Two Millionaires Answer the Questions You’d Ask Off-Camera

0:00 All right, it's the new year, but it's the same old us and we wanted to do something for you guys. So we wanted to do a mailbag of fan questions. So people have written in questions. We are gonna answer them. You ready to jump in, Sam? Yeah. I feel like I can root Well I know.

0:16 Could be what I want to Uh All right, here we go. Question number one, what is the biggest mistake you've made in your business that you have not spoken about publicly yet? And how has it shaped your decision making? Man, I've got a great one for this. Tell me if your experience has been with this. So I tend to hire ambitious young people

0:36 And I take chances on them. And I hate to say it, but the majority of the time that is a horrible plan and it's significantly better to hire more experienced people and pay them a lot more money. And I get way better results. So uh when was this mistake? Is this like I've been making this mistake forever or this is forever, man. Look, this is like

0:58 My mistake is like the American dream, you know? Like Give me your your your broken, you're weak, and you're and you're like ambitious younger. I can fix him. Yes. And like I always want to do that because I'm so r you know, I'm into the romantic idea of that. And just I uh recently, you know, uh at our at Hampton we've hired like significantly more experienced people and they cost like two or three times more than a young and upcoming person, but the results are like five or ten times better. Right. And and and I just make this I always my I get too so emotional and I always find the

1:31 People say hire high agency people or f hire these people whose growth rate is really high. But in general It's just kind of better to say, Hey, you already did this at this other company. Do do it here, please. We were just going through a hiring process. I wanted to hire somebody on my content team.

1:48 And um we found this kid who was great. He sent in this like wonderful video like He made this video application that was super funny. And it was well done and I was like, Yes, this is my kind of guy. Young, green Yeah, he used to do this, you know, he just graduated, but like this video is amazing. I gotta talk to this guy. Talk to him, I like him, good dude. And

2:09 Right before we hired him, you know, we asked a very simple question, which is like So we want this to go well, right? We want this to be great and we want this to work. And so like Does it make sense to just go with somebody who has never done anything even remotely like this, or Are there people in the world who have done very similar things that we could go talk to first? And should we not like lean in that direction? And as soon as we had that like very simple sanity check, because I'm like you.

2:37 I fall in love with the the sort of angel investing in people idea. It's like the like the raw up and comer Never done anything, found this diamond in the rough. Why do I like that? It's not for generous reasons. It's because it's like I feel cool that I found that thing. Right. It's like finding a needle in a haystack, the diamond in the rough. Um But that's in it it is.

2:59 S like I have a such a low hit rate with that, right? By definition, you're gonna have a low hit rate with that strategy. And If it matters And if there are people who have done it before that are way more proven in this category, like Why are you not going in that direction? So I've definitely had that that that same mistake sometimes. It can work.

3:16 And when it does work, it's the best story. It's the best. But like Check this out. This strategy that I've been doing, it's been working well. So I love hiring consultants and agencies, but I'll say I'm only gonna hire you for two months. And I'm gonna You're gonna do the work for the first thirty days, but then the second thirty days it's just you teaching me what to do.

3:33 Uh, and so I have found experience of like getting like a young ambitious high agency green person and teaming them up with an agency. And I have had some results with that. But in general, just hiring more experienced people and paying them more money. It's just typically the way to go. And that sounds so n duh. But Yeah. I that's the biggest mistake that I've made.

3:53 Well, most of business is just figuring out what are your own leaks in your bucket. And then of course to other people who don't have that leak, they're like what I mean, obvious, right? But you have to know what are my biases. And in in your case, your biases are like I like to be cheap as hell when I build my companies. This was like how you were before with the hustle, at least. Like of course. Get the cheap office, put the d you know, get the free desk off Craigslist.

4:16 You know, our dog will be security and you know, like you're like, I'm gonna build this the frugal way. And then secondly What if I found a guy like me, just a lovable fuck up, who could be fixed. And it's like you know, so those are biases that would lead you too far in that direction. It's not to say you never hire a junior person, but too often defaulting to that. And so you gotta know your bone biases. What about yours? Do you have one?

4:40 I wrote project selection. So my theory my theory is this. If you are hard working. And you are sufficiently talented. then the only variable that matters is project what project you pick to work on. Right. Cause if you're gonna work really hard on it and you're talented. Then either you're gonna be a ten out of ten person working on a two on it two out of ten opportunity.

5:00 Or a ten out of ten person working on a ten out of ten opportunity. And uh I think I have picked some real dog shit projects in the past. So I tried to start a sushi restaurant chain. Which like Restaurants are one of the worst businesses. Sushi would be one of the worst types of restaurants to do. And by the way, that makes no sense for me as a person to do.

5:19 The second one. I tried to make the next hit social media app. I tried to make the next Twitter, the next, you know, Facebook, the next Snapchat. And I spent six years going after that as a project to select. And God, that is hard to do. You try to make us hit social media app which frankly you don't really use social media. You use Twitter, but like seldom leave for to be honest, even though you're good at it. And two, you eventually made a streaming video game like Or that's who your market was. Neither of us.

5:46 No, or play video games or like streaming. Or had ever streamed a video game in my life. Dude, I made a I made a craft beer app for craft beer enthusiasts. Dude, I can't spell beer. Like you know I I I like beer's gross, it makes me burp. I don't know. Like I don't like it. So I just picked all these terrible projects that were bad founder fit. just weak market opportunities in general, right? So this is like very uh Very poor projects. I started my e commerce brand is a clothing brand. You clothing fan. You love clothes. You feed me dressed? You know what I'm doing. And that one worked, but it's such a grind because ecom and fashion and apparel and inventory, it's like

6:25 Dude, one of the like worst projects you can select. So I think I've been Together, just those projects I just mentioned, and by the way. Those are just uh The ones I remember just off the top of my head, there's some other doozies in there. Those are ten years of my professional life.

6:39 I've only had seventeen. So the but the majority of my professional life has been spent on Really poor project selections. And and everybody who's Talented knows opportunity cost is the biggest cost. So every year I was working on one of those, is a year I wasn't working on something that was a better fit for me. The good news is, Sean, that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and you've taken enough swing that it's worked out.

7:00 Yeah. I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money, about how build a money making skill, about how to leverage your time and energy. And the team at HubSpot actually went through the video where I explained all that. And turn it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money. Now. This is not, you know, get rich quick advice. It's just core principles, foundational principles about building wealth. Things that I wish I knew when I was, you know, just getting started.

7:25 And so if you want to download it, it's in the description below. It's totally free. You can go get it. Thanks to the folks at HubSpot for doing the research, making this document, and making it available to all you guys. All right, back to this episode. So this is from Dan from LA. Uh, I've been a fan ever since the pod was promoted in the hustle. I think that was uh four or five years ago. I'm dying for another Saresless episode. My wife currently works at Waymo, but time to jump to the next five to ten Xer. I'm tired of waiting. Throw a brother of bone. Give me one company that you think would be perfect for the Ceres list. Now let's let's tell the listener, here's what Ceres list is. So

7:59 My wife Sarah. uh was looking for a new job and we came up with this idea where let's see if you can join a company that has something like a thousand employees so you can m make a great living in terms of like work life balance because there's some stability, uh, presumably and you can make a pretty decent salary. But even still there's enough growth left where your stock in 10x and And hopefully make you worth millions. Uh, in her case it worked. She did that with Airbnb. She joined Airbnb when they were I mean it was a huge company.

8:27 eighteen billion dollar company with I forget. Four thousand people and it grew to be a I think a hundred billion dollar company in her you know, two hundred fifty thousand dollar a year stock grew to like a million dollars a year stock, something like that. And so Sean and I have made maybe three different lists where we've predicted what the next Sarah's style company are. So can we love this because you want to be a millionaire. Everybody does. I don't know. I I haven't actually met anybody who doesn't want that. But not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. That's huge risk.

8:55 Not everybody has the winning idea. Not everybody wants to be the the brilliant investor who finds the the the gem uh at a early price. And this path was basically like No, you're not like the hotshot exec getting this insane package. You just join as a normal employee. Into a clearly good company.

9:15 That's already in a stable position. You're gonna get healthcare. There's like You know, there's systems in place, there's a nice office to go to. So you didn't make any of those crazy sacrifices. But just by even if you had a fifty thousand dollar a year stock grant, right? So let's say your total comp was gonna be A hundred and eighty K. Hundred fifty K. And of that, you know, a hundred and twenty is is cash and then the rest is stock.

