretty exciting to be around someone who's the best at their field and it one hundred percent wears off to you, wears off on you. Where you start normalizing being in the uh one percent of whatever activity you're trying to be in. Totally. Uh yeah, and your money point is right, which is even if we were just like

3:19 If I ran into Kobeashi. On the street. I'd be like this guy's the gr I'd be like, honey, this guy's the greatest hot dog eater of all time. Now she wouldn't care, to be clear, but I would be like it would be like meeting Kobe, right? He's the Kobe of eating hot dogs. And so um, you know, excellence in any form. Is interesting to me. And anybody who is gets an outlier uh result.

3:41 In a field that many people go try to choose, because it's always interesting. How did you get that? Because if you're interested in becoming an outlier in your field, you can actually learn from it in any field. Anyways. So you're right that our quote unquote job gets us uh access to this. Now the giving part here is We don't want to be selfish to just kind of keep for ourselves, you know, what we picked up. So let's let's jump in. All right. So

4:01 I go hang out with this guy, Hayes Barnard. Most people don't know who Hayes Barnard is, but his story's pretty crazy. So the the short version of his story is Guy grows up. Single mom. kind of f you know, from the dirt in uh actually in in Missouri.

4:17 And he ends up sort of hustling his way into a job, a sales job. Did a tech sales job, then he ends up at Oracle. And he works. For Oracle in the nineties when Larry Ellison was, you know, basically he was flip flopping between Larry Ellison and Bill Gates as like the wealthiest man in the world. And um

4:33 And he's and so he becomes uh basically a competitive salesman. And so he becomes a A top sales guy at Oracle just by like working harder than everybody. So he's like I would just get in earlier, I would stay later, I would work every weekend. Those guys, you know, most of the sales guys who were doing well by three PM they would leave, they'd go play basketball or tennis or racketball.

4:53 And I would just stay the extra three hours. And I stay the extra four hours and I would just do that every single day and it just added up. So he Ends up becoming a top guy at at Oracle. But he sees that some of the other top guys at Oracle go leave and start these huge companies. So Mark Benioff leaves and goes starts Salesforce. This other guy leaves and goes starts this other company. And so he starts to think, hmm. Maybe I'm like them.

5:13 Right. And maybe I should go do that. And so he leaves and he starts a um a mortgage company where he's like, Maybe the same way I could sell complicated enterprise software. Using a call center and some online ads. Uh, maybe I could sell a mortgage, right? Most people at the time felt that mortgages were too complicated. Like you do you needed a in person, you know, a local bank branch with the local banker who's gonna talk to you and hold your hand and all the stuff.

5:38 He's like, I don't know, I think with like Radio ads. And a call center in Sacramento. I think I could just Sell mortgages over the phone. The same way I've just been selling

5:47 Oracle databases. Did he know anything about mortgages or No, but his friend from childhood, is like b best friend from like fourth grade or something like that. He kinda knew a little about mortgages and Hayes knew a lot about selling, so they leave to go start this thing. In the oh eight mortgage crash, he survived because they had been underwriting conservatively.

6:05 So they were the one. mortgage company that was like not giving out subprime loans so they survive the mortgage crisis. But during that time he diversifies'cause he's like Instead of just selling mortgages, what if I go into the energy business? What if I what if I branch what if I diversify? Instead of just selling mortgages, could we sell solar?

6:21 and help people with their utility bill. So if uh if like what if I gave you a thing that's cleaner for the environment, saves you money on your electricity. So he starts a company that does that for solar. Now. That solar company gets bought by

6:35 Solar City. Uh it he ends up driving. He's not actually installing the solar. So like you know Solar City would actually go install the solar. If you don't know, Solar City was started by Elon Musk and his cousin. And so he was selling the solar and then Solar Studio would go install it. At one point

6:51 I think they made up like fifty percent of Solar City's revenue. It was like insane. He was driving so much revenue for them. And so Solar City acquires them. Solar City then ends up getting acquired by Tesla for two or three billion dollars. And um and then you know, T Tesla's gone on this crazy run and like, you know, whatever, thirty X and cent. So here's this guy Hayes.

7:09 Who is You know. He grew up nowhere in Missouri. He has dyslexia and uh a form of dyslexia where He ends up flunking out of the first grade'cause he can't read properly.

7:21 Uh, you know, he works on a farm, he's a sa subway sandwich artist, and somehow this guy's now one of the wealthiest men in America. Okay. He's a self made billionaire now. So I go I I wanna do a podcast with Hayes. So I hit him up I'm like, Hey, would you do this? I know you don't do a lot of these, would you do this? He says, Yeah, sure, no problem.

7:37 Now, the thing about Hayes though is that Hayes does not do anything. At like a chill level. So like he was the most unchill person I've ever been around. Well, he's fun to be around. He's actually extremely fun. Like he's very funny, he's fun, but like If he chooses to do something, he doesn't have to do anything. You know, he's only and this is his thing he says, he's like

7:57 We play full out. So Sam, normally when we book a guest, especially like let's say one of the like more on the higher end of the range of success of guests. What is the normal Prep experience like

8:09 Maybe a week before. Just walk walk through that. Well, so sometimes we want to do a call with them, but then other times if someone's really successful, you're like embarrassed to ask them like can I spend like an hour of your time just brainstorming? And so Uh sometimes Ari will call, sometimes one of us will call, depending on how successful they are to not disrespect them. And so it's quite challenging. The more successful they are, it's like Can I waste an hour of your time like just prepare? Or do I just show up with stories that I ask your friends and hopefully it goes great? Yeah. And sometimes we send them a uh like a doc which's like, Hey, here's some

8:39 Can you fill this out? This will help us. And then I would say half the time they do fill it out, but half the time it's like They give us either nothing or half half filled out, something like that, and we just show up, we say, All right, we gotta make it happen. We understand. We hope it works. This experience was completely different. So uh Hayes not only

8:56 calls me, he calls Ben two or three times before the podcast. And he starts discussing, you know What can we talk about? Tell me what what's what you think is going to be interesting. How do we make this amazing? He just keeps asking this question. How do we make this amazing? So instead of just saying, what are we gonna talk about? That's the average question, his was How do we make this amazing? And he keeps calling back and he's basically like When he says this he's like, I don't say yes to many things, but if I do say yes

9:21 I go all out. And so first in the pre prod the the pre pod prep, he's, you know, really active. And he keeps asking how's how's it gonna be amazing? And he this idea he comes up with he's like, you know, most of the time you sit down and people ask the same five questions about like How'd you do it? Um, you know, what do you think about AI, blah, blah, blah, like these same questions and

9:39 You get these ro robotic Tech answers from these like You know these tech people and he's like, Let's do it different. So he's like, Why don't you just come out to Tahoe Come to my house.

9:49 And let's spend the whole day together. Come do my morning routine with me. It's amazing. You're gonna love it. It's gonna be great. Alright, a few episodes ago I talked about something And I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain. And that's what I'm about to do. So I told you guys how I use chat GPT as a life coach or a thought partner. And what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information. So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals. Different books that I like.

