5 Conversations that broke our frames this week

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/5366cae09d96cb5e

Not gonna lie. Haven't heard a word since you said leverage to the tits. I've just been waiting for us to talk about that. It's it was like uh, you know.
Today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck.
And I might try to say leverage.
To the tits. Like You know it's like getting a new haircut, you know, affirmations. Yeah. This is my version. Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs. You know what I mean?
I'm putting my law in it like my days off. Sam, it's just me and you, no guests. This is nice.
It's like a date night for us. The kids are out of the house.
Well, let's debrief. I have done a few things.
Do you want to go like
back and forth of the interesting people that we hung out with. I have got like two or three. How many do you have?
Uh yeah, I got three or four, but I have a theme with mine. I don't know if yours would fit this, but the theme with mine is all
People who are contrarians in some way.
And what I mean by that is not like contrarian, like um you know there's like an annoying kind of contrarian. Not that like like if you call yourself a contrarian
It's like you're not contrarian, right? Correct. Exactly. They wouldn't say this about themselves. I would say it about them, which is what makes it kosher.
The way I'd say it is they're all independent thinkers, meaning
When I hear the stories of what they're doing
I don't even want to ask about the thing. It's like how did you even think of doing that thing?
You know what I mean? It's like how
All right, before you tell me all the details, how did you even get into that situation? Why were you even looking there? Why were you even deciding to do that? Okay, I can I can I can f uh fit within that framework.
Okay, yeah, I'll go first.
So I hosted this dinner in San Francisco and um
invited maybe I don't know fifteen, twenty people to this thing. You did?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know.
And hosting things. So in the city. You drove to the city, you didn't. I drove to the city, yes. This is true true facts. Um
And so we go there and there's a guy there who
Um I'm friends with Cole uh his name's Justin, Justin Caldbeck.
And Justin is a tremendous
investor. He was an investor early on in like
Grub hub, Snapchat, Stitch Fix, like boom, like just like a bunch of
Companies that have done really well.
So let me tell you the story. So I I was talking to him about
Um some of his big win investments.
So I'll tell you a quick one. So there was a Grubhub one. I was like, How'd you get into Grub Hub? He's like, Oh Grubhub was a
He's like, it's a funny story like
They were doing well.
But nobody knew them and I don't think they had raised much money yet.
And I tried to get a hold I cold emailed them, I call cold called them.
called the office, couldn't get a hold of'em, so he's like so I just flew to Chicago
I just hung out in the lobby until I bumped into the guys. And I was like, hey guys, I'm just really a believer in this thing. Sorry to bother you, but I'm I just really believe in this thing.
A classic classic meet cute.
So I was like, how'd the Snapchat one happen?
And he told this great story, he goes.
I met Evan and he's like, I will just never forget meeting Evan. He's like, I walked out of that meeting being like this guy.
He's one of them. He's like one of the people that's gonna build this like legendary company. He's at the time
I think he was still a student at Stanford, student in college, and I go
Was Snapchat taking off? Was it like
A rocket ship?
He goes, No, no, it was like really small. He's like it had maybe like a hundred, hundred fifty thousand users, wasn't growing fast.
And everybody on the outside viewed it as this like
This silly little thing. It was like this toy. It's like, oh, is it just used for it's disappearing photos must be for inappropriate pictures or
It's just a stupid college thing.
And he's like, uh so I was like, So how did you invest? And he tells the story. So he's like, you know, first I met Evan, I heard him out and he
He shared the story that he's like
Snapchat people think it's about photos and when they hear photos, they think about Facebook and Instagram.
It's like permanent public photos.
That are for your memories.
Exactly, but actually we use photos for communication. It's like a
back and forth. And so Justin goes, Hmm, so it's like messaging. He's like, Yeah, it's messaging.
He goes, Okay.
And so he goes home and he does some research. He goes
I think everybody's been comparing this to Instagram and Facebook, and because of that, the metrics don't look as good.
But if you compare this to iMessage.
I wonder what this looks like. Or WhatsApp. So he
He hustles and he gets in touch with somebody at Apple and he's like, Hey
I just have a good question for you. If somebody sends an iMessage
How many
What percentage of them send an I message every day for the next seven days?
And they
Run the query for him. Yeah, like if you use iMessage, you can use it every day. That's just how you use messaging apps.
He asked somebody at WhatsApp. Same question. He asked some and then he gets in touch with somebody from Instagram.
He's like, Hey for Instagram, if you post a photo, what are the odds you post a photo?
You know, the next seven days.
They're like super low.
Right. He's like, Okay, what about even just using the app? Like it's just reasonable, healthy number.
And he goes back to Snapchat, he asks them the number.
And Evan like he's like, I don't know, let me look it up. He looks it up. He's got the iMessage number and he's like, This is communication. And he's like and nobody, you know, r nobody else was really that that eager to invest. And he was like, I gotta go all in on this thing.
And uh sure enough he did.
And you hang hung out with him and he told you that story at dinner?
Yeah.
Did you have any other interesting people at the at your dinner that you want to talk about or no?
Uh yeah, there's a couple guys. So there's one guy, Will, who's coming on the podcast.
Will O'Brien, he's this Irish guy.
And he's coming on the podcast because
He had this uh sentence that caught my attention. He goes, The ocean is the n ocean is the next space.
Ocean is the next space. What he's talking about? He goes, Well, you know how recently all these you know there's a bunch of investment now in space tech. So space, obviously first, but then
After that there have been uh more and more companies that have been getting Varda and others.
That are all about rockets and satellites and getting to getting to space, mining asteroids, mining minerals, whatever it is.
And he goes.
The ocean is the next space. Like the ocean is this other vast
Mostly unexplored.
Mostly untouched by tech.
Space.
And he's building an ocean tech company and he told me about four or five other ocean tech companies.
And it was a finger to the lips. You gotta come on the podcast and tell talk about them there. Don't don't don't waste the set of dinner, okay? That's actually a a really interesting concept because right now space is hot.
Robots.
So hot right now. Having a moment.
Is oceans?
The new It Girl?
I'm looking for it, bro. I'm looking for it. I'm like
What's gonna be hot?