9:38 And you get that every year for four years, normal vesting cycle. Well, over those four years, that two hundred thousand dollars of stock could become a million dollars of stock just by the company naturally growing at the rate it's already growing at. And I thought What a hack. When I saw that you when you when you said that Sarah did this and that you guys were somewhat intentional about what company to pick to go to, she worked at Facebook, then Airbnb. We decided to christen this as uh Sarah's list. I think we came up with thirty companies. A couple of them were home run. So I think Rippling, Figma, Andrel.

10:08 Uh I I don't even remember. Cursor tool. Yeah, the cursor. There's been others, yeah. Now. The question is, is why haven't we done this again? I have an answer, which is my pred uh my and I think you're gonna agree. It's so much harder to predict

10:21 What the winners are right now. Because compared to Airbnb and Uber and Lyft and Rippling and these software companies, they were fairly steady growth with all these new AI companies. It's impossible to predict A what's gonna hit and it's impossible to predict are they actually going to have longevity. The hot companies today are like They're they're so proud to be the fastest growing fastest a hundred million in ARR. But it's like, dude that happened in four months or five months. Like that's not the same like sure footing that you could stand on. It's not a stable stable foundation where whereas you could see these things that have been going for seven years just compounding steadily. And you can predict that the next seven years will probably be more compounding steadily. But I do have an answer. Do you have an answer for this for uh Dan from LA?

11:06 My It sounds so boring. There's probably two of them that I would predict. One of'em um I heard I heard Scott Galloway make the same argument, so I'm just stealing his. One was Your old your alma mater. Amazon. I I do think that you can get incredibly wealthy still at Amazon. Yeah.

11:23 Uh crazy pick. Dude, they've been Amazon. What what is Amazon? They've they've underperformed the market. They've underperformed the market and you're saying it's currently a two point four trillion dollar company. So you're saying it's gonna be a ten trillion dollar company, the first ever Yeah, because I think that um when I use my Alexa, it's still so stupid. Like it doesn't understand AI. Or what do you like use Amazon dot com and like search for stuff? The AI is still horrible.

11:48 Amazon is a wild pick. Well I don't know. What else do you have? Okay. Here I I have two for you. I thought you there's one a layup. We're we're both investors in this one company. I thought you were gonna say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one's pretty good. Okay, so I I'll give you mine and then I'll g then you can you can use that one to I don't know if their valuation is public, so careful what you say. No, I think it is. Okay. So my pick would be

12:09 Neuralink. Okay, why Neuralink? Well First, I think if you're gonna join a company, maybe join the company by the greatest entrepreneur. Ever of all time, which is Elon Musk, on doubt un undisputed at this point.

12:22 I would say. And so The Elon index of companies. has just performed at this absurd level, whether it's Tesla, it's SpaceX It's um XAI now.

12:33 Is is now like a a r ridiculously valued company. Neuralink is what's next. So Neuralink is one of these companies that is doing something that very few like there's no basically no comp no competitors to this. There's like Five competitors total in the world. And they're all way far behind. What is Neuralink doing? They're putting

12:51 Chi in your brain that Today help a quadriplegic person. be able to use a computer Just with their thoughts.

13:00 And by the way, this isn't just like a Pie in the sky idea. Like there's a guy. You could watch him streaming himself playing video games on Twitch. Using his mind as the controller. And it's pretty insane. They're do they've done it in like monkeys, now they've done it in a c in I think two humans now. And it's just getting better and better, where it's becoming less invasive also. I think now uh he he just tweeted out there's like a I think there's like a surface more surface level uh implant that they could do that rather than going so deep into the brain.

13:28 Can you even work here? Like can you go like how do you get a job? Why? It's a company. Is it? Okay. So Neuralink w uh I think when I initially said this on Sarah's list, it was like a two billion dollar valuation. It's now a ten billion. So it's already had one Sarah's list jump of five X. It's gonna have another. There this is this is going to be a huge company. Like If you think about um

13:50 Computing. So computing went from computers to laptops to mobile phones. And the next one is probably some version of glasses or a watch, some version of that. That's what's coming next. And then what comes after that is the computer in your mind, right? Like just attaching yourself to the computer. So that

14:07 You can literally just think and uh you have access to the internet just from your thoughts. Now some people will say this is dystopian, some people say they don't want this. Guess what? Once the first people start to have the chip in your brain, you will be the equivalent of like a turtle. If you do not.

14:21 And so this is the the game theory of this is that We're all gonna end up with this because if anybody does it, they're gonna be a god amongst men, right? Dude, you're like You're like one of these guy I I think you're like you don't like taking d I'm gonna make a prediction. You never said this. Are you the type of guy who doesn't even like take a medicine? I don't take much medicine now. That's what I thought. Don't take any supplements. Don't take medicine. That's exactly what I thought. The guy who doesn't even take medicine, like Adiville or something like that, you're saying you're gonna be putting a brain chip in your brain?

14:47 Again, y you have to, right? Like Well, I already basically have the computer attached to my hand. If I'm honest. It's in my hand eight hours a day. It's in my pocket, right? It's attached to my body at all times. If I don't have my phone on me, I kinda panic, right? So it is in some ways already a third limb.

15:04 But Where w you know, once this goes to the point where I can just have it, you know. In my mind. Again, it's not really gonna be that much of a choice'cause the people who have it are gonna be like walking around like gods compared to the people who don't. And by the way, he's doing the Tesla model. So the the Tesla model, the Tesla business plan was

15:23 You first Do the really expensive sports car. High cost, low production volume. Sell it to just rich enthusiasts who want something cool, a cool toy. And then the cool toy becomes more and more mainstream and more and more, um, you know, eventually you get to the model three, which is now like a mainstream car.

15:41 With Neuralink he's doing it where first it's gonna solve the problems for people who are quadriplegics. The next one he's going for is people who are blind. And you know, like people who can really improve the quality of life. And eventually it'll get to It's kinda like a phone. It's like a consumer device we all just do for fun. Right. But he but it's inarguable that you should not be helping people who are paralyzed.

16:01 um you know have more more function because because of this technology. They have a cool um s so uh the reason I was like Can you even apply to work there? Is because I had never like seen their job openings. I thought it was I thought it was like A project. I didn't realize it was like a proper company yet. Because if you go to the CEO's LinkedIn, he says like manager of a family office.

16:21 But they do have a careers page and they're hiring for a bunch of roles in San Francisco or Friedmot and um Austin. And their jobs page is pretty cool. It says you don't have to be a brain surgeon to work at Neuralink and then it lists all the open roles they have. So that's pretty okay. Yeah, I'm on it. There's a content creator role. There's a junior accounts payable specialist, right? You can work at these companies. Dude, I talked to a guy who worked at Facebook in PR. I think he said he was the four hundredth employee. And he was in PR and he said that they did things where you know I a large company, Amazon or Hub S had this too.

16:51 Where that you get. I forget exactly. Do you get a discount on the stock or if you buy the stock, they match it, or something like that as a perk, like twenty grand a year, nothing like crazy. And um he told me he did that, plus he like just stayed for ten years and he said he made ninety million dollars. Yeah.

17:06 Excellent. And you are an accounts payable person? This definitely looks cool. This is a good talk. I thought you were gonna say I thought you were gonna say owner for your answer. So owner which is valued kind of in the billion dollar range. I think the last round they raised was a billion dollars. I'll just tell you two things.

17:24 One, when I got introduced to the investment for owner, the person who my friend who introduced it said By the way, this is the he goes, Hey, I think you should meet this company. Why? Well, it's the best founder I've ever invested in and probably the best company I've ever invested in. So I was like, Okay, well that's a Incredibly strong recommendation.

17:39 Within like Ten minutes. The CEO Uh, email me. And now this is normal. They'll say, Hey, you'd love to set up a time to chat. Here's my calendar. Maybe we could

17:48 But we could grab coffee next week. We'd love to tell you about what we're doing. This guy Adam is a savage, he goes. Hey Sean, great to meet. I just forwarded you our last three investor updates so you can get a sense of how things are going. And you know, like

18:00 Have you ever seen that slide that says If they don't have revenue, they'll talk about users. Right, right. Or like if they don't have profit, they'll talk about revenue. If they don't have revenue, they'll talk about users. If they don't have users, they'll talk about uh potential, right? Or product features. If they don't have features, they'll talk about potential. And it's basically like the ladder of proof of like what do you actually have?

18:19 And I can tell you what you have'cause I c be based on What you choose to reveal. And so A founder that just says here's the last three investor updates was It was just like Oh, let me just show you I have I have a straight flush. So here's my cards.