10:18 issues going on in my personal life and businesses. I uploaded so much information. And so the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having Issues with in my life. Like how should I respond to this email? What's the right decision, knowing that you know my goals for the future, things like that. And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step by step process showing the audience showing you The software that I use to make this, the information that I had Chat GBT ask me. All this stuff. So it's super easy for you to use. And like I said, I use this like 10 or 20 times a day. It's literally changed my life. And so if you want that, it's free. There's a link below. Just click it, enter your email, and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes. And I'll show you how I use it again, 10 to 20 times a day.

11:03 Um all right, so check it out. The link is below in the description. Back to the episode. And so we go to Tahoe. And we're like, Cool, uh we'll we'll be there Tuesday. We'll see you Wednesday for the recording.

11:16 And he goes, Awesome. Be at my house at five AM. Oh my God. I am. What w what are we doing here? So we show up at five AM. And he's like Boys, good morning. He's already like I'm like rubbing the like boogers out of my eye.

11:29 And he's like awake and he's he goes Let's go down to the lake. Okay, so we go down to the to the boat. And um We take this boat out for two minutes into the middle of Lake Tahoe.

11:42 It kills the engine. And we're like, Okay, what's happening? It's it's completely dark out, by the way. The sun hasn't even rose yet. He's like, So we're gonna do my morning routine. Um he's like you're gonna love it. He didn't just say like I hope you guys like this or Thanks for you know, like thanks for coming, like I hope you have a good time.

11:56 He was just like, You're gonna love this. This is gonna be amazing. He basically brainwashed me before I'm even out there of like I do love this. This is kind of amazing. He was he was so charismatic. And he he was just having a good he was genuinely excited. That's the thing. He's not like trying to sell us on anything, right? Like He's doing us a favor inviting h us into his life. But he was genuinely excited for us and he's like my my friends right here, this is great, you're gonna love this. So he kills the engine.

12:18 He turns on he's like there's a little woo-woo. But Just W are you guys willing to play ball? Like just let's do this today and you'll like it. So he puts on this Breath work routine.

12:29 And He's like, I met this guy uh you know on an island with uh from the guy who you know the guy who started uh Cirque du Soleil uh Gee or whatever his name is. Uh, he's like I met this this kind of breathwork guru on his island and he's amazing. I've been doing this for like twenty years since then, or something like that. And so he we do this fifteen minute breath work and then he's like, All right, boys Stand up, let's go. We jump in the lake.

12:52 And we're like we do this kind of like cold plunge in the lake, basically. And Lake Tahoe in the summertime is still freezing. Yeah. So we jump in. Um immediately like you know lose all feeling in my body. And then he's like, Okay, we're gonna go down and do a breath hold down underwater and for a minute, and like this is gonna be great. It's gonna feel like you're in space. Open your eyes. Like I don't have goggles. He's like open your eyes. Okay. And so we go underwater

13:17 I open my eyes and it literally looks like you're it's floating in space. He's right. By the way, can only hold my breath for no joke, seven seconds. I don't know what happened. Yeah, well, when it's freezing, it's hard. So I immediately go down and I'm like, Nope, I'm done. I pop back up. He's underwater, so he comes up, he's like, Okay, let's do that again. Okay, yeah, yeah. I need a a redo because that was you know pretty short. So we do it again. And then he's like You know what? I heard this thing, this amazing thing and it said basically that like

13:48 You know, as you get older, you really want to make the most of your life. You guys are still a little bit younger than me. You'll you'll feel this too. Like you get the sense of urgency about like You realize, you know, your friends start getting sick, you know, your parents getting older. You realize that, you know, this time is not Yeah, time is time is really precious. And there's a time hack. You guys wanna know the time hack? We're like, Yeah, for sure, but what's the time hack? He's like

14:08 If you do something new every day, you sort of mark the day. 'Cause like you know, if I ask you, Sam, what'd you do five days ago? It's probably pretty hard to remember what you did five days ago, even yesterday. It's pretty hard to remember. And that's because when we're in these routines and routines do serve us, but they it causes all the days to blend together. But if you do one new thing a day.

14:28 Um It sort of marks the day. He was you're not gonna remember every single day, but it it makes that day more memorable. She's like Let's figure out what we could do new today. And we're like we're like back on the boat shivering. And he's like You see those rocks? I always see those rocks when I've been this routine, but I've never gone out there.

14:43 You guys down to swim out there? Okay, yeah, let's go. Not because they know. Uh so we jump in the water. Yeah, we start swimming. And he's swimming like

14:51 You know. A shark basically out there. We are like I'm like dying basically. And behind me, I'm like, I don't even know if Ben can swim. I look back at Ben like his glasses are like foggy. I'm like, Well, I don't know what's going on. Diego has like shoulder dislocation problems. I'm like Diego's for sure gonna dislocate his shoulder and just sink like a rock to the bottom taho. We're all dying, and we're swimming from rock to rock like little kids. He's like, Let's like playing tag basically. He's like, Let's go over there. All right, race you to this one.

15:17 And we go and he wants to get to the big he's like, Look at that big rock. Let's get to the big rock. And we go to the big rock. He ends up getting to the big rock. Jump off the big rock have this great moment. Come back to the boat. And this is all like before eight AM. And he he's like I do this every day and I remember

15:31 Just having this feeling which is like This guy basically lives his life at a level He plays at a at a f like a full out level. He plays with a level of intensity on everything that he was doing, whether it was like The podcast. His morning routine. Like

15:48 Each of the things I would do At a seven. He just does that at ten. And if you think about that, like How does that stack every single day, right? Like that extra three units of intensity that he puts in.

16:00 And by the way it's not like he's It's not like hard work in a sense. Like he's just like He just goes for it. Right. He's having more fun. He's w willing to play more than us. And we went and played pickleball with him. We did whatever we did that day, he was like this. And um he told the story During the podcast of this where

16:16 You know, he was a certain way, but he's like Once I worked for Elon and he worked for Elon for ten years. He's like, it broke my frame of reference. Yeah,'cause I was telling him I was like, You kinda broke my frame. Like I have a morning routine, but it's not like this, right? Like I have a

16:30 And I was like, by the way, it's not the money. Like yes, you've got this Beautiful. Was it a sick house? Oh my god, dude. Unbelievable.

16:37 And to the point where he was like he's like Yeah, I prefer not to film this, you know, I'm not trying to show off. I'm like Yeah. The people who try not to show off have the things worth showing off, of course. And so I'm like Um

16:49 It's even if I had that house, would I act like this is the honest question I had. I was like Even if I had this house and I had that boat. And I had this little like you get in this like frickin' like Willy Wonka elevator to get down from the house to the boat. And I'm like Would I wake up at five AM every day and do this?

17:05 No chance. I'd be cuddled up. In bed. With you know, like I would be the little burrito. Tucked in with my just my eying out of the covers.

17:15 At five in the morning. Uh but he does it, right? That's like kinda the difference between him and me, is that he He plays full out. And so that was this the big takeaway for me from that whole experience was Do you want to live like that? Like I I like I think

17:28 So when I'm around I've been around people like this, like They're crazy people. And I think I admire so much about this and I want to take little bits, but I don't I don't want to replicate that. Like I'm not a high energy person like that all the time. I'm only a high energy person like that some of the time. Hayes was like that all the time I was around him. He's energy rich. Yes, I do want to be like that.

17:50 Because I think that' Well first the feeling I had by eight AM I was like oh so I've conquered The world. Already.