Is it like Is she like the hot girl who just has like glasses on for some reason, she's still the nerd, and then someone's gonna like take her glasses off and be like
Makeover Dodd.
You're the rom com where all you had to do is take her hair out of the ponytail and take off the glasses. Yeah. You're now beautiful. Is that the o is that the ocean right now? Who is that? That's Cali. No.
She shows up at prom.
Imagine them giving their pitch to their LPs or to their investors like
How about dead things I hate about you? Then my friend, let us introduce you introduce you to our new Ocean startup. You get it.
So that was great.'Cause he's just thinking a lot and living in a space that I
It's like, you know, sort of right under your nose, but you never really think about.
That's pretty cool. Um all right, you want me to tell you uh about someone I hung out with?
Yeah, give me one.
All right, so we had this guy on the Money Wise Podcast like a month or something ago, and he's like
In his sixties, his name's Steve Howden, he's a billionaire.
He uh
I had a great time talking to him on the podcast and like on the podcast he was talking about like
You know, making money and and and all that traditional
Career shit, but
By the way. Um, yeah, so he is worth he says it on the podcast, he's worth something like two billion dollars. He made his initial money.
uh doing door to door sales, selling something and I I forget what he sold, but he made like a hundred grand. And with that hundred grand, the savings and loan crisis hit. Do you know what that was in the eighties?
I I don't un completely understand it, but basically a bunch of cheap land became available. He got leverage to the tits and bought all this property and that made three million. The three million he then bought some storage units. That turned into like nine. And then using that nine, he bought a bunch of they say
Oil and gas. I don't know like these Dallas guys like say oil and gas, but basically it means you buy uh lease rights, meaning you like not gonna lie.
Haven't heard a word since you said leverage to the tents. I've just been waiting for us to talk about that. Quick Up Spon ad break. Discuss that. I kinda liked it. Well done. I'm trying it on just it's it was like uh you know
Today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck.
And I might try to say leverage.
To the tits. You know it's like getting a new haircut. Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs. You know what I mean? So makes a bunch of money, oil and glass and land. Got it.
Didn't just talk to him on the podcast, then you went and you did an absolutely normal human thing to do after the podcast. You invited yourself to his family reunion or something. Well, a after the pod, I was like
Could I come over?
Like, can I come and just like hang out with you? Uh and he was like, Yes, absolutely you can. And so basically he lives in
Uh Dallas. He has this
Huge mansion.
Uh on I know that because I look the way I look. A lot of people think that I know about like skiing.
Um but I don't. But he was like I have a ski in, ski out.
House, which I didn't even know what that meant. I've never skied in my life.
And I had to like figure all this out. But we went to Utah at his huge mansion. It was a ski in, ski out thing, which if you do ski, that's like a fancy thing or whatever. And I learned a few things. The first thing that I learned, I had no idea.
But
His three daughters are famous.
So his w or sorry, his wife and two daughters are famous. So his wife is uh Jen Houghton. She's got a Instagram called Turtle Creek Lane. I think she has one point five million subscribers and basically your followers, and basically what she does is she decorates their home in like the most crazy over the top way. Like so, for example, for Christmas, like it looks like a
Christmas doll house, but that's like her real house. And so she got famous doing um doing that via Instagram.
And then brought in the other two daughters to do, you know, their stick, which
I actually don't know what their stick is, but I know that a million people follow'em because when I was around them I was like they're just living and people just like love watching'em.
Were they just like snapping content constantly or what? No, that's funny. They weren't. I mean they did a bit, but it wasn't any different than anyone else who has like a thousand followers. You know, or like
Uh it was not obnoxious. And uh they actually had mentioned that they worked with you on a company you invested in and they were like his company that he invested in.
They did a great job of hooking us up. So you they they knew you. Uh yeah, yeah. W one of them uh yeah, for sure. But I I didn't know uh maybe from their I think they do a good job in their person the daughter's like personal content. It doesn't look like
I'm the daughter of a billionaire type of thing, right? It's like super relatable. It's fun. It's you know, it's it's easy to follow, easy to like. So I didn't know that they were like these famous people. The second thing I didn't really know.
I don't know they were Mormon, but they weren't just Mormon. He was like
King Mormon. Like he's on the board of BYU. And so I
I think I learned this the first morning when Sarah and I get up at seven AM to go hang out and everyone we're sitting around the kitchen and we're just kinda like patiently waiting for them to get the coffee ready.
And You're just vaping rudely in the kitchen. I'm just like sitting in this kitchen and we're like
Do you guys do coffee? What's up with that? They had to tell me that they don't drink coffee and they were like, but we went and bought coffee beans to accommodate you and we have this coffee machine. We even went and bought a coffee machine. We don't know how to use it, but it's like over here. And like they had to like
And like I don't even know if they bought the right beans. Like they literally had never gone through this experience, which is like imagine like not knowing like do you get the beans, do you get the grounds, you know, like how does the what device do you need to ground the beans? Like is this the right machine or is this like a a uh there's five different types of machines they didn't know and they went to to accommodate us, which was hilarious. Um
But what I learned with the with the Instagram stuff is, dude, Middle America moms who's they're following
So much more profitable profitable than like comedy like doing comedy bits for like millennials or uh Gen Z. You know what I mean? They made they kill it. And they would like post like these gummies that they got or this candy or this
other widget that someone had sent them and they were like showing me how many of the products that they sell.
And it was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
Like it was like why on the people listening to this podcast, they're like, I want to do things for the creator economy.
No.
Just do it for Lisa in Oklahoma. The mother economy. That's who you want to sell to the Oh my God. It was it was crazy.
They were like super Mormon and I um I'm I'm not into religion. I don't like r religion in particular, uh particularly, but I learned a lot. And the one thing that I learned was they like explicitly stated their values. So like you know when you're with your family and you'll make jokes with your sister like, Yeah, you know
Uh
Uh like you'll you'll you'll bring her down. You'll be like
Hey, you said you're on a diet, why are you eating that? Or like you just like you just like mess with her like just teasing.
There was not one
Bring them down joke. And I was like
And I asked him about that. I'm like you guys haven't made fun of each other once.