18:34 Uh because the investor updates will tell you All the numbers about the company. Because he sent me the last three, I know the trajectory of how fast they're growing across those three updates. I can see how the CEO communicates, and I can see what they care about, what their priorities are. So it's like I made the investment without ever talking to the guy instantly once I read those three updates. And since then Every update is just like

18:55 Hey, so we're crushing it. Here's Here's another gigantic number. Here's how much growth we had just this quarter, or this just this month instead of like what most companies do in a year. Check this out. This guy, Adam, I don't know how old he is. I think of him as like a twenty two year old because Dog he was born in nineteen ninety nine. That's insane. He was born during white he like messaged me about his brother. He's like my brother's looking for a project to do and I thought it was like a kid

19:22 And he's like Yeah, he's a content creator and like his brother has thirty million followers on TikTok or something like that. I don't know if you saw that. But then he wrote this update yesterday. I read his update yesterday. Um And I was reading it and he was explaining how it was the company was killing it and he was like You know, we also had a little bit of churn in December. And that really bothers me. And I thought like, Okay, he's bothered because the product sucks or something. He goes, I'm bothered because that means that these businesses likely went out of business.

19:49 Like so basically sorry, owner doc owner serves small uh small restaurants. That's their customer. They it's like an ordering platform for restaurants. And he was like we had some more churn or some churn in December. And it was all because they likely went out of business,'cause that's when these restaurants tend to go out of business, I guess, is at the end of the year. And I read that line and it was pretty cool because he's like Kind of a terminator. Like he says, like here's where we said we were gonna go. Here's how we exceeded it. Here's where we said we were gonna go. Here's why we exceeded it. Like constantly throughout each category of the company, and at the end he was like we had we did have some churn, and that is part of the bad news. And it because they went out of business. And that makes me he goes, I think it's that and that devastates me. I'm so saddened that like these guys lost and it was that was really cool. Yeah, I ignored that. I was like I'm just gonna think this guy's a terminator. I'm not even gonna think of the human side of this that he actually cares to,'cause

20:33 You know. You need both. Yeah, both. He also sp ye know this guy guy seems very likable. He can't just have everything. I refuse to accept that.

20:43 Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifths of the pages. Point is you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit hubspot.com. Let's do another question. Which one do you want to go to? Let's do this one. I I don't think you wanted to this one, which is why I have to do it. Okay, Alex from Brooklyn says

21:16 Gentlemen. Every culture has its quirks. The Japanese make you take your shoes off at the dinner table. The French chicks don't shave their pits. And my first million is home for asking blunt financial questions. And Sam, you are the king of blunt financial questions. So it's our turn to return the favor. I won't ask you for the number, but is Hampton over or under ten million in revenue in twenty twenty five?

21:35 Alex from Brooklyn. Uh over And that's all I will say because It's one of the businesses, it's my only company, and I just wanna shut up and just quietly build for the next decade and just keep on trucking and maybe after ten years I'll come out and reveal some more information. But yeah, it w it's done really well. There you go. All right. Good job, Alex. You you put Sam on the hot seat. All right, next one.

21:57 All right. I just want to suggest the episode and Sean playing the piano had me kinda wowed. It's not what you can do in a year. If that was your Masogi for twenty twenty five, what is each of yours for twenty twenty six, Dave from Mexico City. Yeah, put some respect on an American living in I don't even know what that's C D M X, whatever that is. That's Mexico City.

22:15 You hillbilly. That's Mexico City. CDMX? How does that stand for Mexico City? Uh I think it's some Spanish. Like I don't know. It's some it's sp a Spanish way of saying I don't know. The city of Mexico. By the way, did you have a a Masoge d in twenty twenty five? Did you do that? Uh yeah, I I trained so the point of a mistake so here's the the Here's the thing people forget about a Masogee is it's supposed to be so hard that you have a high chance of failing. And we don't talk about the failure enough. But yes, I trained for a fifty mile hour run and I just like fucking got hurt and destroyed my Achilles and I couldn't do it. So I did it and I failed. Okay.

23:00 Now let me recap something. So on uh two days ago, Sean put out this video of him going to Jesse Itzler's house. You prefaced it by telling what you did. So basically Jesse Itzler, friend of the pod, amazing guy. You flew to his house in Atlanta. And very um it seemed planned, but it was very uh um spontaneous that you played piano for him and his wife. Uh, Sarah Blakely, a very famous entrepreneur.

23:22 They were in tears. You told us about the video and then it finally got released. It was awesome. But I have a bone to pick. Everyone's saying how amazing this is and all this stuff, and they're like, You inspire me because you play this beautiful song and people were literally in tears. And earlier this year you said you're gonna start playing piano. I'm pretty sure you've been playing piano for years and years and years and like

23:42 You did not just pick this up from scratch. Uh no, I haven't been playing for years and years and years. I did as a kid my p my parents did buy a piano. And they probably got us, I don't know, a couple of months of lessons when I was maybe Eight or something like that. But I had by the time I'm th I'm like thirty eight now, I'd like forgotten everything. So when I started this year

24:01 I started fr I started from scratch this year. But yes, technically when I was I remember us being somewhere and seeing a piano and you sat down and I thought you like played a song. I did know how to play two things on the piano. So I knew how to play the uh intro to James Bond Goldeneye, like the like just like the like But like a one hand song type of thing. And I think I also kn knew the uh

24:29 Beginning of For release, which is like of kind of a classic piano song through muscle memory. But I couldn't like Didn't know how to read sheet music, didn't know how to do the notes, didn't know like what the key I didn't know what the keys were called, type of deal. Right. I just said memorized because

24:43 You know, I think it's a good thing. At some point some my sister or somebody had showed me like Hey, watch, push these push white, white, black, black, white, black. And like that'll sound like James Bond. Like that was the level I was at. Well, it was very good. Okay. And so the question was, um what was the question? What's your Masogi gonna be this year? What's it gonna be this year for each of us?

25:01 Do you have one? I have one. I'm trying to figure out The exact way to frame it. I I think I told you this. I deleted all my social media apps, all the consumption. So I said I'm I'm

25:13 I'm going to Go dark, uh in terms of Consuming like I basically was like, How do I trade Consuming stuff that people put twenty seconds of thought into

25:23 Right, like a tweet. People put about twenty seconds of thought into it. to doing things that people put like twenty years of thought into, which is books. And so I deleted Reddit, I deleted Twitter, I deleted Instagram, I deleted Facebook, deleted all those apps. And instead I just if I open up my phone, I wanna kill the kill boredom, I have to open up Kindle. It's like the only thing left to do on my phone is Kindle.

25:45 And so I'm I basically made a list. I was like, All right here's the twenty six for twenty twenty six, right? Like the twenty six books I want to read. In twenty twenty six. And I have kind of a hit list. These are books honestly I've probably owned for years.

25:56 Have thought about reading, have heard really good things about But hadn't actually read. And so I started that a couple of weeks ago. That's going good. The only other one I uh that might count here is I have this life bucket list idea of coaching a high school basketball team. And so like in it walking away from business, like not focusing on business for a season, which is three months.

26:17 And so I started that last month, uh, and it goes our season goes till till uh end of February. But basically take like there's like a local high school basketball team and I've become an assistant coach and it's like Um We wanna go to the state tournament and and win and that's the goal. I know your first game you got spanked. I think you said the second game went better.

26:35 Yeah. We are what are we now? Six and three. Um, so you know, we're we're doing all right. We're getting better as a team. And uh right now it's all about like just can we improve. But I'm basically spending like I don't know, I'm at this I'm basically going to practices and games, you know.

26:51 Four days a week, roughly. And just me like I get my coach's whistle and my little whiteboard and I drive to this high school and then it's just I'm doing it. I'm doing the actual thing. I'm like coaching this high school basketball team. I'm an assistant coach, I'm not the head coach. I have a a two year old girl. And then I have a two month old uh little girl. And I have underestimated leading up to it how difficult it would be.

27:15 And even though I have grandparents around and people helping out, my wife is helping and r you know, obviously running the show there. I have underestimated how challenging it was. And so frankly, I kind of feel like I'm holding on right now. My goals are simple. I'm trying to eat two hundred grams of protein a day and get out of bed at six AM. So I have pretty small ones because I um

27:36 I've always been you know, ever since I got into fitness, I've always been good at maintaining a fairly fit state. Right now I'm at the lowest of my fairly fit era. And so I just need to eat my protein. And going to or going to bed early and waking up early. It it's this is so rudimentary, but it is just has had the biggest impact on my day's productivity. And so my I don't really want to set a big goal right now because I am kinda hanging on Yeah. Although I I do think those are big. I know a lot of people who have that goal and don't do that thing. That is actually quite difficult to do both of those things that you just mentioned. If you actually did those, those are high leverage things. Also, I'll say two things.