17:58 Like Well. W what can you do to me today that's gonna make me feel bad? Is anything really gonna mess with my mood? Or my you know, myself today. Like it's pretty hard to do that when you like conquer the morning like that. But like forget the morning routine and like wake up at five a.m. Like that's sort of secondary.

18:13 The point was If you're gonna do something Like just actually like do it fully. And the thing you the prerequisite for that is to be energy rich. to not be energy poor. Like I went there because I'm like, Oh, this guy's so successful, he's money rich.

18:28 And when I walked away I was like The money rich thing is the com is a byproduct and a complete secondary footnote. to being incredibly energy rich. And two of the guys said the same thing. I don't know if you remember this. I said this when we went and hung out with Mr. Beast. I was like This guy's like the energizer bunny and we were talking about like literally the when he walks, his walking pace

18:46 It's faster than the average human being by like You know, two notches. The the two of the guys that that came with us, they're like, Do you see how fast Hayeswalk God is like hard to keep up with them? It's like just literally has a pep in his step. Um and I think just I think being energy rich is one of the more attractive things. Like You see people who are contact rich. It's like oh wow, they know all these famous people. You see people who are money rich. Oh wow, they got all these dollars in the bank account. To me, energy rich is

19:11 Very, very appealing. To give like an example of this guy Hayes, he's Not talked about at all. He's very under the radar for how big a big of a big shot he is. We're with you and me and a bunch of people were with Jesse Itzler, who is a very gregarious loud personality in a great way. Like he is also energy rich. And I remember being

19:31 in this room with these guys in in Asana actually. And Hayes took over the room because of his stories. And it's energy. And one thing led to another And they are apparently Hayes' hobby is that he used to be into hip hop. And he loves to freestyle rap.

19:47 Which is a very strange thing'cause this guy is like a he looks like me, but like fifty five. He's just like a blonde hair m Missouri guy. And he Is it amazing? Freestyle rapper. They went freestyle rap and he was beatboxing for like six or seven minutes and they went out they went and did this thing.

20:05 It was so good. And I remember talking to him and being around him. And Yeah. I I don't think I've ever met someone whose oven burns that hot. Like he was on fire the whole time.

20:18 Yeah, exactly. Uh he's an incredible dude. The other amazing thing, by the way, hung out with him maybe twelve hours straight. And um Did he work at all or is he taking the day off? So he was like he's like I I'cause I was like, dude, Hayes, you don't gotta do this, man. Like I appreciate it, but like

20:35 You don't have to you know, it's not like normal for a podcast to do this. He's like, No, you guys came all the way out here? I wanna make the time. Yeah, I know I know you guys took time. I wanna make the time. I'm he's like I th I thought this would be cra I thought that would be so rude if I Just show up or record and then uh you leave. Like no, I I wanna make the time. One thing that he

20:52 That stood out he did not check his phone a single time in twelve hours. And I told him at the end I was like, Is that normal? Like you I know you're getting emails. I know you're getting slack messages like just like all of us, right? Like ten times more than all of us. You run a ten billion dollar company. He's the CEO of a ten billion dollar company. And

21:12 He did not check his phone a single time and he's just like well, you know, like If I'm with you guys, I wanna be with you guys. And if I'm working, I'm gonna be working. And I was like, Well if you say it like that, then yeah, I guess I'm a little bitch for it. Yeah, let me put this away then. people or stories that I can tell, or probably you also can tell from that is gonna be the Hayes Carl hang session. That was really good.

21:35 Mm-hmm. Did Ben and uh Diego have a great time too? Oh, I think Ben is at home making Valentine's cards for his right now. He's just like I love that man. I was like I do too. Honestly, I do too. I think he uh if you Google his name too, this is all public. He uh

21:49 Like his side hobby was uh There's a famous hotel in Tahoe or maybe Reno, I forget exactly where it is. And he owns it and he was telling me about the renovation and everything like that. And it was like an epic Thing. I forget exactly. So the story is so the story is this.

22:05 He's in the lake doing the morning routine. Every day. And he's like he's like, I didn't think about like manifesting. I don't even know what that word really means, but He's like I was in the lake and I was thinking about my life and like you know what I want and I was full I was just filling up with kind of like the feelings that I want and he's like, Can I see this hotel.

22:23 And there's this hotel that was kinda like On the you know. Over the hill a little bit. It was on the on the other side of it. He's like And it's two it's literally like one minute from his house. And he sees that hotel while he's in the while he's doing his cold plunge in Lake Tahoe.

22:37 And he just decides looking at it, he goes, I'm gonna buy that hotel. I don't know how, but I'm gonna buy that hotel. And then he starts working on it. He find he finds out it's owned by Larry Ellison, his old boss. Right. His old boss's boss's boss or whatever. And he goes and he purchases the hotel and they're turning it into a proper hotel in Tahoe and he he walked us through the construction of it or whatever. And even that.

22:57 You know, he's architecting his life. It's not like he's doing it to make money. He was like We're gonna put pick a ball career, pool here, this year, this here, all these activities. It's like I want a place to do activities. I want a place for my friends to come and stay. during the summers. Like this will just make my life so much Better if we if we if we're gonna be able to do it

23:13 generate this, if we make this happen. Uh incredibly generative guy. Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty impossible, but that's exactly what Sandler training did with HubSpot. They use Breeze, HubSpot's AI tools, to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal touch. And the results were incredible. Click through rates jumped twenty five percent.

23:37 Qualified leads quadruple. And people spent three times longer on their landing pages. Go to hubspot.com to see how breeze can help your business grow. All right, let's do the next one. All right. Um

23:50 Man, this is gonna that you you you start off really strong there. It's hard to follow up. Uh all right, this person I actually just hang out hung out with. I didn't do a pod with them yet because they refused to come on. So I'm gonna say uh a little bit of information about'em, enough to make it awesome. Not enough that might totally blow up the spot. But have you heard of the company Buck Mason? Buck Mason. Uh I've heard of it. What do they do? Is that a genes? Sort of, sorta. So they started in two thousand and thirteen. And they started in two thousand thirteen selling something very simple, a T shirt. And their goal was just to make the best T shirt. I'm actually wearing one of them right now. And I they didn't they tried to raise money. He was like I I

24:25 try to raise as much money as I could that I got lucky because I was horrible at fundraising and I could raise no money. And so they bootstrap this company. I think it actually started with like a Kickstarter or some type of auction like that. Like a uh pay and then we'll make it type of vibe. And they build this company.

24:43 And Over time They've grown it and grown it and grown it. And I suspect he didn't tell me, but I suspect they do somewhere in the hundred and fifty million dollar arrear uh a year range. And he has forty two stores now.

24:58 So when you go to Buckmason dot com, what do you see? Yes. Well see this is like this Nostalgic I see the I see this like video of these Guys from what is it, maybe like the eighties or what I don't know what what era. It's like a it's like a California cowboy eighties vibe, yeah.

25:14 Yeah, exactly. And I see a bunch of T shirts and and uh collared shirts and jeans. So I love this brand and I became friendly with him because I've DM'd him to get him to come on the podcast and he refuses to come on. And I ask him why and he says I just want the brand to be the face. I don't wanna like get too popular. I I don't wanna be the face of the brand. I want the brand to be the brand. Which is always like the whenever I hear someone say that, I'm like, Oh, you're the best. You're you're gonna win. Yeah, like oh so you're yeah, whenever you hear someone say that, it's like Yeah. Okay, so you're absolutely going to win and you have the right attitude.