And they were like, Well, like, you know, we're taught in this religion that you gotta treat like, you know, you gotta be Christ like and like he doesn't make fun of people, so we don't make fun of people. And they had like all these like I would ask him a variety of different questions. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?
And they all had like very explicit answers. It wasn't ever like
Uh just feels good or I don't know, we just kinda do. It was all like well mapped out. And I thought that was really cool to be like
super intentional about living. When I asked them, I was like, Why don't you guys drink coffee? And they're like, Well, we're taught not to like
you know, try not to be addicted to things or or try not to like overly rely on stuff. And I was like, all right, well, that's a good reason. And so it was crazy to learn all all all that stuff. But here's the let me tell you this last thing that I learned from this family.
It was like a fifteen thousand square foot house.
And I learned that you you know, uh you've heard me talk on this pod, and and I think you feel the same way, about like owning stuff in a big house. It's kind of like
It's like oh that's a lot of work. I don't wanna do that.
Dude, it's such a life hack for like being around your family. Like it's the greatest thing ever. And like I've noticed this amongst this family, but also a bunch of other really wealthy families that if you can like
acquire a home that's big enough for your grandkids
And everyone's super comfortable to stay there. They will want to stay there more. And thus you will spend more time with your family. And like they didn't ha we didn't have a private chef. We didn't do anything. The whole almost the entire weekend was us just sitting around a kitchen table and we like
cooked our own meals and just hung out. And it was like
The way to live.
Uh, awkward being at their like family reunion or w what was dude, they were so they were like
Come on in. And like they might even more awkward. They're so nice also.
They were so nice. I I just think these guys are nice all the time. And I asked them, I was like, Why are you so nice? And I was like, Why do you guys have so much fun? Like they had like activities like we went like they're like, Let's go in the pole coal plunge and then get in the hot tub and then we're gonna go do like they had like activities planned that they all did as a family. I was like, What are you guys doing?
And they were like, We just want fun to be the center of everything we do. And it was just like amazing. This is like the opposite of like, you know, when you're a bad kid in school and they take you to like jail and they want to like sho shock value, like show you.
What your life could look like if you just keep going down this path.
Yeah, I just got like hugged really hard.
This is like the opposite. You're like, hey.
Wanna see what a really healthy family dynamic looks like? Take you there for a week in immersion. It was the healthiest family dynamic. I have never seen anything like this. And then
They have a subreddit.
There's a subreddit dedicated to making fun of them.
And it's have you ever seen this? So first of all, do you know why there's so many Mormon influencers
Basically, Mormons are explicitly told you should journal. You know, uh journaling's a good way to reflect on life and it slows you down. That led to Mormon mommy bloggers, which they're like inherently kind of interesting because they're uh really into like uh I think Mormons are told they need to prepare for the end of the world.
Fucking awesome content, right? Like talking about like your your packing system for like all your nuts and stuff.
Like that's really good content. Parlay that into
Instagram.
And that is one of the reasons why there are so many freaking Mormon influencers and I didn't know that.
But um
Uh they have and so because of that, they have a whole subreddit. It's called like Turtle Creek.
Lane snark or something like that.
And every time that they would post something, people make fun of them.
for the silliest stuff. Like one time we are like in the house and like
One of the kids was eating a piece of cheese and like
For some reason.
I
Two year old shouldn't have cheese. I don't know why, but that was a post that someone made fun of them. Or there was one time where Sarah, my wife, made it in the background of one of the photos and they're like, Who's this person? As if she was like a new cast member. And they like were Googling her and like listing out her name. It was crazy. And I asked them, I was like, Does this stuff bother you?
And they just it totally like like they were like no like why like what they care about us is their business. It doesn't bother us at all. And so this family had the most positive outlook on life and it
It did wear off on me, to be honest. If uh like
You know, I'm not about to go and like
Become a Mormon or anything, but I want to hang out with them a whole lot more. Right.
This is wild. By the way, didn't he get in like a helicopter accident? Like the
Next week or something? The week after. Yeah. He uh he his he on the podcast on MoneyWise he talked about how much he loves flying helicopters. Uh I don't know all the details, but like three days afterwards
They were flying a helicopter. I think he was He's flying it himself?
He w in this particular c he does, but in this particular case he was the passenger
And they got in a wreck. And it was not good. And
He survived. He's gonna be fine, but it was a it was a bad it was a bad wreck. Uh and like if you go to their Instagram you'll see like
all ten of their family members like surrounding him at the hospital. And so yeah, he's gonna have a um
A lot of issues to deal with.
But like this was like the kindest, sweetest family I've ever been out been around. Do you know Raleigh Williams?
Mm-hmm. He came too.
And uh it was like me and Raleigh Williams and then the Houghton family. And Raleigh Williams, uh his kid was amazing. She's ten years old and I was she was the most articulate little girl I've ever talked to. I was like how
How did you learn how to talk this good? And she was like I you know for the the church
They teach us how to do like a homily. That's what we call it in the Catholic church. I don't know what the Mormons call it. We talk in front of like five hundred people at church.
And she's like in in doing that, I learned that I need to like
And like
told me like all like the principles to like speaking confidently. And I was like, you're the greatest person. I was like, I'm navying my next daughter Navy because of because of you. Uh but this freaking family was awesome. It was so it felt honestly like I was in a reality TV show.
But
There's no drama. There was zero drama. It was like the happiest thing I've ever seen. And the husbands, by the way, are the managers of uh so the husbands are the managers of the two daughters. They were like one guy was like, Yeah, I used to work at Amazon.
Uh I helped create
I think Alexa or something like that. But then when I saw the potential for like this influencer stuff, I quit right away. And now we make and they tell me how much money and it was just an astronomical amount of money.
Uh it was crazy. So that was my weekend.
With
uh a billionaire Mormon family and it was awesome.

Alright, where can we go from here? Uh this might feel like a letdown after that. Um, let's see.
All right. I'm just gonna give you three numbers to pick from. I have three people on this list. Give me w no you want number one, number two, or number three.
Number
One.
Or maybe I could rapid fire these and then you could tell me which one you want to talk about. Okay.