28:11 One. I think it's great to acknowledge the season you're in. I think people want everything to be constant. And there are seasons where you're able to be full out. There's seasons where you're in recovery mode. There's seasons where you're in you know, nesting mode where you're just like, look, all that matters is like protecting the nest, because there's like these baby eggs here right now. And like that's all that really matters. I don't need to distract myself with a a random hunt over here. I need to stay at the nest.

28:36 And so I think Knowing the season and and uh not beating yourself up about that is something that ambitious sort of type A people struggle with. It's like you gotta give yourself some grace, you know, when when you're when you're so wired. Towards achievement.

28:51 Of random goals. You didn't do a good job of warning me though. You should have warned me. I I didn't realise how challenging this would be. Well everybody says the same thing. It's like oh Man to man defense now. There's two of you and two of them. Like I did not understand like it sometimes it feels like my wife is my roommate and uh

29:08 Like like I barely have gotten to know my little girl because uh my new baby because I'm with the eldest. Like, right? So it's my job to uh Uh take care of her and like you gotta like take her out of the house because she's gotta grab the pacifier out of the mouth. You know what I mean? It's definitely a second baby blind side for dads. 'Cause the first baby is the one you think everything's gonna change and it's gonna be like Oh my god, my life's gonna get really crazy and then it's like That's all right, I got this. This is not so bad. So you get this false sense of security.

29:36 And then when the second baby comes, it's like nobody you you had already given up you'd already stopped worrying about it in a way. And the second one is the blind side, especially for the dad because for the d the mom who you didn't realize how much she was carrying the team. But now she has to focus on the new baby and that means Existing kid.

29:54 Is your kid. And all of their needs and all of their time is like, you know, on your clock and and that is a very That's a big wake up call. Just getting her socks on.

30:03 Like that's like it can be an ordeal. Do you like just like these small things that I just kind of dismissed. So I'm I'm frankly I'm not drowning, but I my cup is l is a bit full. All right, there's here's another question. So this is what is it, Gary Vee? Uh it's the Gary Vee one. All right, so I like this one. Gary V wants to buy the Jets.

30:24 Sam, you're working hard to grow Hampton now. Why are you doing all this? Are you trying to buy all the pawn shops in the US, brother? In all seriousness. What is the FU money purchase? That you want if this is a home run. This is uh Tark from the Bay. I guess that's the Bay area.

30:40 So I when I moved to New York City, I got this like really big, nice apartment and I love it. And I've gotten so much joy having family come and stay and be comfortable. That I have my eyes set on I do in the next couple of years wanna buy a huge, like lavish you know, fifteen or twenty five million dollar apartment. I do that is that is something that I definitely want. But more than anything, I saw this photo of fifteen or twenty million dollar apartment.

31:07 Is your call? Yeah. Yeah. Why a apartment. Fifty twenty million, shouldn't you be getting like a city block? No. Brother sucks at you like one of the brownstones at least? Like it's an apartment? I don't want a brownstone. I've I've rented one before. I don't like them. I like having a doorman. What's the like dream building? Is there a dream building in New York that's like the cool one to be in?

31:27 W well, it's different flavors. So like if like there's like this thing called Billionaire's Row and it's like right next to Central Park and that's what a lot of the really rich like tycoons like Bill Ackman lives there, and it's a hundred million dollars for the a fancy apartment there. It's insane. It's just absolutely insane how rich some people are and how much this real estate costs. That's not my flavor. That's like Um Opulent. I mean it's all opulent if it's twenty million dollars, but that's like um You know, like you're the the master of the world type of apartment and it's all clean and cool looking But

31:56 What I'm really working to do, I s I don't like Donald Trump, but I saw this photo Of him working at his office. And he he was like had just left a meeting with a bunch of his employees and his m uh wife and two kids, uh the boys, I forget their name, John Junior and the other guy. They came up to him while he was working and the cool part was that They lived. in the same you know, he owned the building and they uh the building and they lived in the same building where he worked. And the kids could see him working and and he was just able to do stuff and it was like a total life integration, work life integration.

32:28 That's my dream. That's really what I'm working towards. I I really want to do that. Wow, I never took you, Sam, to be the penthouse kind of guy. I'm not a penthouse type of guy, but well, I guess I am. I just said I wanted to buy a penthouse. Yeah, I think by definition. Yeah.

32:45 Yeah. We used to have this funny thing on the pod where it was like You know, we're just two entrepreneurs with big dreams. Sean wants to buy the Lakers, and Sam would love to buy a lake. I feel like you were so much more likable then. Now not like Manhattan, Sam. You just lost like thirty points of likability with that answer. What are you doing here telling the truth over here, bro? You know what it's rooted in It just so happens that I live in Manhattan, but really if I lived in like let's say uh St. Louis, Missouri, I would say I want the fattest house in the cul de sac that has like a soccer goal in the back and like a basketball goal and like all the kids play in my yard.

33:21 Like that's really what it's it just so happens that I live that's done so much better. It just so happens that I live in Manhattan. In order to do that, you have to spend twenty million dollars. By by the way, this This Gary Vee buying the Jets thing. I've talked about this before. To me, this is like a master class in personal brand. So I always say like for personal brand, you want these five D's. One of the D's is what's the dream. And if your dream is I want to make so much money It's like crazy. I just want to be a billionaire. It just sounds greedy, right? So what Gary did, which is brilliant, is he's like, I wanna buy the Jets.

33:50 Now there's a lot of brilliance in this. One It gives him the air cover to go try to pursue a bunch of money without just seeming greedy. He didn't say I wanna buy the Yankees. He wanted to buy this lovable loser, his childhood team, the the New York Jets that's never done anything. and try to turn them around. And so it's like there's like a nobility to the mission.

34:08 There's this like l likeability to the mission where it's like a turnaround project. Everybody likes an underdog type of deal. And it's something w a lot of people remember about him. Like something he he dreams of doing. And so I think that Gary doing that is is is yet another example of Gary really understanding marketing and personal brand. Do you know how um so Sean and I like the UFC and at the UFC every after every uh fight, Dana White does a press conference. And he lists like five or or ten stats. So who got the fight of the night, who got the bonus

34:36 And then one stat that he always lists is how much money they made at the gate. And it's supposed to mean like this is how many fans came to the fight. But the tickets are like two grand. Like I I went recently and it was like eight hundred dollars for bad seats. And it's pretty funny that he rar rebra he like is using that as like look look how many people are coming. It's like dude, no, this is just how m you're just charging so much money for a ticket. So you're like bragging. It's sort of like when Gary says like I've noticed that Gary's videos

35:05 Um people will be like hel let me help you buy the jets and achieve your dream. That's so much better than people saying Let me put more money in your pocket and become a billionaire. Um all right, let's do uh another question. Or do you have one of these, Sean? Uh I don't it's gotta be authentic, right? So like I d I don't actually have one. You know, to me I'm like I bought back my time. That was the first purchase.

35:31 Uh, you know, f first important purchase buy my own time back, buy my freedom. And then it's like you invest in health. So it's like I got a trainer, I got a chef, I got like doing everything I can for health for me and my family. And you know, after that, like I don't know, I've I guess it'd be fun experiences. Like I I don't really have like This burning desire to go purchase some really expensive thing.

35:53 Yeah, Morgan Hounsel wrote this thing in his book that really resonated with me. He goes there's two ways to use money. Number one is as a tool to improve the quality of your life. And I nod. I'm like, Yeah, that makes sense. Right. That's buying Your time, that's buying a a nanny, it's you know, getting a A personal trainer or something like that. And the other is as a measuring stick.

36:12 And I realized that like all the big money purchases, like the things you would need Tons and tons of money for They tend to be measuring stick things. Like I've almost run out of like Money as a tool to improve my life ideas. You know, I've done a a lot of the big ones and so

36:27 I guess I don't really want to switch into that gear of money as money as a measuring stick. Yeah. But you enjoy that penthouse, Sam. I'm sure people will think you're very cool. All right, uh let's go to the next question. Dude, do you remember the do you remember the the kids house when you were younger where it was like the open door where it's like a campus, you just get everyone can like hang out? Yeah. I've I've aspired to be that forever. It just so happens that You have to spend a lot of money in Manhattan to do it. All right, let's do this one.