25:49 And so he started this company in two thousand thirteen. And Clothing companies. are a pain in the butt. You and I know people in this industry, we know econ guys. It's really, really hard. And it takes a long time, I think, to figure it out.

26:01 But basically they got to the point In ten or fifteen years now. It's twelve and thirteen, so twelve years. Where it's really starting to fire on all cylinders. He's grown it to fifty two stores. And I started talking to m um

26:14 about the history and everything like that. And I started realizing It's not that crazy to do this. Like it's really hard. But I was thinking about Every project that I've started since two thousand and thirteen.

26:27 So in two thousand thirteen I had just graduated college. Do you remember where you were in it was two thousand thirteen sushi era? No, no, that's when I moved to San Francisco, Monkey Inferno. So what was Sushi era? Eleven? Yeah, two thousand ten, eleven. So imagine you starting a sushi store in twenty eleven and you just

26:44 You were chained to that company and you just had to stick with it. You had no other options. You just had to. I have a feeling it would Be a huge success. And I have a feeling that if I had done the same with whatever I was doing

26:57 That there's definitely a world where I would be five or ten times more successful than I am now. Because of Just compounding of sticking with something. And I I sort of felt

27:10 First of all, twelve years it sounds like not a long time. But when I thought about well, where was I in two thousand twelve, two thousand thirteen and what all ha what all have I jumped from thing to thing to thing? And should I have just stuck to one thing and done that the entire time? And where would I be now? Because he was telling me his story. And I love where this guy's Sasha, his name's Sasha Cohn. I love to hear the story where he is now, which is like I've got this amazing team, we're firing on cylinders. I just get to like work on the really exciting projects and it's just going great, cash flow's not an issue, whatever, et cetera. It doesn't feel like that leading up to it, obviously. It's really, really hard. And the majority of the time I would think you'd want to quit. And the majority of the time I would think a guy like him, he didn't say this, I'm guessing, if someone offered to buy the company from him at different weeks throughout the year, I bet he would have said yes, just because it's it's really freaking hard.

27:59 But I just remember thinking like I wish I had the foresight to Yes. Like I wish I would have I I I regret that.

28:09 Uh a little bit when I see where I'm like I don't I don't exactly want to pay the price that you had to pay'cause that was really hard. But when I see where you are now It seems very attractive. Yeah, that's a great one. Um honestly actually that was pretty common amongst all the people I've met with.

28:25 Actually two of them even said this. They go I have very high pain tolerance. And what they were the reason why they were saying it was actually not as a brag. They were like, you know, one of the problems is I have a really high pain tolerance. So I will keep doing something. Even when it's not You know.

28:40 quite right or not obvious. There probably was a better way or a better idea I could have done. I don't know. I'm just That's who I am. I just keep going. Uh, Hayes even said this kind of off the record. I was like, dude, what do you what do you think is the difference about like, you know? You and a bunch of other people are like, you know.

28:55 What I was really interested in was and I I probab probably didn't say this right, but When we were talking about the morning routine. He said he has a different friend come and do it with him every morning. And so he was like, Yeah, yes whatever it's like, Tony Gonzalez did this with me yesterday, the Hall of Fame tight end. And then he was like, Oh yeah, over the week he's like, Oh, he had this thing on his knee and I was like, What happened to your knee?

29:16 Like you got caught up there? He's like, Yeah, I was mountain biking with uh I think his name was Lyndon, like the Elon's cousin from Solar City. We were mountain biking yesterday. We w see that mountain? We went all the way over there. I was like, God, this guy's so active. It's unbelievably active, this man. But I'm also like he's hanging out with Hall of Famers.

29:33 He was talking about Elon and his son went and worked at SpaceX and he's like I was like Oh you didn't have him come work with you? And he's like No, I wanted him to go see what it's like to work with Elon. He's like, I just wanted him to go like it took me a while. The hardest working person who tackles the biggest problems on earth. Yeah, I I work

29:51 ten years of my career be f fifteen years of my career before that happened. I wanted my son to see it like right away. But yeah, just incredible stick to itness for all of them. Because I I'll do my next one. Yeah. So

30:02 Next one is hormose. So I go to Las Vegas and I hang out with Alex Horbozy. And a lot of people know Mosy because he's so he makes so much content. I don't think I actually think Alex Ramos doesn't get enough credit. Every time I hang out with him, I think To your

30:16 You're really wise. Like this is not. Yeah. So okay, so I have a bunch of things that I could say as my takeaway, but I promised one. So here's my one of Hormosity. Um student of the game.

30:29 Okay, so what does this mean? We're talking. And um I asked him, I said, You know, you I get a lot of emails, but you put out so much more content, you have a much bigger audience. You must be getting a hundred emails a day from entrepreneurs who want some advice from you or want some help or want you to invest.

30:46 And then he does these workshops every weekend with a hundred entrepreneurs. So I was like so you're saying another Maybe five hundred plus, maybe thousand plus entrepreneurs in your workshops that are in person. And then you have all the deals that you look at. Maybe another few thousand deals that you look at. Probably looking he's probably meeting I don't know. Five thousand entrepreneurs a year. That's the minimum.

31:07 And I was like, what do you think is the mistake? The m the biggest mistake you see them make. I ask him this and he says. They're only studying their business. They're not a student of the game of business.

31:20 So what do you mean? He goes, Well when you start a company You're very like narrowly focused on your Business, your industry, your business model. So he's like, you know, Sam, you're doing a new you're doing the hustle newsletter? You probably knew

31:33 A ton about newsletters. Right. You knew everything about other newsletters and you knew everything about um maybe the media industry as a whole. And

31:43 I think you're very good about being a student in the game, but I would say most people were probably, you know, even one tenth as curious as you. But then you might also have s gone and looked at the events business and then the SaaS business and other businesses to try to understand like, oh, is that a better business to be in? And actually you started in the events business. Then you went into the media blogging business. And then you found your way into the newsletter business and you were like, that's a better business to be in. And now you're in a paid community business. It's actually a better business to be in than even the one we're before. And the reason why is because you're a student of the game.

32:13 of business, not just your business. And Alice basically was like, I made this mistake. You know, I was basically a gym operator. I had a one gym and then I had two gyms I had three gyms and I was gonna own and operate gyms. And I got really good owner operating a gym. But the best thing he did was he went to this mastermind.

32:29 I think Russell Brunson was there and they basically were like You're a 10 out of 10 entrepreneur going after a two out of 10 opportunity. Like forget opening and running gyms. Sounds like you're amazing.

32:42 At getting a gym to have no members to go to like a ton of members. Why don't you sell that? Create a sell the sell the ability for any gym. to fill up their uh to get more members. And so then he's like, ah, okay, that's smart. And he goes and he learns about other business models, he realizes that he should do this thing called gym launch, where he would fly to a gym

33:01 And he would basically say, Hey, look. If I can get you five hundred more members Can I keep the first month of their membership and then you are, you know, the the the six weeks of the of of pay that they're gonna pay up front? You get to keep all the recurring membership bad behind that. They're like All right, sure. He's like at no risk to you. You pay me nothing. I'll run my own ads.