Uh hung out with my friend James Courier. He's uh we did a podcast together. It's gonna come out soon. He has this one bit that I just really liked. So he's all about his fund is called NFX as a network effects.
He's all about network effects. Like
Nobody on earth knows more about network effects than this guy. And he has this great blog post and this thing that we talked about, which is called like your life on network effects. I hadn't really thought of it this way, but he the contrary thing he said was he was talking about uh leaving
San Francisco's we had we had a bunch of friends who we used to hang out with that have moved out of San Francisco during COVID because they were like, Oh, everything's online now. So we'll just leave and then it'll be like good for taxes.
And he goes, He's like look, everybody, you know, personal choices, do whatever's like but if you wanted to be here and you left
Because of taxes and because you thought it's the same s it's same same on Zoom.
He's like
That's idiotic. You know, you could he's like you're just gonna save thirteen percent on your taxes and you're gonna
Lose
thirteen X you're gonna make thirteen X less money uh on that same dis on that same money saving decision.
Moving for taxes.
When someone tells me they do that
I think they're stupid.
I think that's a s really that's a foolish thing to do. Do you agree or disagree? There's a lot of people that do that.
I think it's foolish. Sorry. They're not stupid. I think that decision's foolish. Or rather, I don't agree with it. That decision and actually several other decisions they make are probably all the stupid. But don't you agree? Like the the point of of like succeeding is to do what you want, not to have to live to Port uh move to Puerto Rico. If you want to live to Port in Puerto Rico, then great, do it.
Exactly. If taxes is the number one reason, I think that that is uh your your your what what's that phrase? You can't see the forest and the trees or some something like that.
I mean I I kind of agree as why I'm still here, but um
But yeah. So I thought that was interesting and he when he talks about your life on network effects, he's his idea is basically
Everything if you could take all your decisions you make and instead of thinking of them as things you did or decisions you made or um
Just like events in your life.
If you looked at it as
You either joined a network or you left a network. You either added into a network or you you subtract it out of a network. So for example
Where you choose to go to college. It's not just a college, it's not just an education. You're picking a network to join. You I joined the Duke Alumni Network.
And that that alumni network is gonna have certain benefits down the road. It's also gonna lead me to maybe certain careers that that network tends to go towards, which is like Wall Street finance, things like that.
Um
You know, where where you live, obviously is a huge one. So like what city you live, if you join ho the Hollywood network, you're gonna be joining a certain lifestyle, certain career opportunities, et cetera. And when you leave, you are opting out of that network or you're getting yourself away from the white hot center of the network.
Even just skills you pick. Like let's say you want to learn
Um you learn marketing.
Well, you're actually joining a network of other people who know marketing and that's who you're gonna hang out with. Those are the opportunities you're gonna get.
And that's why where that's the
the sort of the next decisions are gonna be heavily heavily influenced by
The um
the network decisions that you're making, the initial network decisions that you're making.
And why what like
Did that make you reflect on a decision that you've made or thinking that you did the right thing or the wrong thing, or how will you implement this?
'Cause that like makes me
I don't regret.
I don't regret.
Mostly because of Famp or
Only because of family. But I do wish I was a Which is its own network, right? You like opted into your own per like, you know, your own par family, you know, network or whatever. You know, you opted into
You opted to like
D be more dense there.
And have more connectivity there.
Which is gonna be great for your family raising and all that.
But you opted out of the tech network.
Of San Francisco, let's say.
Which by the way, if I could live anywhere, like if family weren't a thing
It would one it would either be an S F or uh a suburb, like uh twenty minutes away.
Right.
I would live there in a heartbeat. And did what w what did it make you feel like?
Well, he kinda points out he's like, you know, there's some things that you don't choose, like where you're born.
Right, things like that.
But then there's after that, it's a lot of what you start to choose um to do.
And even the little things like you know
Language is a network. So
You know, if you're in China right now.
Like choosing to join the English network?
Is actually like a a really powerful decision you can make that's gonna like
completely change the trajectory of your of your life, being able to do that.
Uh if you start to look at things, English is not just a language, it's a network. It's a network of people who all can communicate with each other.
Using certain syllables and words and vowels and phrases, right?
Um
money as a network, right? So joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision.
Because you picked
Hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is gonna be valuable.
network. Right. So it just made me more aware of that. It made me, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco? Partly because James was like, Yeah, one of the big mistakes I made earlier in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself.
I kinda just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of the network. He's like, it was great for creativity.
'Cause I was just in my bunker, just doing my thing.
But it was terrible because he's like you know I
Turn down that lunch meeting with uh Travis when he was starting Uber.
And I uh you know, I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me,'cause I just thought like I'm gonna I'm gonna be off in my own land, creating my own little castle over here.
And he's like again.
Fun for creativity and for learning.
But
f a little bit foolish to the how extreme I was with that. Like uh and so you know for me for example, I'm I moved 45 minutes out of San Francisco.
That reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings that I could have in the network in in the network of people that I like to be around. Interesting, ambitious people. Would you move closer then?
Well, I don't I I don't think I'll move closer'cause like
the family networks out here and it's just better, like the school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here.
But
I'm like, yeah, I could definitely like drive to S F twice a month and have like, you know, host a dinner.
Do a couple of live podcasts with people there.
That'll be great.
And like that's not that much of an effort, but just to stay just to keep one almost like a in the diagram, right? One line connected to the white hot center of the network. Yeah. And I mean you live near Bart, right?
I do, but Bart
You're opting out of that one. So uh basically I don't speak at conferences unless
My wife wants to come with me.
If Neville wants to join and do it with me.
And if Nick Gray will attend.
Those those three things have to happen. You know, I need my arbitrage. All three or one of the three? All three.
All three have to happen. All three have to happen. That's your like I only eat green skittles. That's your writer. That's my writer. The next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's gonna tell you cool shit to do.
And also I just like doing stuff with my friends. Uh and so I went and spoke at this thing called the newsletter conference, which
was pretty wild because like fifteen of my m ex employees were speakers and are all like
Many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing uh newsletter stuff. And that like made me feel proud. But I met James Alticher. You know who James Alticher is?