36:59 Early on. You guys had a ton of friends on the show as guests. Give us OGs an update. On the OGs. Where's Sulli? Where's Ramon? Where's Jack Smith?

37:08 Is there anyone else that I missed? So When Sean started MFM it The first fifty episodes maybe? A lot of people don't realize this. M FM is that like some number between seven hundred and eight hundred episodes. I don't remember exactly.

37:21 The first Some number. I don't know. Twenty five or fifty. It was just Sean interviewing people. And all those people were uh being interviewed. And also you and I when it was just When I came on, it was just like five thousand people listening. We basically just talked about our friends.

37:36 And so for the OG or we had them on and be like, Hey, what's up? What are you up to? Yeah, like that that sort of deal. Before we were chasing Clout. We were just hanging out with our butts. Once we once we figured out the YouTube algorithm, things changed. But uh before that, we invited our friends on the pot a lot. Okay, let's do an update. So Soule, do you want to talk about Soule?

37:55 Okay, Sul Sulli is Sulaman Ali. He's one of our Uh uh he's one of our friends, he's one of my best buddies. There's there's a a question later that I think will be w good good explanation of who Sully is, but he's an entrepreneur. He built a company called Tiny Co, which was like mobile games, uh sort of think like Candy Crush. But he licensed the the IP for Family Guy. So he made like the Family Guy mobile game, the Harry Potter mobile game, those those types of things. Sold Tiny for

38:19 A bunch of money, uh, nine figures. He then uh helped his brother start uh and sell native deodorant. So the Ali brothers are prolific and they've both been on the podcast. Suey did something that I really respect and admire, which was he was able to

38:35 Understand what matters. So he's like Sully's in his forties. He ha you know, he's been super successful. And when you when you're successful like Winners have options. You get

38:45 Deals put on your plate every day. Things you could go invest in and make a bunch of money. You have People who want to come work for you and you know, start companies with you. You have more knowledge about how to win in the game of business and it is very tempting. to just go and uh go get more success. Ca success feels really good and you're good at it. And it's very t uh tempting to do that because there might be other areas of your life that you're not so good at.

39:08 Where you're not getting that same feedback loop of I'm awesome and this is awesome and my results are awesome. And what Stuy did, which I thought was great, was he uh didn't make the mistake of just chasing more success. He started to look at those other areas. So First thing he did was he started working out religiously every day. Like I started being like, Hey, what are you like?

39:25 What are you working on today? He's like, I don't know, but I scheduled my workout. That's the most important thing that I do. Dude, he takes more like workout classes than like a twenty three year old Manhattanite woman who works in PR. And then he takes the same classes that she takes also. He introduced me to like rumble boxing and I think my boot camp. So he's he loves the classes. So he started doing that. Then he was like, I want to have kids. Like that's the next chapter I want to have kids. So he just had a kid. And he has resisted the AI wave to focus on having a kid. For now. Uh we'll see what he does. I think he wants to take a very big swing in the world of AI and Robotics.

40:00 We'll see what happens, but he he's a first time dad. So that's the Souli update. Ramon. is doing a very cool company called Athena. If you've ever looked in your house and looked at the tap and your tap water and you're like, I don't want to drink tap water. I want to drink clean water. I don't want water that has

40:16 Heavy metals in it, chemicals in it. You know, a lot of people don't even know your the the water supply in most cities is like very interlinked with the sewage system. Like it's a pretty gross thing to drink tap water, but we all bathe in tap water. We put it all over our naked bodies. And so Ramon has built a Uh uh

40:33 company that's around clean water for the home. And so it's started with a filtered shower head. So how do you shower in water that's gonna be clean on your skin and good for your hair? It's called a Fina and he's m going into other categories um w with clean water for the home. And so Ramones Basically gone back to what he knows best.

40:52 Which is How do I sell stuff? Online. And he's just moved to more noble things. He started with when he first came on the podcast was He was selling essentially soap opera daytime soap opera spoilers. So like

41:04 What's gonna happen tomorrow on The Young and the Restless? And he sold that company for like nine or ten million dollars. It was a blog. And he only it was only two years old, he sold for ten million dollars. When we talked about it, this was like such a viral story. A Dutch kickboxer. He's never seen a self opera in his life, but he just loves to sell stuff online. He loves to figure out how to get traffic from one place to another and how to sell. And now he's doing he's selling things that actually, you know, improve people's lives a little bit more than the soap opera spoiler. So that's that's Ramon right now. You guys should go listen to his episode uh early on. So basically, yeah, he started a soap opera business that he sold for nine or ten million dollars, then he started a dog Ramp company. So like if you're

41:41 It was called Sausage Dog Central. So if sausage dogs can like use a ramp to get up in the S E V insane grow to eighteen million. Now he's doing a Fina. And he's a single dad. And his son's about to go to college or getting gearing up to go to college. Then he uh Yeah.

41:54 His kid is like the most well mannered, well behaved kid. So that's probably the best thing he's ever done is uh be imagine He's been a single parent since the uh his boy was t two years old. Yeah. Uh and now his kids h has been, but is still thriving. Jack Smith. Uh so Jack Smith is our buddy. Jack Smith

42:12 So on paper he um basically sold his company at the age of twenty nine or twenty eight for eight hundred and fifty million dollars. It was called Vungle. Uh now the intangibles or if you meet Jack Smith Very quiet. You'll have to You'll have to pull anything out of him. He won't tell you anything. If you ask what he does for work, he'll say

42:30 Oh, I um I like to play on computers. Like he won't tell you he he's the in terms of what you said, Sean, about um people wanting to flex, he is The most non flexing person I've ever met in my life. He's very special. Uh one of my best friends, he now lives in Portugal. And he's building

42:46 He just bought the acres of land on the coast of Portugal. And he's building a meditation center. Uh that's what he's doing. Like it it's like digital detox meditation, right? Yeah, so he bought fifty acres of land and check this out. He uh has like a mobile home.

43:03 that he mostly lives in. And this little like he I think he has a house that he now I think they've rented a house nearby, but for a little while they're living in like a tiny home. Him and his his kid and his wife. And very him and his wife are both Tycoons. They're both incredibly successful people and they live very, very modest lives and they're dedicating everything right now to building a Retreat. So people can like

43:25 Get into uh I don't know, whatever you do when you meditate. Self awareness, calmness. Yeah. Whatever those uh All right, let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a two thousand and two tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send.

43:50 And it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I gotta visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team. All from one clean dashboard.

44:09 That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, call them NA, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. All right, I got one that's tactical, practical. Business.

44:30 So it's a this is this is from Ben's brother. Ben's my business partner. This is from his brother Sam. He says, I've been a realtor for the past decade. I've had good success. I made three hundred thousand dollars a year for about a decade. But I hate how it just doesn't seem to be compounding. So I've decided it's time to make a change. Everything is on the table.

44:48 Buying a business, buying a franchise, flipping houses, getting a job. I'm not looking for specific prescriptive advice on what I should specifically do, but I'm looking for you guys to tell me how you would think about deciding. The type of thing you'd look for next and how you would attack it. Have you read the uh I think it's called The War is it War on Art by Steven Pressfield? War of Art. Four R, sorry.

45:10 And uh he talks about this idea of the difference between like an amateur and a professional. And like an amateur maybe says that they're have writer's block or that their creativity just hasn't come to them. Whereas professional, they sit down at the same day and they get to work and they just write regardless of how they feel. You know, their emotion that day doesn't impact how they feel. They're they're they're a professional. You go to work. The things that I've noticed that have held a lot of people back Is when they think about making money, um Or in Ben's case, um or sorry, Sam's case of like what to do next.

45:41 I think that they don't think of themselves as a company builder. I think that when you're like thinking about what to do next, you have to think, How do I Get enough traction to hire people. to create a team and to create a proper company with a culture that solves a problem and has recurring customers. And I've noticed this like with a lot of real estate agents p in particular because they're one off peop you know, it's like a

46:02 one person business oftentimes, but just like an a assistant. And I have a bone to pick a lot of times with these one person companies that we talk about online all the time. They're incredibly interesting. But in general, in order to build a lot of value for yourself. You have to create, in my opinion, a company. And that's sort of this like vague term, but in my head what that means is like employees who are all working together on a mission and who are creating an asset. That has a lot of value.