33:19 Uh but I get to keep what I kill. And so th that became Jim launched and that became the thing that was really, really successful. And now he's in a better business, you know, like let's say private equity and he's buying SaaS companies. So he's gotten into a b even better business than that, right? Private equity is a better business. And so he's like I think most people are in the game a student of the game of business. And so and at the end of we we basically talk for I don't know, two and a half hours. Uh we do like a two part episode.

33:44 And he had before that he had done two podcasts. So this guy's done like, you know, basically eight hours straight of talking. And where I think most people would be like Passed out on the floor. Or just ready to go home or just want to go eat or like just be like Can you guys get out of my office now?

34:00 He was super curious still. He's asking me a ton of questions after the pod. And he asked me a question, he's like, You know, what would you do differently if you were me? And you know me, I can't like Hold my tongue. So I'm like Yeah, honestly, like I think this. And I gave him a very blunt and honest answer of like I think you're amazing at this, but I think this part of what you do

34:19 Doesn't do you justice. I think it actually makes you look That's like bad for your brand and I think you're you're You shouldn't be doing that. How did he receive that? Extremely well.

34:27 And I this is kind of like kudos him for A being curious and then B being not defensive. And so he he text me the next morning. I didn't even give him my number, but he f he gets my number from somebody And he says this, he goes, I just wanna say thanks again for the pot. I've been thinking a lot About what we talked about at the end.

34:43 Then he goes, It's her mosey, by the way. And then he goes. Um, I'm gonna make some changes some content changes. I appreciate you caring enough to say something. I thought that was just like a a really kind message, but also like, you know, a testament to him for n for being Extremely open minded. And uh being a student of the game and being like

35:01 having that mindset of I'm here I'm gonna try to learn something from every single person I meet. That's just such a positive attribute to have in general. I'm good friends with a guy who bought one of Alex's companies. So Alex started this thing called Allen Software. Um My friend was the buyer of it.

35:17 And that is an interesting place to be in so the person who you buy a the the buyer of your company, they know all of your They know the truth. They know all your dirty secrets. Yeah. They know all the dirty they know everything. And I was like, Lloyd, um, this is when Alex first started getting poppin' before we ever even had him on the pot. I was like, Lloyd, is this guy legit? Like this seems too good to be true.

35:38 And to this day, Lloyd is like he's the smartest person I know about business. Like he like knows everything about Alex. That's that's what due diligence is. And he is knows everything and he still is like This guy's the best. When I need advice. It's like your doctor's given you a colonoscopy. He's like, Yeah, he's got a great gut. Yeah. He he he and and so that like

36:00 Tells a lot uh about'em. And what's funny is Alex comes off as a very serious And he is a a pretty serious guy. But he's a lot more fun. Like I I'm able to have fun with him whenever I'm with him. He's way more fun than he uh gives off. That was one of the things I told him. I was like, You come off so serious.

36:18 But you're actually you have a great sense of humor. You should show that and show yourself having fun. And not just like I paint the windows black. And a grind. Right. There is that is part of you, but there is another part of you and I think you don't really do your j yourself justice in like Uh not showing that side. Uh this is so funny. As we are uh texting

36:38 My friend Lloyd uh just texted me about Alex. A compliment about Alex. The same guy referring to this uh Just out of the blue just now? He just he just texted me a thing about how Alex uh just gave him some great advice, which is pretty funny. That's That's pretty awesome. Did you um their seminar business. So basically well, a lot of people don't know this.

37:02 But acquisition dot com either buys or invests in companies, whatever, pretty normal. But they also have like a seminar business, which is like On paper, if you were to think about it, like the worst business to be in. Oh, you're you're selling your time for money, yeah. Yeah, they own UFC's old headquarters and people spend five or ten thousand dollars to come for a three day like seminar. And uh According to Alex, but also I just like ran the math and uh you could like see like the schedule how full it is.

37:30 I think that thing is killing it. So th that was my runner up takeaway, which is Turn your there's a business uh more practical business lesson. Turn your cost centers into profit centers. So He said two things about this.

37:43 The first is the uh on the workshops that you're talking about or the seminars. So he was like Well, we're doing acquisition.com and we're because of that, we're talking to all these companies and we're diligencing all these deals. And I'm basically that's a big cost to me, right? I'm paying I have a team of people that's diligenting all these businesses. We meet the entrepreneur, we ask him a bunch of questions. We dig into their business.

38:04 And you know, we're only doing one deal out of every so many, right? So he's like all the others are just the cost of doing business and it's costing me a few million dollars a year. So he has the idea, like how do I turn my cost center into a profit center? So he's like, Well Let me just try this. So he says, All right, I'm gonna invite whatever, fifty entrepreneurs out to our headquarters, come spend two days with us.

38:23 We will dig into your business. We'll learn what's working, what's not working, and we'll help you sort of unblock. And like, you know, maybe if you're a great fit, like, you know, we should have a conversation, but like This was really about understanding d what's going on in your business, how to unblock you. Okay. So that's what they did. And basically he turned a thing that was losing him a few million dollars a year of people cost.

38:43 Into I think like ten million dollars plus a free cash flow. And he said the same thing about content. He goes, I don't make content because I enjoy it. I make content because it builds my brand. And I was like, I really I I do it because I enjoy it. Like I like doing this. He's like Well, he's like the way I think about it is this.

38:58 The old in the old world. Let's say the T V era or the radio era. You had to spend millions of dollars of your money to build your brand in the consumer's mind. The crazy thing about social media is you get paid to build your brand. So he's like, Yeah, like I make all this content. I d I'm building my brand, but I'm making money doing that.

39:17 So he again, he turned a cost center into a profit center on the content side too. He and but he he loves it. By the way, uh he absolutely loves it. I think you and Alex actually have a very similar attributes, which is Uh, you both like teaching? Yeah, and so like I've been talking to him

39:34 I've been buddy stuff for a little while and we'll just be talking about wha what's up, what are you doing? And he's like, Oh, I'm making a Google document. for my staff on how to sell better, or how to do this. Like he loves Process and he loves teaching. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's and I he the part I think he really loves is writing. Um like I actually like writing out

39:52 The stuff like almost in textbook style. All right. Uh you wanna do another one or you want me to go? All right, here's uh a a quick one. Do you know the company Zapier? Yeah. I do. Zapier was founded in two thousand eleven. Another company, by the way, that was founded

40:06 way it's way older than I thought. So Zapier's a company that um They now they're basically an AI company. Like they make uh ways for you to connect uh different AI stuff. So like if you're Chat GPT you can be like you know, make a whenever I get a calendar invite, do this and use Chat GPT to do it. Whatever.

40:24 they started two thousand eleven. Now I think they do something like four hundred or five hundred million dollars a year in revenue. And they've only raised a million dollars of funding. And they founded the company out of Jefferson City, Missouri, which is the capital of Missouri, where near where I'm from. the smallest town you could think of. It's like nothing. It's like when you think of in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, you're gonna think of Jeff City. And

40:48 I met Wade because years ago I used to host this event called HustleCon. And you spoke there, a bunch of other people spoke there. And Wade showed up. Wade wasn't supposed to speak until like two o'clock and he showed up at like eight AM And him and I sat back stage. The entire time and we

41:06 for two days actually. It was a two day event. He sat with me the whole time. And the reason he sat with me is I would have all of the speakers come to the green room two hours in advance. And I always lied to them and I think you know the story where I would say you have to come for mic check, but of course there is no mic check. The mic works perfectly. But we just wanted to hang out like there there's no mic check for a a conference. Like you just put the lapel on and it works. It works. I would tell people, Oh, you have to speak at three, make sure you're here at one.