Yeah, he's been on the podcast. He's uh w what is his
Like he's an author.
What was his like title in life?
I think James might be the craziest person that I've met in the last six months.
So if you Google James Alticher, you're gonna see that he's like the thing that sticks out is his hair.
He's got this like crazy haircut.
And in real life
He sort of looks like a rock star. Like he kinda like like he's not trying, but he looks so different that he looks super cool and awesome. And so James is the type of guy
Who
Well he's got the story. I don't know his full background, but he's like
Created a startup, made a bunch of money.
Blew it all on stocks.
Or bad investments.
Did another startup, made a bunch of money, lost it all. And now I think he's on like mountain three. And he's got he has a thing called Choose Yourself Financial. It started out just as a newsletter where he would just write about his interesting opinions and things like that.
He sold a portion or all of it to Agora. Agora is a large uh newsletter business that makes something like one or two billion dollars a year in revenue. I don't like their company. I think that um
They they they they have like fifteen or twenty
It's basically it started in the
eighties as one newsletter. Now they have like twenty and they acquire other people's newsletters. And I think they do a lot of nefarious stuff. So I'm I'm not trying to promote the those guys. But now they're not all bad. And he sold to them and now he's their highest or one of their highest earning newsletters. And his newsletter, Choose Yourself Financial
Did a hundred and thirty million in revenue last year.
And
It's like crazy. The the numbers are crazy. Very profitable. And he said all this on stage. Everything I'm saying is public. Um
And so I hung out with him and his uh his wife and we had a great time. And he said one thing to me
He said it like in passing.
And I was like, the record skipped?
He was like, Yeah, you know, like I love DoorDash because you know, like
I don't leave my house for like three or six weeks at a time and if I need a pen, they just bring me a pen. If I and I was like
Uh
What?
Did you just say that you don't leave your house for like three to six weeks at a time? And he told me he's like
Yeah, like sometimes I just get so into something that I literally will not step foot outside.
For like four weeks at a time.
And so he but he but he said like five other things like that.
Where
He just was so fascinating.
And it was proof that you know how like
I I think it was in the Peter Thiel.
What's his book called?
Zero to one.
He said he there's like a graph where it's like a bar chart or something like that, where it's like extreme success.
means that you're likely gonna have extreme personality traits. And those extreme personality traits like
come off as weird or undesirable in many settings. You know, you could be like Elon, which means you're gonna be kind of mean sometimes. You could be like
Albert Einstein, which means you're like forgetful all the time and like wear two different socks.
Or whatever, like he like has these examples.
James is that guy.
He very much has the like brilliant
but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe to him.
And it was just wild seeing him
Just have normal conversations because his opinion and the way he looked at things was
one hundred percent fresh and different from how I looked at the most like normal things. For example
When he said he didn't leave his house, I was like,
That's horrible. He's like
He was shocked that I was criticizing him. And which is pretty funny because uh, you know, what he should live his life and be happy. And that made him happy. And it was
It was like or in the green room.
Cute.
was playing chess the whole time with Steph Smith, who was also there. I was like, You guys know each other? And then and they're like, Well, we've never actually met, but we played chess like constantly together online. And he w meets a lot of his friends playing chess online.
And there was just so many
Little
tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me.
Um and by the way, if you saw if you know Agora
You know, they're famous for these like long form sales pages.
And like incredibly advertising. Do you remember in like two thousand twenty or two thousand nineteen, James's face was everywhere? Yeah.
He was like, I hate that. I hated it. I hated it. I hate our landing pages. I hate how long they are. I hate how they look too aggressive. And he was like, I try to write differently and like make my own landing pages.
None of'em could ever convert nearly as good as like the crazy shit that they would write.
So did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or uh maybe the Yes, and also I uh I think the answer is
Is and is still.
And it's still okay, gotcha. Um
All right, I like that one, James. Uh I have another one that's less
Weird, but more um side questy. So Sheel
Sheel Monat, who came on the podcast.
Uh recently you can see his episode. The number's crushed.
Yeah, he did he did he did really well. We um so he was at the dinner too.
And
She'll tell these stories and you're just kinda like
If you just listen to the stories, you'd be like, Wow, this guy's fascinating.
You would never know his day job.
Because Sheel is an epic sidequester. So his day job.
Is he's a V C.
He invests in fintech companies.
That's his job.
And there's a lot of that.
The weird thing is that
If you listen to him, he's he's like, Oh yeah, I um
I'm taking like like courses or like whatever. I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now. So I can access all these travel discounts. And he's been doing that. He's like, Yeah, I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position uh for like being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks. He's like
Basically like your friend who's like really good with credit card points.
But for everything, including credit card points, by the way. I think on the podcast it gave us like a pretty good credit card t uh point tip.
But he just has like all these epic side quests he's gone down.
Um over and over again. He's like, Yeah, I got married in the metaverse. And like Taco Bell sponsored it. Oh, and hey, guess what else I did? You know, I started this auction company.
To go and buy and sell
Like
D the domain endings like dot app and dot photography. Like that was his business. It's like these aren't even normal, even his businesses.
aren't normal businesses. They're just weird side quests that made money.
I think his side is this all his? Is that it?
Yeah, this one was another one. He's like Oh yeah, like
Um
So th the story he told on the thing was he was like, I was interested in this like food delivery space. It got really hot, sprig, et cetera. I was ordering from all of them.
But I just thought there's no way this thing's making money. So then as a side quest, I signed up and became a driver for a month and I drove around and it was a it was amazing. I met all these people and I learned the model and I realized that this thing's never gonna make money. And he's he was right. Sperg went out of business and so did all the others that were doing it.
He's like, but we could do this other thing, thistle, and I got my friend to do it. And now thistle is like I forgot what he s what did he say on the podcast? It's like a absurd number. I think it's like a hundred million plus. And I was like, wow.
This guy is just always on side quests. So that for example he was talking about. He's like um
He's like
Oh yeah, uh Mr. Beast posted this video about like I I'm on this abandoned uh island or whatever, like this this abandoned island, I'm the only one here and there's nothing here, blah, blah, blah.