46:28 Not just creating something that pays your your salary. And so are you suggesting he Take his current Job. Where he's like, I put in hours and I get a commission out of it selling it home and start to think about like well why don't I turn this into more of a brokerage? Or why don't I create a real estate team and we're not gonna sell

46:46 I sell twenty homes a year, but we could sell Why couldn't we sell three hundred if I was able to hire other people like me, maybe even better than me at selling homes? And p organize us all under one brand as a company rather than me as a broker. John Rockefeller, who's I think the best businessman ever, famously said, I'd rather have one percent effort from a hundred people than a hundred percent effort From me.

47:07 And I think that to be true. Where Then The name of the game to creating a lot of value and something sustainable is to create something that involves getting uh other people organized and them doing a lot of the work.

47:20 And that sounds very simplistic, but I don't think that's how a lot of people think about it. Yeah. So I I I my answer would be um It's kind of like eating late at night. It's like are you hungry or are you just bored? And a lot of w a lot of what people think is hunger is actually just boredom. And so similarly

47:38 I think Sam wants to do something Different. He's basically saying like I've been a successful realtor for a long time, but I'm ready to buy a franchise, flip houses, I go to Go do something completely different.

47:50 Whereas I think you first would want to question the the Question the initial assumption which was Um he basically said I'm making three hundred K a year for about a decade, but it just doesn't seem to be compounding. Well why not? I've seen

48:01 Many brokers m make way more money. If the goal is to make way more money or to work way less, I know many brokers that have done what you said, which is productize themselves or make a company out of what they're doing, make a team out of what they're doing and scale it. And so I think that would be the first instinct. But I guess my my general advice for anybody who's trying to figure out what to do next is Go talk to twenty people. Because the goal is to work backwards from a specific idea.

48:24 Not forwards from uncertainty. And what I mean by that is you go talk to twenty people who you think are having success in one way or one flavor or another. Now what does that mean? That means you go talk to friends or your friends are friends. You go talk to local businesses. Once you realize that everything around you is a product made by a business, then you can go find the owner of that business and you can just chat with them. Or you can study what they do from afar.

48:47 You want to find people of similar backgrounds to you, like other realtors who then pivoted and did something Bigger and better. out of it. And you're just searching for a blueprint that you can copy paste for yourself.

48:58 And then you're gonna of course you're gonna tweak it as you go, but you're gonna sort of steal like an artist. You're gonna find something that already works and work backwards from that. So I I think that's the the first thing is like Have you okay, you talked about buying a franchise. Go talk to twenty franchisees. And see, is that like do I want the life that they have? Does it seem like Do I want the inputs of the life, not just the output, right?'Cause

49:19 Yeah, everybody wants success, but do you want to do the things that they have to do in order to get the success? Does that sound like fun to you? Does it seem like things you're naturally good at? Is that the type of work you want to sign up to do three thousand times? Those are questions you gotta ask yourself. And so I would go and try to look for blueprints. I look for first Fit people like me, what did they do?

49:38 And then You know, maybe go a little bit. Further out on the weirdness scale and find other other things. And once you go look at those blueprints, something will scream out at you of like Some combination of that looks fun to try.

49:50 I think I could do that. I like the I like the lifestyle that that comes with with doing that. And that will give you more direction on where to go. And so I think m people don't really think about business as blueprints. They think they need to be original. And instead I think you should largely look for existing blueprints that many people have done. And say which one of those do I want to do?

50:09 Do you know uh this guy, Sam? Yeah, yeah, I've I've talked to him a bunch. This is Ben's brother. Ha ha. Well, I guess we're gonna have to follow up the mistake. He doesn't make time to search.

50:23 So every time I talk to him, I'm like, Great, what are you thinking about now? And he's like made so little progress in the time, and the reason why is because He's got his job. Then he also bought into like a restaurant. He owns a piece of a restaurant. He Spends a bunch of time trying to make sure that restaurant doesn't fail,'cause he doesn't want that restaurant to fail.

50:41 And I'm like, So how much time are you dedicating to this? He's like, Oh, like, you know Whenever I have free time. So how much free time you got? Not a lot. And so I think you if you want to actually make a change, you need to first clear your plate a little bit.

50:55 And create some space to actually work on the thing. And work on the thing in like dedicated religious time. That's like as sacred as your work. As sacred as going to the gym, as sacred as Of the things you make time for. So I think for him he's gotta find You know, two, three hours a day.

51:10 that he's gonna just spend to this and specifically mark off on his calendar and be like, I might sell less homes this year and I'm okay with that trade because I'm working on building the next thing. I think people don't really make specific concrete time. They try to hope that like In the extra time I have, and there's you don't have extra time. That's a great uh great answer.

51:28 Can I pick the last one? Yeah, go for it. This is hilarious. This is a great one. So this is from Peter J. Yeah.

51:36 One of my favorite American traditions is that when you get arrested, you get one phone call. That has to be one of the highest stakes calls ever. I almost want to get arrested just to feel the rush of that one phone call rule when they place the phone call when they place that phone in your hands. Anyway, what's your one phone call when it comes to business?

51:56 When you need advice or you're in a tough spot. Who's that one call you're going to make and why? That's a good question. And that is a great question. Yes. Do I I definitely have one. Do you? I have one. You go first. Do you know who um Barry Diller is? Barry Diller's the founder of IAC. You know, he's like um

52:12 A deal maker or whatever that phrase is supposed to be. Phone call? Isn't he like eighty five? He's not my phone call. Uh he but he's like a guy who like kinda knows everyone and he is just like he like is um He owns this huge conglomerate and he's just a little bit of a business savant when it comes to like numbers, a little bit like Ari Emanuel, where he just kinda like knows deals and he just knows numbers and he spots value and he organizes people around it. Austin Reef

52:36 Is one of those two guys. But at the age of thirty. Austin Reef is one of my best friends. Austin Reef started this company called Morning Broom. I had a company called The Hustle, both daily business newsletters. They were a little bit more finance. We are more entrepreneurial and tech But when we are both getting going. I hated him.

52:52 I wanted to kill him. Not because of him, just because we were competitors. We both sold our company and we both We're in the same core group of Hampton. One of the reasons I moved to where I live is because I'm down the street from him. He's one of my best friends. I love him like family. And he is probably the smartest business person I've ever met because a he I do think he is like genius level. I'm pretty sure he got like a perfect school on the SATs. But B, he approaches things with the perfect balance of something must have soul and you must love it and you must be passionate. But then for any problem that I have, he's very very good at taking away the passion and the energy and the emotion away from the actual logistics and he's very pragmatic.

53:28 Uh he's the best person I've ever experienced, uh when it comes to asking advice on on a certain issue. Um it sounds like very similar, honestly, to Sulli. Yeah, that's a great one. My answer is Sully, uh no no secret here. By my rule for for the person you would call, right? If you think about the the the jail phone call, you would want three things. One, they have to care. I want this to be like The dad from Taken.

53:51 When his daughter's taken and he's like, Oh Okay. It's on now, right? That you want the person when you come to them with your personal life problem, that it becomes their personal life problem. And Sully is like that. Like uh He had a friend from high school who was like A dentist. I think I don't think he talked to him in several years.

54:08 And he was like, Hey you know, I know you're in the business world, like, you know, we've gone our separate ways since high school, but like I'm trying to sell my practice like any tips for me? And suddenly like flew out there and made it his mission to help his friends sell his dental practice business and had this incredible outcome. What was this?

54:23 This is a couple of years ago, two years ago maybe. That's incredible. And so um second, they need to be wiser than me. So I want you to have seen ten times more data points and be better at putting together those data points. So that when I come to you with noise and panic. You just see the signal. You know what to ignore. And what to focus on.

54:41 Um, and then lastly, I want that person to basically live rent rent free in my head afterwards, which is what I have now, which is If if I'm I don't even need to call him anymore, it's just oh what would Sully say? Oh he'd say this. Okay, I'm just gonna do that thing. Right. That's as as simple as it's become. I spent enough time with him to know what he would say in ninety percent of these situations. Can I give you a fun two fun facts about

55:01 Calling people from jail? I used to be a a problematic person and I had to experience this a couple of times. The first thing that I've realized. You people learn this the second time they go to jail. You have to write down the phone number of the person you want to call on your hand.'Cause you don't remember any any you don't know anyone's phone number. You don't know anyone. So the second time I did this when I was getting arrested, I I I looked at my buddy, I go, I go, Hey

55:23 Can you run and grab the Sharpie and write your number on my hand for me, please? Uh that's what you have to do. Cell phones don't show up in yellow book or you know, yellow page white pages. The second thing. Here's the bad part.