41:32 for Mike Check. The reality was is I just wanted to hang out with them backstage. And there was one time like I distinctly remember it was like Casey Nistat. Uh the founder of We Work. It was uh Wade from Zapier, and then like the founder of Class Pass and Tucker Max, if you know Tucker Max. And we were like all in a room. And I was like, How wild is this? And I wouldn't say a word. I would just listen to all these conversations people were having. And Wade was with the one guy who stayed the entire time with me. And we just sat and listened to people talking, and it was so fun. And that's how I got to know Wade.

42:03 I had him on the pod uh last week. because I wanted to see how he's using AI and It was crazy, this guy, because he's Wait a billionaire. So Wade is probably thirty five years old. I think he started the coll uh the company when he was a senior in college. And I think he graduated college in two thousand eleven.

42:21 Zapier. They're they they did a funding round. I think three years ago at a six or seven billion dollar valuation I asked him where they think they're gonna be in five years. He told me a billion in revenue. So the I don't know what that means the company's worth, but I know that it means that on paper he's a billionaire.

42:38 And I was like, Why are you living in Jeff City, Missouri? He was like, Well, it's where my family lives and I like it here. And I was like, Wait, does anyone know how big of a big shot you are there? He's like No, the people here don't use Zapier. Why would like they so they have no idea. And I was like, Well, do you have like a fancy house? Like do you stick out? He's like, No, like no one has any idea. Like I'm just like a guy.

42:59 Uh, and I thought that it was so cool to see because I was hanging out with Sasha, this guy who started Buck Mason, a very cool brand. I was hanging out with Eric, who It's founded Ramp and is the hottest thing going, and everyone knows in the tech world what Ramp is and it's one of the fastest growing companies. And people know Zapier and everything, but they don't know Wade. The founder and

43:19 It was so interesting how he was just a guy. It was a and he was just he was just a guy. That's all he was. Yeah, and it he very had that every man uh mentality or every man vibe. And he came on the pod to talk about AI and he was just like Darmesh. He was a nerd. Like he was in the weeds and he loved it and he was incredibly passionate. And his he didn't have a fancy webcam. It was him and uh it looked like a small, very small office in his house. And it was just totally unassuming. And I loved it. And so I think my biggest takeaway

43:51 with him was how passionate he was about this game that he turned into a career. And how Inspired it was that he Was

44:04 not flexing and he truly did like it was the opposite of Hayes. Where not that Hayes flexes, I mean where Hayes is just full of energy and he's like, I wanna manifest, I wanna do this. This was the opposite. It was an introvert, nerdy guy who just did what he loved and it just It worked out and he just was really happy go lucky. And it was really fun because I'm used to these haze guys. I'm uh not quite, but like these like alpha, like let's get it, let's get after life, let's manifest, let's have fun, let's do this. And it's awesome to get the opposite of that because

44:36 I think when people listen to this podcast I hope one of the takeaways is that there's a million ways to get done what you want to get done. There's a million ways to achieve your dreams. There's a million ways to get rich. There's a million ways to go to where you want to go and where you want to go can be anywhere. And there's n there are maybe some best practices, but I can give you tons of examples of people doing the exact opposite and they're just as happy and just as effective. So that was my big takeaway with Wade. I like that. Yeah. There's a

45:03 You know, you get to create your own little heaven on earth. And i that's one of the cool things when you go and you meet these people, you get to sample what they chose for themselves and you pick up like Ooh, I really want that. Or in some cases, ooh, I really wouldn't want that, you know? Um there was one guy who won't be won't be named, not in this trip, but in previous one. Where This

45:21 huge house and fancy cars and all this stuff. What. Also like Huge headaches with all of that. Oh, I gotta get the this repaired and this and then that car got a scratch and then this has this.

45:33 And it was like man, you own these things and then they own you and it's like, Oh wow like Definitely f for me is a tr that would be a total trap. to fall into. Good. I'm glad I saw it firsthand so I can avoid that. Whereas with other people. For them that is their heaven on earth. They want that. They they uh they actually prefer that trade off of you know, and so you wanna

45:51 It it's good to sample the different sort sort of styles so you can get you know get a feel for what what you think is gonna work for you. 'Cause I think people have this idea of like, Oh, you just gotta do what you want. Reality is you don't know exactly what you want till you're even exposed to certain things. And then you sort of develop taste. About what it is that you like and what it is that you how you wanna be. Um, you can sort of you can modify yourself based on you know what you're what you're exposed to.

46:13 So you guys know this, but I have a company called Hampton. Join Hampton.com. It's a vetted community for founders and CEOs. Well, we have this member named Lavon, and Lavon saw a bunch of members talking about the same problem within Hampton, which is that they spent hours manually moving data into a PDF. It's tedious, it's annoying, and it's a waste of time. And so Levan, like any great entrepreneur, he built a solution. And that solution is called Molu. Mulco uses AI to automatically transfer data from any document into a PDF. And so if you need to turn a supplier invoice into a customer quote or move info from an application into a contract, you just put a file into Moku and it auto fills the output PDF in seconds. And a little backstory for all the tech nerds out there. Slavon built the entire web app without using a line of code. He used something called bubble I.

46:57 They've added AI tools that can generate an entire app from one prompt. It's pretty amazing and it means you can build tools like Mulku. Very fast without knowing how to code. And so if you're tired of copying and pasting between documents or paying people to do that for you, check out Molku.ai. M-O-L-K-U- Dot AI. All right, back to the pod. Uh all right. So uh let's do um I'll do Eric Lyman. So for those who don't know, uh Ramp is a company that does credit it's like a basically a credit card for startups.

47:27 Uh, they're worth something like ten billion dollars. And I think they do eight hundred million in revenue. Eric, who's the founder and CEO is thirty five years old. And it's just absolutely

47:40 Breathtaking how fast they've built this company, because I think the company is only four or five years old. Like it's brand new still. And My biggest takeaway I had two takeaways. The first is that He was so nice. So if you Google Eric Lyman nice, there's all these posts that talk about how nice this guy is.

48:00 But it's very strange. Did you Google Eric Lemon Nice? Well, I was like surely uh everyone talks about like like he was the kindest person I've ever met. Like when he looked at me It was like I was the only one in the world that mattered at that moment. And like I talk to Ari, I go, Ari.

48:17 Who Ari only talked to him on the cell phone and I go, Ari, was this guy the nicest guy ever met? And he goes, When he talked to me, I fell in love. Like I like I wanted to keep talking to him. He felt it felt like I was the only one that mattered to him at that moment and he did such a good job. And like he wrote a follow up email and he wrote like I was truly Blessed with by our conversation. I am so thankful. Whatever. He was so nice. But what I found strange.

48:41 was you don't meet people who are nice and intense. And so I asked him a question. Uh about something. He goes, Look. Ramp is two thousand fifty three days old. And we're only just now and I was like, Wait. What did you just say he

48:54 He goes, Yeah, Ramp is two thousand and fifty three days old. And I was like, You know exactly To the day, how old ramp is. He goes, Yeah, of course. Like I'm trying to get this done by this amount of time. Like I know exactly to the day. And I just found it very strange that you can be both incredibly intense at having a company. And intense about life. And also a very generous, kind, nice person. Those two things typically are not in the same package.