And then she was like
Hold on.
I've been to that island. But but without the video. Like and he's like, No, wait, that's not abandoned. There's like a
There's a bar like three minutes away from where he is, and there's this motel. So he tweeted about this, and then Jimmy calls him and is like, hey man, like what are you talking about? Like that is an abandoned island. He's like, No, it's not. It's three minutes away from a bar. Like he's like, No, technically it's abandoned if you look at XYZ. And
I was like this guy just constantly gets himself into situations Wait, Jimmy called him because Jimmy like felt his integrity was under attack?
Yeah, and he was like, Did you give Jimmy my number? I was like, No, I didn't even I didn't even know this happened
And w and Shield didn't back down. He was like, No, it's not a it's not an abandoned island.
Or when they're like he's like, where you were? He's like, look at it, three minutes away. There's a place. There's a pub. It's like it's not abandoned. And I think technically, maybe there was something where it's like the the like the border or like I don't know. I don't know what this I didn't get into the details. I obviously I don't give a shit. Uh but I just thought it was amazing that
There's people that just do things for their own amusement. And I'll bring this home with a little tick tock I saw. And it was a tick tock was
There's like
This TikTok had gone viral and I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people
Are similarly
really attracted to people who just do do shit for their own amusement and really for no other reason. So the v the TikTok that went viral was like
I forgot the name of the of the dance, but it was basically like
Shout out to my boy Willie.
For um
Spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance. And I guess there's like some dance and there's like this he's like this awkward looking white guy. And there's like two black friends trying to show him how to do this dance. And it's just like
Everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he's just practicing this dance just to like see if he can learn it in a weekend.
And like he starts off really bad and by the end he's actually like pretty good at the end of the weekend. And then they cut to the to the wedding and he's doing the same dance just for fun on the on his own on the side of the dance floor. Like not part of a performance. Just like
Just doing his thing over there.
And um I l I respect that. I think I respect that
More than I respect like
someone's achievements in life. Uh I kinda respect people that
That value their own amusement.
As the highest order bit.
And I think Shield is an example of that. Like the shit he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seek. He's just amused by it and therefore like follows it. And he ends up in these situations that at the end become really good stories, but I don't think that's why he's doing it.
I think you you know, we've done close to seven hundred of these episodes.
She would be in my top ten of people who I admire most.
Um I think that Shield
Did you like people
I don't even know if we mentioned this this one. Do you know that Shields in a Justin Bieber music video?
Of course he is. Why wouldn't he be in just music just beaver music? How did that happen? Like I was watching
From the
the outside. So I think the way it happened was during Covid
She'll created
an online version of Bachelor, like the Bachelor. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched this. It was great. And wait, what were what was it exactly? It was was this during Covet. I think it was called the Zoom Bachelor or something like that. Yeah. She'll the Bachelor
And there's a bunch of women that would pop up and then he would, like, eliminate he'd give out roses and eliminate them and then he'd fix someone in the end, they went on a date or something. And somehow
I could be confusing all the stories, but somehow this
It it w like it was a hit. It was awesome.
And then
He then there's a video of him uh where he's turned around like this and it looks like he's making out with someone like this.
In the video? Yeah.
P I think he is I'm watching this all from outside. I think he posted that video and then he turns around and he smiles and he looks so happy and that clip
made it into a Justin Bieber music video. And if you go and watch the music video
His clip, Shield's clip, is the best clip.
Oh I have it. I have it.
It's there.
What what w what was it called like Love Yourself? Was it Love Yourself and he's like it looks like he's making out with someone, but play that clip and like watch that. Oh my god, this is so funny.
It turns around he's got a huge mustache for some reason. And he's just cheesing.
Do you know another crazy thing about him, by the way? I you know the podcast startup on Gimlet Media?
I think he created that.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh uh yeah, I think he did. Or he he had his hand today. Maybe we'll say that. Yeah.
Uh he just has had he's had so many weird things happen to him.
Let me let me tell you another one. Another person who I think is is doing their own thing. So
My buddy Furcon, who you know, he's also been on the podcast. Uh so Furcon and I try to we were co-founders, we tried to start a bunch of companies together for like you know six or seven years. I know Furcon super well.
One of the things about Furcon is that he is um
He's just a grinder. And it doesn't matter how like
successful or wealthy he's gotten. I mean his last company, Apple's like a hundred billion dollar company. And it it's like absurd. And um he was why is it taking off so much, by the way? Like AppLevin for years
It was sort of a joke because when you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards.
Uh where they were trying to recruit engineers and the name App Lovin' came out right a or
We still associated it with Mick Levin.
And it was like is this is this a s is this a real company?
You know what I mean? And now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Yeah, exactly. So he um
He's
So so
Ferkon has been early into into a bunch of like tech things, right? He's he's basically like a hacker's hacker, so he was really into
To crypto before crypto was cool. Like I remember literally being at the office and he was
Like not pay attention'cause he was buying into the Ethereum ICO uh at like, you know, seventeen cents or something like that. And I was like Ethereum, like literally like Dorkyest fucking name, never gonna work. Uh so I didn't buy'cause
Yeah, boy, he's a genius. And that's why I'm a podcaster now. And he's a billion. And so Is Furkan a billionaire now, or I don't know. I don't know if he is or is it, but something he started a hundred billion dollar company. I don't know. He's he's not like
He's not like three zip codes away. Maybe he's two. I don't know. Well he's he's getting close.
So he got into cryp early on and then when web three happened, remember when web three happened and everybody was like
Like piling into Wi Web Three.
And Ferkon was building a company in that space, literally these company's called Third Web. And he was just really into the actual like technology behind it. He's like, Oh, I think I can make
These tools easier to use for developers and blah blah blah blah.
Dude, one time he like did a talk on remember the raspberry?
Raspberry Pi, yeah. Yeah. And like he he like one time spent like forty five minutes explaining to me all about it, and he knew everything about it.
Yeah. Yeah. He knows everything about everything. So he's um
The second thing he got really into was VR. So he bought me an Oculus.
Just'cause he was like, I don't wanna tell you about this and like
Hope that you go try it out.