55:35 It might be different now. Thank God I've not had to experience this in in over a decade. Most cell phones don't accept collect calls. So it just you get a dead end right away. Dead end. Dead end. So you have to figure out how to make it work. You gotta call someone with a landline who happens to be at home. I d I just Googled it. I think Verizon Except it.

55:55 But most do not. That's ridiculous. Maybe it has changed. But the uh I know a lot m most of my friend uh you know the real problem with this is most of my friends don't even pick up phone calls. So it needs to be like a text from jail. It usually says it. It'll say like uh like you know, like Bay Area or Sacramento County, uh

56:14 Correctional. Or something like that. Um do you know I you know what's crazy? I I think one in five American men have been arrested at least once. Do you have any friends besides me who have been arrested?

56:26 Yeah, of course. Good. Yeah, friend friends in dark places. Sully. Was this call?

56:40 What I asked and what he said. the first time. I was trying to figure out if we should sell the milk road. We had gotten an offer to sell. The business. And we were debating should we take it, should we not?

56:52 And we were spinning in circles, basically writing these pros and cons lists of like Why we would sell. Blah blah blah. And then like why we shouldn't sell. Or like We should sell, but only at this price.

57:03 Or that price. Is this enough? Is that enough, right? It was like so confusing. We were just tied up in a knot. That's we call Sue Lee. And He just listens to us for five minutes and he goes, All right. How about we put away the pros and cons list?

57:15 Because listen, you're selling your company. Do you want to sell your company or not? Uh you should have a visceral gut reaction when I say You're selling your company. And either the gut reaction is Yes or it's no. And if you don't know, don't do anything. You don't need to make any decisions here.

57:30 And just simplifying it to you need a visceral gut reaction. What is that visceral gut reaction when I say this sentence? It became very clear to me what I want to do. I wanted to sell the business. So that was the first time that was like a lot of clarity in a very short amount of time. The second one was my e commerce business. I was like, Hey, you know a ton about e com You know, your brother built native deodorant, you helped him with that. You you you yourself have done e commerce.

57:52 I want you to help me with strategy. Can we do like a call where I kind of ask you questions, pick your brain on strategy and we figure out like, you know I want to come up with a good growth strategy. And so here I am and I show up to that meeting. I'm ready to like Have a strategy talk. And five minutes before the meeting, it just says, Sullia shared a Google Doc with you.

58:10 And the Google Doc. Is a list of forty shitty things about our website, our email pop ups, our welcome email flow, our SMS sequence, our Facebook ad copy, like He just went, looked at our funnel and just wrote forty things that we're doing. That probably could be done better. And he was like we get on the call.

58:28 And I'm like Oh. So like Uh Like Should we talk strategy? He's like this is the strategy.

58:36 The strategy is you look at your product, you figure out everything that sucks, you fix it, then we do this again in two weeks. And we do that again and again and again until there's like not that many things that suck anymore. And like that's the strategy. And that really just like shook me and I was like, Oh That's how winners operate. Got it. I thought this guy's so smart, he's gonna say something brilliant.

58:55 No, he just drilled in and looked at the details and was like, Why are we doing this? This took three seconds to to to load. Make that faster. This is th this is the wrong photo for this. We should put that photo up here. This copy is weak. Let's find better copy. Yeah, like that sort of thing. Dude, the smart people I've noticed or the people I admire, they tend to be

59:14 Like I I don't know if he would fall in this category, but he it wouldn't surprise me if he's like in the traditional sense of genius level IQ. Like Like a perfect score on the standardized test type of But they're also really good at just kinda being a caveman. Yeah.

59:30 It's the midwit meme. Yeah. Where they like are incredibly brilliant. So I've seen him talk about like some financial instruments and stuff in a very sophisticated way that I didn't understand entirely. Uh, where it was as if he had to like read a book on it, like a textbook on it. Particularly when you're talking about like tax structures and things like that. Like it's as if he had like literally has read like the tax code. But then he'll he's also given me advice. He's like Why aren't you doing this? And I'll say like uh some like you know, answer just like you did of like, Well, do you want to sell?

59:58 I think yes. Okay. So Like that type of like he like he's done that with me many times. It's like

1:00:04 Just these rudimentary like Very like Child honestly, it's like a child. Right. It's like you should do this because you want to do this. There's a um a meeting I had.

1:00:15 with this the now CEO of Twitch. Uh when I was at Twitch we got acquired This guy became my boss uh for a period of time. His name's Dan Clancy. And I go into Dan's office and he He asked me some questions. He tell he he's he's like, I'm the new chief product officer at the time. Now he's CEO, but he's chief product officer then. I want to tell you a little bit about how I work, how I operate.

1:00:36 You know, first hundred days, I'm just gonna ask a lot of questions. I wanna go meet people at the front lines, not talk to managers. You know, some standards kind of first hundred days. Stuff. And then he goes, And then from there You'll see me work like this. And he took a white em took a marker and he drew on the whiteboard.

1:00:52 He goes, do you know what a square line curve looks like? And I was like Sure don't. And he goes, You know what a sine wave is? I was like, Yeah, it's kinda like a up and down y, like music-y, heartbeaty looking thing, right? And he's like, Yeah, yeah, that's a sine curve. And he's like it's this like smooth round thing. A square curve looks like this. And he basically drew like

1:01:10 A straight flat line, he goes, I'll spend a lot of time at ten at the ten thousand foot level. Basically figuring out like Big picture priorities, what matters. Um, you know, what are the three things we need to do to win, like where are the key levers, what do we have to get right? What makes this whole thing work? And so he's like, I'll spend a bunch of time here.

1:01:28 And then as soon as I find some problem I go like this. straight down all the way to a level of depth that you will find Like Confusing and amusing.

1:01:38 Like wait, why does he care about the pixels and the color and the copy and the this and the that like the details of this area? Is it can I stay there for a little bit? And then I go back up. And he's like, This is how I work. I will be at the ten thousand foot. I'll drop down to ten centimeters. I'll stay there. I'll go back to ten thousand feet. I'll stay there. And he's like, That is how I work.

1:01:56 And Ever since I saw that I realized oh this is what Paul Graham and those people met when they said founder mode. This is what founder mode is. Founder mode is being able to simultaneously hold in your head.

1:02:08 The big idea, the North Star, the vision, the direction we need to go. And then being able to dive down into the absolute most sp simple details of those areas that are problematic and like roll up your sleeves, solve the problem. Side by side with the team. And then go back up for air. Would this guy want to come on MFM?

1:02:26 Yeah, we should have Dan on. That'd be fun, actually. Because I'm d uh you guys who are listening, you gotta Google this guy. First of all He does not look Like the CEO of Twitch, you would think like I would think it'd be like a Red Bull looking like

1:02:42 Bro. This guy looks like a w like he's sixty one and he's got uh He looks like he's got all the t shirts from like the Grateful Dead tours. Yeah, he looks w A, he looks wise just'cause he looks older than the average Twitch user, but he's got long white hair A goatee. He looks like he should be studying philosophy.

1:03:01 Or like giving a lecture on like man's search for meaning. But he's a Twitch guy. This is so fascinating to me. This guy looks awesome. I would love to hang out with this guy. He he's very wise. I I talked to him like I remember once he was like, So what do you want to do? Like it was like a one on one, like a career talk. And I go in and you know, I just got acquired into the company. My career plan at Twitch was like

1:03:22 earn this vest check and get the hell out of here. Right. Like that was just like the general mindset. I wasn't trying to think about my My tenure career at Twitch. That was like that would be losing. So I walk in, I'm like, uh, what am I gonna say? Do I need to like fake the funk here and tell this guy like I really want to get this promotion and in ten years I see myself here as a Senior VP, blah blah blah blah. Like that wasn't true. So am I gonna lie?

1:03:43 Or do I tell him the truth, but then like is he gonna be like F this kid and like you know check out on me, right? Cause I'm checked out on on the long, long term with Twitch. Short term, I was gonna try, but like long term I wasn't gonna be there. So I told him the truth. I was like Yeah, long term I'm not here. He goes okay, great. Uh so we don't need to worry about th like this pile of stuff.

1:04:01 So tell me, like what is it that you do want to do? And I started telling them this thing that I told many people before The hot waners start a university someday and like blah blah blah. And I was like, yeah, and I had this like very logical, like in in order to do that, first I need to do this and get the capital and the network and the skills. And then those three things are the core components that you need to be able to pull this off. And he just looked at me and goes.