49:20 And so my big takeaway with Eric was how you can be Not a jerk. You don't have to be e you know, a big like pumping your chest, big ego, highly confident guy. You can be very soft, you can be very kind. But also A complete killer and savage. It it's a weird dichotomy, but you could be both.

49:38 Um yeah, I talked to him before I think I've told the story before. I bet I met him Many years ago before we ever started Ramp. And also super sweet guy. And then what they and I the other thing I've said before is I can't believe ramp one in that same way. Because

49:51 At the time I remember that Brex was Brex looked like the runaway winner. It was the Y C company. It was based in Silicon Valley. It had raised a bunch of money. I think it launched earlier than Ramp. And it just seemed like ramp this company out of New York just seemed like the natural second place winner. And um instead Ramp has Crushed it.

50:11 And actually Brex is a second place winner in that space or third or whatever. And he had a whole answer to that. So most people when they start a company. It's like it was cool. Or I had this problem. Or whatever.

50:23 He had a four point list. Where it was like well Uh'cause I ask I ask the same question. I was like, you know, Brex was already around, this was already around, whatever and he's like Well, the Frank Dodd Act or something like that was passed, which meant this, this, and this. And that also met, and then he had like it was a four point list and it was incredibly intentional. And he's like, I saw at Capital One it took this many days to approve an account. I figured if we could reduce that to only seven point three days, and since there's this many potential businesses in the world, if we do that and we do this many businesses per day, it was like

50:55 Incredibly detailed and exact and precise way. Typically how I think about building a company, a lot of times it's like off energy or like vibes, like it just feels a certain way. It he did not have that at all. It felt like everything was like It in it it was very intense. Amazing. All right. Let me do one now.

51:13 This is a more practical business one, I'll say. Was this with your brother in law? Yeah, it's my brother in law Sin Jeff. Okay, so um this episode I think I think this one will have come out already. But In the middle of it, he tells the story where

51:26 Okay, so the the headline of this is this guy basically my brother in law has built a real estate portfolio. He owns basically Over a billion of real estate. That he accumulated in about ten years. With no outside money. And so no like he had like lenders, but no no investors at the time.

51:41 He's incredible. He's just like an a absolute animal at what he does. And I always knew he was smart and I always knew he was Like really uh like ambitious and was like Yeah, he's just a winner. I that part I know. I've known the guy for ten plus years. So like the fact that You're as successful as you are, and you're uh you're you're second place to in your own family. Maybe third. I think my wife's dad is a pretty amazing guy too. So yeah, he he he wins in in not not not just the success way, but the guy's a saint. Uh So yeah, he wins it in his own way.

52:11 All right, so what is it about this guy that I picked up? So the st the the short version of this story is He um He goes to law school, gets his MBA. First uh interns with a lawyer. So he's like working on actually the the the Scott Peterson case, like the Lacey Peterson or whatever.

52:27 And then he meets but he also intern he has two internships. That's one internship, he has second internship with a real estate guy. He's like The real estate guy is always you know, he's He's at home at a good time, he's in his kids' life, he's got passive income, like This seems like the better model. I'll go towards that. So he goes to real estate. Um, he has no money and so he can't buy any real estate. So he starts off as a broker.

52:45 Um, you know, he does his first deal, make sixty K, but By the time he's like twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven He's making millions of dollars a year as a broker. He would like He'd be like cool, you got this empty space. Uh let me lease it for you. You you want to sell this? Let me buy let me be your buy side broker and your sell side broker, and I'll lease it for you. I'll get all three. I'll bag all three commissions.

53:05 Somewhere along the way he basically makes a mistake and he's like, Yep, this is where, you know, youth catch up youth and like, you know, ego catches up with you. So there's this one guy who's like expans he's like a jack in the box franchiser. So he's he's got like I don't know, thirty jack in the boxes or something like that. And so My brother in law, Sanjeev, is doing deal after deal with him. And so finally the guys are like are the at some point, instead of just leasing the place to him But the guy would say, I wanna be over there So he'd say, Okay, cool, I'll buy it, I'll build it for you and then I'll sell it to you.

53:32 So I'll I'll buy, I'll develop it, I'll sell it to you. And the guy's like, Cool, I want these twenty locations. So he goes and he he takes out fifteen million dollars of debt. To go buy twenty locations. Uh like you know. Three days after it closes, you know, that guy gets popped for like he didn't pay his payroll taxes, something he goes to jail.

53:50 And so now my brother in law's on the ho he bought He borrowed fifteen million dollars and uh Now has these like 20 locations or whatever that need to be jack in the boxes, that the deed is tied to that guy's name. That guy's now in jail. He can't develop them. So he's basically kind of screwed. And um, you know, he doesn't want to declare bankruptcy, so he decides he's gonna try to pay off 15 million dollars, even though he has nothing. And so he's like, Okay, how do I do this? So he's

54:15 He's just like depressed. And his wife is like, You know what? Like, I don't know, I've never seen you like this. You need to go to the gym. I don't know what we're gonna do in business, but just go to the gym so that you, you know, get out of this funk. And he goes to the gym and while when he's there, he um 'Cause guy he always used to see working out there at night. He used to work out at like eleven or midnight at night,'cause like after work he would go there. But today he went there in the daytime.

54:37 Because it doesn't have shit else to do. And the guy who he always sees working out is like behind the desk. He's like, Yo, you work here? He's like, Yeah, dude, I own the place. He's like, what? He's like he's like, Yeah, come check out the b the office. And then when he's there, the guy tells him like he's ready to sell he actually wants to sell the business.

54:53 And My brother in law works out a deal to basically buy the business from the guy. With no money down because uh l a little bit of money down, he pawns his wife's wedding ring. And they go all in. You know, they're at this point they're living in their like parents Like the his old childhood bedroom.

55:07 And they owe fifteen million dollars. And they're like, I don't know how we're gonna get out of this pickle, but I'm gonna Basically, I'll use the cash flow from this gym to just pay the monthly thing we owe. And then we'll try to open up a second gym maybe and we'll figure out how we do this. Anyways, he ends up building like the largest private gym chain, eighty two gym in California.

55:26 Otherwise your brother in law like Really is he jacked? Yeah, he he was one of the first like Indian bodybuilders basically in college. He was gonna go pro and then like you know, but he decided not to like go full on um but yeah, he he was he was huge before. He's big now. But he's like, Oh, this is this is the deflated version of me. Um I was like, Wow, that's that's crazy. So

55:45 Again, whatever this guy chooses, he does with like crazy intensity. So uh with real estate. I'm like, so how did you okay, all all that you told me so far is the gym business. Like, how did you do the real estate side? So this is the business lesson. So he's like You know, along the way, when I would go lease these gyms, I realized I had a little bit of leverage, right? I'm coming in, I'm as the like the the big tenant in the shopping center. And so I just added to the lease an option to buy. And he's like, I just added a a a no risk option whereas I have the ch option to buy within five years or whatever.

56:13 I can buy this at four million dollars. And at the time that sounded like a high price for the guy, so the guy had no problem putting it in. Free option. And he's like, And by the way, I have no money and no plans of how I would ever buy this place, but Why not? Why not take an asymmetric bet where I have no downside, but I have possible upside. And so his start in real estate was he's working at the gym.