Here, here's the new Oculus headset. Go home and put this on.
It's like okay. Uh that that's that's a that's the type of friend you need. And so I go home and I I put it on, I'm blown away, and I'm like, wow, this thing's getting really good.
And then I think he bought me like another one when it got better and then I started buying'em and I'm like, uh paying attention to VR but you know
I'm like every other lemming out there. It's like
I pay attention when shit gets hot.
And Furcon, the reason why Furcon is so great is because he doesn't pay attention when things get hot. He's like in the hardcore nerd bucket where he's like, I pay attention because it's interesting to me. I don't care if it's popular or not. I don't care if it's hot or not. I don't care if it's if it's here if it's here or not. I want to be on this train.
The whole time.
And so
He was telling
Um about his so he's got this lab called Fink.
And he was telling me first first about Third Web, how it was growing and how it had real revenues now. I was like, Oh wow, that's great.
Then he's telling me about VR.
And
Like Sam, like how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now? Like everybody who
W is interest in tech is interest in AI. Where's your Oculus sitting right now?
Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room? I think it's back there. It's yes gone.
Same.
My uh I mean like I did I did what everyone did. They got it.
This is awesome.
This is gonna change the world. It's gonna change everything. Uh I don't know where the charger is. It's in my drawer somewhere. Yeah.
And um he didn't do that. He's like he would tell me like we would hang out and he's like I'm working in VR today once a week. I go co work
In VR. I'm like what?
And um
So guess what?
His interest in VR
There's not it's not popular right now. In fact, um they went to a VR conference
And this VR conference was like, you know, crickets, basically, and he sends uh Is VR the new ocean?
It's the old ocean, that's the problem.
And so our buddy Hubert, who works with him, goes there and he wears a t shirt all black that just says, I invest in VR.
Huge on the front.
He's like, dude, it was like being the only girl.
At like a like a prom or something like that. Th there was like everybody was interested in him because he's in he's like the only guy left investing in VR.
And he's like, dude, it's actually kind of working. He goes, you know, if you look at the top fifteen apps, like the top fifteen apps in all of the the Oculus store.
These three guys over here own three of the top fifteen.
He's like they're printing money right now. Like this thing is amazing. Um Yeah, it's not like
It's not
The hot thing right now, but like
I don't know, if you can make ten million dollars as like a small team
building these apps and you're the front line of this and you're the only people who are like specializing this technology. Like
Good things are gonna happen.
So it just kinda reminded me of like
You know, all the money is made either in being
sort of right on time, but timing is super hard.
And so the same way that Warren Buffett was like, Don't try to time the market, focus on your time in market.
Furcon is doing the like
uh the tech the engineering version of time in market.
We're
Once he's interested in something and he's
Believes in it.
He doesn't sort of he doesn't let his interest go in and out based off of like, you know, popular sentiment or V Cs or or exits or anything like that. It's just based on is the tech getting better or not. And I think that's just such a s strong thing that's gonna, you know.
Help them be super, super successful.
to like all the young people listening who are like looking for a thing to do. I feel like that story is maybe
A life altering
Th that this is a very good premise. And I'm I'm on board with that with this premise. I do think
VR like
It's actually and it's not
This isn't a secret.
Mark Zuckerberg, who
Has a really good ratio of getting things right.
has like said like this is the thing. And also, do you know who also loves VR? Sheel.
She'll post videos of his or not.
It's not VR, but the the metal or what's it called?
The Ray Bands. Ray Bands, yeah.
He loves those ray bands and i it's very clear how there's like you know, that's all in the same ballpark of of VR and how this can all work.
That was what I was gonna bring up next. So I love those two. I have'em. I bought some for my sister just like for her birthday recently.
And um
I think that that it's a great product.
It's an actually like uh do you have'em, by the way? No, I'll go buy them right now. What do they do?
Like what's the point? Well the first the very first easy thing is they're basically AirPods.
So people don't really realize this.
A pair of AirPods that you're probably not gonna lose.
So the audio from the like
The glasses the the
The part that goes behind your ear.
It's not in your ear, but you can hear
Like music, podcasts, whatever, super easily.
Um so the audio is the the
AirPod type of feature is great.
And then the camera, right? Like hands for your camera. If you have a kid, like for kids, this thing is incredible because I wear them to like my daughter's like soccer games or whatever.
And
So like you know, the moment passes so quickly with kids. And if you're fumbling, get your out of your pocket, unlock face ID, nope, nope type in my password, get the camera apple, but it's it's over by then, right?
Um, and you're now looking through your phone at life.
versus your glasses, that's the way where you're already looking. It's on your head. It's on a swivel. All you do literally if something's going on or something's interesting, you just tap the thing and it starts recording.
Um, and the video looks great, by the way. It's it's really, really good. So for if you're traveling, if you're out and about, if you've got kids, if you're at a sports thing, if you're at a concert. This thing is amazing. And so awesome. To me, these are the these are the future I think
Meta knows this. They're like investing in it very heavily.
I think it's interesting'cause it's kind of uncontested right now. Like maybe Apple will get in the game, maybe.
If they still have like the the juice to do it.
Snapchat seems to have fallen out.
Um
The
famous like I forgot what the thing was called, Magic Leap. Those guys died or are dying.
And so the humane pin died, right? Like all that stuff is is kinda dead and I think
Facebook has this sort of uncontested right now.
And um
The thing I was gonna say though is I remember when I was in San Francisco
This company called Leapmotion got bought. Do you remember Leapmotion?
Yes.
Uh did they did it become a video game or like uh part of a video game? They got bought by Facebook and what they were doing was they were they were like it was like this thing you wore on your wrist and then you could just move your hands and do like hand gestures to control a computer, essentially.
They never really found product market fit,'cause guess what? A lot of not a lot of people want to sit in front of their desktop and like hand gesture like the minority report. Like
replacing the mouse and keyboard wasn't like super sick, I guess. Yeah, but it's pretty sweet if you have some physical disability, which I mean, uh there's a lot of like amazing applications, I would imagine.
Um, maybe, but you still gotta use your hand, your arm, right? So it's like, you know, same thing as like I guess a mouse really. But the
The
The team that was working on it was like cutting edge.
at this kind of like gesture control.