1:04:24 Yeah, I don't buy any of that. I was like, Oh sh okay, okay, what? And you know, somebody you could call bullshit is generally like somebody you want as a friend. And he was like, I don't believe in the deferred life plan. Like I don't believe you need to do all these prerequisites to go do the thing you want to do. I think more often you're better served just going and doing the thing you really want to do, if you really want to go do it. And if you don't really want to go do it, just say you don't want to do it. Uh, figure out what you do wanna do and go do that instead.

1:04:48 And you know, just immediately cutting through the the BS. Uh I had like ten interactions like this with him where like I go into his office. And I come out with some nugget of wisdom that really like shifted the way I think. Because this guy's just been around, done a lot of things. Like he worked early at Google. He worked directly with like, you know, Larry You know, Sundar, who's now like, you know, the CEO was like a peer of his at the time, but it was like in that

1:05:12 Circle of like fifteen. Up and comers that were like one of them what might be the CEO of Google one day. Like that's who this guy is. I just think it's funny to imagine this guy having a meeting on like i show speed. Well he's like gone on his stream. There's like videos of him like

1:05:26 Going and hanging out with them and going on their streams and stuff. And it's it is a fish out of water for sure, but you know. But props to him for doing it,'cause it would be pretty easy to just retreat to the Ivory Tower. And like Try to be like this. Kind of corporate.

1:05:38 person behind the scenes and uh instead he's he's like no I'm gonna do this. Dan, if you if this makes it to you, we would love to have you on. I know I'm personally trying to learn how to like be a proper CEO and like it sounds like you're amazing at all the things I aspire to learn. This would be awesome if you came on. This guy seems badass. I also want to know what he thought of you, Sean. I also want to know that. Th there's one more I wanna do. One more I wanna do.

1:06:03 So this question comes from Brian from Austin. He says My guess is that there's been over a thousand business ideas shared on the podcast. Don't need a list, just gut reaction. What is an idea you wish somebody ran with? That has been said before on the podcast, you got five, four, three, two, one, go. And so I have one for this. I don't know if w if if any ideas come to you initially for this.

1:06:22 You're gonna laugh at mine. What's yours? So I like um hardware. Just as a fan, I like gadgets. I don't know anything about'em.

1:06:30 But We Like people thought I was joking about like making a really good washer and dryer. That's one. Uh but like we have seen I have seen the Maddox. Have you seen Matic? It's like a a new Roomba. New roomba, yeah. It's a thousand dollar roomba that I absolutely love. We have seen like

1:06:47 figure you know, with the robots. That's like kind of like fits the stereotype of like these big things. But we've seen Nest, I've seen all these like really cool gadget companies like gadgets. Yeah. Yeah, like the Dyson, they've got the oven. It's like a fancy convection oven. And not all of them like like June hasn't haven't totally hit. I think it failed like I don't know what happened. I think it failed, yeah. But there are a handful that seemed silly, like a nest. Or like a um A ring camera. Uh, but they actually were so cool and they did revolutionize an industry. And I always thought that could be one of them. And so I'm I'm shocked no one has uh pounced on that. Um what about yours?

1:07:20 Mine is not the biggest idea, but it's one that I wish existed and I think would totally win if somebody had the right amount of hustle. It's the youth sports combine. So professional sports have combines where you go, you get measured your height, your weight, your wingspan, your vertical leap, your strength, your speed. All of that.

1:07:38 Well As I've had kids and as I've met most of my friends have had kids, I have seen the absolute money. Hurricane. That is youth sports. And um so the idea here was to create a city to city traveling tour similar to Tough Mudder.

1:07:53 But your goal is you go into a city and you say, Hey, if you're a youth youth athlete, if you're, you know, whatever, it could be As young as Whatever, five years old, all the way up to eighteen years old. Um, come get tested. Get your forty yard dash, your vertical leap, your height, your weight, your body fat, your all the the attributes that go into becoming an athlete.

1:08:13 Every city you go to, I think you get somewhere between a thousand and two thousand kids. To show up easily. Th I think you could charge a hundred twenty dollars a pop. I think you could charge a little bit extra for f either, you know, a printed photo or for like storing your data. And you know, for for the long term.

1:08:29 If you just do the math on that, so fifteen hundred kids, let's say, uh two thousand kids, something like that. You're basically making two hundred grand a weekend. In every city you go to, you do that fifty weeks out of the year, you have a ten million dollar a year business. That is recur you know, that is gonna dominate one angle. And I think you can upsell training and camps and the data. And like there's a bunch of other things you could do on top of that. But to me,

1:08:49 I can't believe this doesn't exist without with the amount of money I see poured into youth sports. I cannot believe there's not somebody that's doing the fitness testing The standardized testing, the SATs for athleticism. That I cannot believe that nobody's built. I really want to be a part of this if somebody wants to do it. I don't want I don't have the hustler to do it, but If somebody else has the time and hustle, I really want to be a part of that.

1:09:09 What sports do you want your kids to be good at? Every parent has this function. So there's there's two factors here. One is what are the sports that I love? So basketball. Um and the second is What are the sports that I strategically would choose?

1:09:23 For example. Baseball. Oh. I'm out. Yeah. My son.

1:09:29 I don't want him to know what a baseball glove looks like. I I don't even want him to see it. Why? 'Cause he's gonna stand around for three hours. I'm gonna sit around for three hours, nothing's gonna happen. Um, that is like the worst sport for for for you know a kid to be in like that. I just took my kids skiing. Great time.

1:09:45 Not gonna double down in skiing. Sing is like This weather dependent, location dependent, equipment dependent, like So dangerous too. Expensive, dangerous. Impossible to access sport. So I'm like, I went skiing recently and I saw old people going down these hills and they go so fast. Yeah. It's crazy to me. I get it. Families have fun together. It's fine as a hobby. It's fine as a family vacation. I don't want my kids to be doing it as a sport.

1:10:11 Soccer. My kids love soccer right now and I hate it. I wanna get them out of it, but I can't do it yet. They they they love it too much. But the idea of soccer where like Dude, nobody scores in soccer. You can be like amazing and you're just not gonna score. There's like n there's n there's so little reward in soccer. It's crazy.

1:10:28 Uh, I had a friend once whose parents sat him down when he was like in seventh grade and they were like, Look The big four? We're not doing it. You guys don't have the raw athleticism to to succeed at the at the higher levels of this. You wanna play varsity, you wanna go to college? It's not gonna happen. May interesting water polo.

1:10:43 Interesting in these these niche sports where you're not gonna compete against the best athletes. So I think there's a strategic part to it too. But of course, whatever my kids like, great, but I'm gonna try to expose them to sports like tennis. Which I think is a great sport for the mind and body. Tennis is is is one that that we're definitely going for. Basketball is another'cause I just know it so well and Uh yeah, I I I I love I love I had such a good experience that I can't I can't say no to that one.

1:11:08 Tennis is ours. It's one of the only sports where the men and women like appear equal in terms of like uh status. Right. And uh you could play it forever. You can play forever. The best athletes don't go into it. Um like hard work. It's not as super athleticism dependent. So like hard work takes you a long way there?

1:11:26 It's a w it's an individual sport or could be a team sport, depending on how you want to do it. There's a huge mental component to it, like controlling your own psyche. And being like both competitive, but like, you know. There's feedback loop every single point that you have to like recover from. Uh, so I think there's a lot of good things that you get out of tennis. Also, martial arts would be the other one that I think is is pretty cool for kids to be in for a period of time.

1:11:47 Yeah, if I could uh wave a magic wand, my kids would be n very interested in tennis. And then I want to do some type of individual fitness sport. So that could be wrestling, martial arts. track and field, cross country, swimming. Something where you have to like it's just you versus a clock and it's just totally objective and you just gotta grit through it and dedicate a lot of time and just put in the hours. Did you play team sports growing up? Any?

1:12:10 Ye like as a kid, yeah, and I was all right at it. Um I was never like terribly I mean, you've seen me like play sports. I'm not like terribly coordinated, but I always had attributes where I could just j I could always jump and run and I was strong. But I was never like good enough where I could like catch a ball and like learn how to like Like the skill part never it was always very hard for me. You know, I always looked like a giraffe. I was always like like a dancing giraffe. I wasn't very coordinated. Alright, that's it. That's the pod.

1:12:37 I feel like I can root Well Be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day song. On the road, less 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. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Louise and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue.

1:13:06 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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