56:34 And a guy comes in to buy the building. And the guy th assumes that he owns the building, which he didn't. And he's like, We would make an offer somewhere around the ballpark of seven million dollars. Oh, got it. And so he's like Oh, amazing.

56:47 And he's like, Cool, I have option to buy this for four, but I don't have any money. So I actually cannot physically buy this, but I'll do a double escrow. So if you agree to buy it on this date It basically is like I'll sell this to you for seven. I'll take the seven, I'll give this guy four, so I'll own the place. And then I'll buy this and then I'll sell you this thing. I'll keep three million dollars as my profit.

57:06 It's the old uh Hey, uh Mom says I can go if you say yes, or she'll say yes if you say yes. Right. Exactly. And so he got his the entire empire that he built was because he baked in one Asymmetric bet. One no risk option.

57:24 I thought that was kind of inspiring. Like, you know, and he pro by the way, he probably had 10 of these that didn't pan out, but the what the one that did got him his start. He took that three million dollars. And then he used that to buy uh to buy and buy and flip and buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip, but he compounded that over ten years. into a billion dollars of real estate. From that one option. I just thought that was just like an incredible lesson or takeaway to have.

57:44 And and by the way, now and so I invest with him now. So um I I'm able to like it's probably my biggest investment of the past two years has been investing in his deals. And I'm just getting incredible returns. And one of the reasons why is because he keeps doing the same model. So he just he's the master of de risking. So he goes into a spet say there's a a shopping center with like a you know Two big vacancies.

58:07 So he'll while he's putting it under purchase contract, he already has leased it. He has a signed lease. And a sign purchase contract. So the same day we buy He has the tenant in place and he sells the thing. And so we get these incredible returns because he's de-risking all these properties so far in advance. It's like a such a Like the same it's like you know w you find one unfair advantage and then you just keep playing it.

58:30 Does he have an awesome house? Oh, he's got a crazy house. His his house is crazy. Realistic guys always have obviously Amazing houses. Th there there's one other little hack that he had that I liked. I I think that's another tidbit I think people can take. So

58:44 I was like w when he's doing these things, I'm like Dude, how do you do this? Like you We're buying these properties. There, you know, maybe there's a vacancy or whatever. And like, how are you cutting these deals beforehand to get them, you know, oh I know the buyer of Trader Joe's.

58:59 I know the buyer at whatever, Chipotle. I know the buyer at the the the the real estate guy at this place. And I'll get it under contract. And he's like, Oh, it's just relationships. And he always just said this vague word. Oh, it's you know, real estate's a relationship business. And I I'm I hate answers like that that sound like general. And so I dug in with him and I was like I was like, Tell me how you approach this idea of relationships. And he he said this great thing. He was like, You know

59:22 If you think about the word commercial real estate, it sounds like this vast universe, like this huge industry, right? He's like the trick is how do you make a big thing f feel small? Like how do you break it down into an achievement like into a chunk that you could actually You know, you could actually digest. So he's like kinda he's like one day I sat down with a piece of paper and I realized, all right, who do I who's my ideal person to know.

59:43 He's like, Well, it's a national retailer. Who's still expanding and growing. And they don't want to own their own real estate because I'm a developer. I want to own the real estate. I want to lease it to them. And he's like Once I did that, I realized there's actually like I don't know, a hundred and fifty names.

59:59 And he's like I took this big idea of commercial real estate, just felt like an ocean. And he's like, I turned it into like a little goldfish pot. 150. He's like, I could I could fit 150 people in this room. I could meet a hundred and fifty people over the next two years if I tried. And I could form a relationship with them and I could they can I could get so that they know me and I know them and they'll call me and I'll call them when we have something that fits.

1:00:20 And that's literally what he did. And I just thought that was like a great like I don't know how I don't know where else you could do that in other businesses, but I suspect that that idea Of taking something big. But then reframing it. And then realizing it's actually much smaller and more achievable than you think.

1:00:36 Is um is probably something that applies to a lot of businesses. Is he a billionaire or billionaire ish? I would say like ish, not not not there himself, right?'Cause you know. If you own a billion dollars real estate. In his case, I think like forty or fifty percent is equity and the other half is like debt. See you know on paper.

1:00:52 You know, that's whatever, that's let's say five hundred million dollars. I don't know I'm just uh I don't know his actual thing to be clear, but like hundreds of millions of dollars net worth. Of the six people that we talked about. Five of them are There or

1:01:06 Give or take. The give or take there. And I just think that that's I think it's crazy. I think it's crazy. I don't know how many billionaires are in the world. five or ten thousand, I'm not sure. Whatever is like Forbes has, I would like multiply it by like some number. Uh, and it's crazy that over the past ten days we hung out with five of'em.

1:01:25 Or something like that. And get to learn from these people. And again, I don't I I'm almost embarrassed when I say the name My First Million because what I tell people I'm like, you know, it's actually It's not always about money. It's actually about like things greater than that. And um because I do think life's richer than just money, but it is interesting to be able to uh rub shoulders with people who are

1:01:46 Yeah. Point zero zero one percent of their field and it's It's we're lucky. Yeah, and also Like I think now we're a little bit like, Oh, you know, it's not about the money, but like

1:01:57 Us ten years ago very much one of the main goals was like, Yo, get that money. Get that money and then figure out that money doesn't make you h yeah. Well, sure. I believe you, it's not the end all be all, but I still want it. I'm still gonna try to get it. I'm still gonna try to make it awesome. Exactly. It's definitely seems pretty great to have, but I'd rather have it than not have it. And uh so you know

1:02:16 I think as much as we're like, Oh, you know Like I think both are true. Like It is true that there's a lot more to life, but also to these people and like, you know, you pick up a bunch of different things. But also it is kind of crazy to to to make that happen. And um It's fun also to make that happen.

1:02:31 You know if if if business is your sport. Well, how are points tallied? They're tallied in dollars, right? There's a guy um I don't pay attention to golf, but I'm sure you do. But ha do you know Scotty Sch is it Schaefer? Sheffler. Sheffler. Uh he won what did he win this weekend? The US Open or something? U.S. Open, yeah. Uh

1:02:49 I don't know anything about sports, but I know that I saw like his one year old kid like crawling up the green to give him a hug and a kiss after he won. So I guess Scotty like won. He set the trophy on the ground and his kid crawls up. Uh to to to play with the trophy. And Nike took out this amazing ad.

1:03:07 The best ad ever. It was a two page ad or two like swipes on Instagram. The first one It says uh a picture of Scotty holding his son and it says You've already won. And then the second Slide is

1:03:19 But another major doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt. Uh and I think that's that's kind of like the takeaway here is like uh yeah, it feels good to Like I I've won already. Like I have a loving family, I feel secure. It don't hurt them. You know, six eight a little more. And I thought that was such a great ad, and I thought that was kind of a representation of this episode. That was a beautiful ad, wasn't it?

1:03:42 Oh my god. Nike is at the top of its game when it does stuff like that. Uh, it was pretty good. Um Alright, that was a good episode. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like a day song. On a roadless travel, never looking back. Alright, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content Is Profit. And it's hosted by Luis and Fonzi Cameo.

1:04:09 After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Louise and Fonsey are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're gonna hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out content is profit wherever you get your podcasts.

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