And guess what? Like being the best team in the world at gesture control, or another example of this was
They got bought for I think a hundred million plus. Another company that got bought for a hundred million plus.
uh that never hit product market fit was the company that was working on um face masks. So before remember when Snapjack came out with those face filters, they were super hot, like the dog face filter. The emoji?
No, it was um
It was called Masquerade was the name of the company.
It's a masquerade. I think there was like a European company. It was just a small company.
And again, got bought for like a hundred million dollars plus. And then Facebook bought another company that was doing a very similar thing, or maybe I'm mixing up who who bought Masquerade.
Um
But I guess my point is being at the leading edge
Of just the tech, you get two shots to win.
If you make the breakthrough app
that actually does get product market fit.
Then you get to win in the billions.
If you're just the h most hardcore tech team at building
Like good functionality and like like
Working on these new platforms.
Your team is your team of ten really strong engineers. If you can actually build a strong team.
your floor becomes like a fifty to a hundred million dollar company.
I don't think most people realize this. I think most people think starting a company is really risky. Yes.
But there are less risky versions of this. And right now
If you were working on the meta Ray Bands platform.
Which like today.
There's no there's no app store for it. There's nothing. But guess what? There's gonna be, right? Like that form factor is for sure going to exist.
And there's for sure gonna be apps that are built on it.
Um, and so if I was a pretty hardcore tech team or if I worked at one of these big companies, like let's say I was at
Facebook or I was at Snap Snap Spectacles and I was on that team.
The smartest thing you could do is spin out with your five smartest friends.
And be like, Hey guys, the floor of this company is a fifty to hundred million dollar company and the ceiling is like a billion dollar company.
Or two billion or whatever it is.
And all we're gonna do is we're just gonna live at the cutting edge of this and we just have to survive five years. We have we need time in market.
Like we just have to survive five to five years in order to like be there and we're gonna just
Work out all the kinks about
the spatial, about getting gesture control correct, about
All these little tech problems that you need to do to make things great, because either you're gonna do it and crack the app or they were gonna buy you because
You've solved a bunch of gnarly problems.
There was um I'm reading this book called Digital Gold. It's about the have your do y you know that it's a that book it's about uh Bitcoin and the founding and like the early community and things like that. I don't think I've read that one.
It's great. There's not actually that many books written about like the early characters, which is why I wanted to read it because we had Nick Bilton on and we did uh
American Kingpin about Silk Road, I was like, this is these stories are are are really fun.
And uh now like I know of a lot of the early characters of Bitcoin and like them talking about going to
their first conference. And now the first conference there was like fifty people there and it was like a shitty restaurant and and just like all these like stories
Of like, yeah, like this checks all the boxes of like early like crowd just nerds who are regarded as freaks and no one takes them seriously. And then
one like legitimate financier is like, okay, there's something here, and then another one, and then another one, and then like
There's a controversy, but they overcome it and then like it just like it fits all the stereotypes of of these types of stories. And what you're describing is like that same thing. It's like a group of weirdos. Uh you know, what did we say about uh
I had some guy pitch me a company that I thought was really stupid and now it's huge. It was like uh
Uh this product is dumb.
Oh my God, people are using this.
They're dumb.
Oh my God, everyone's using this. I'm dumb. You know what I mean? And like it's like that's like how you go through that's like the process of some of these things.
And uh like when you're talking about these metaglasses, you're talking about VR, you're talking about oceans, I'm like
Oh my God. There's like a story here, a story there. Like it's the same pattern over and over again. And it's a really fun pattern.
Speaking of crypto, I have three crypto things for you real quick. Number one.
James on the podcast tells a story about
Uh,'cause he wrote this blog post a long time ago. He tells he tells a story about how
Um
His friend thought he was Satoshi, and the reason why is because
How flattering.
I know, by the way.
What's up with my friends? You think I'm Satoshi? No. I could never what an honor though.
Um
But the thing that he was saying was uh he wrote this blog post that I it's on his blog still. It's called One Currency to Rule Them All. And it was about one world currency about creating a digital world currency. And he tells a story on the podcast.
About why he
Why he was interested in that, how he's interested, and what what happened. So he was like
Him
Um, I forgot who it was. It was it was him. It was Philip Rosdale who started Second Life.
Which why by the way, like still to this uh you know, basically second life to this day is probably the best
execution of a metaverse. Like they had like millions and millions of players. They lived their lives in there. They formed relationships and marriages. They had like
They have their own currency in there, like is it
Is it its own thing?
I don't know if Second Life has officially like died, I don't know if it's still going, I'm not sure.
But like at the time they had Linden bucks or whatever, Linden dollars, and it was like a whole thing.
So him and Philip Rosdale were like
interested in this. And then it was a there's a famous V C I'm forgetting the name now, but he tells a story about a famous VC and they used to meet once a week.
And they would talk about like okay, how are we gonna build this world currency?
And they were like, here's what it needs to do. And like all the things that Bitcoin eventually did, they're like
Like it needs to have
Um
I need to have this, he needs to have this. And then what they did was that they went to the lobby conference, which if you know is like this hundred to hundred and fifty person conference.
And they you buy it. I went to the last year of the lobby conference. It was awesome. It was all internet OGs. It was so cool.
So they were at one, I guess, and their their little breakout conversation was about this.
They're like, hey, I think there's some there's a need for this. And he bought the domain blue.com, B L U E.com. He was gonna launch it. It was gonna be called Blue.
And like, you know, the dollar is green and this currency was gonna be blue.
And they had the whole thing sort of like planned out, I guess. They
Um but they were like
They couldn't figure out how do we if this ever becomes a thing
Like the target on our back is gonna be too crazy. Like we can't do this.
And the problem was they were like, We've already talked about it at lobby.
And he's like, Once we realize this this thing would need an immaculate conception, that it would need to be totally anonymous
Yeah, or Sudonymous like uh
start and nobody could know who did it.
Um
They're like, We blew it. We said it at the lobby conference. There's fourteen other people now who've heard us be interested in this.
And when the white paper came out years later.
Uh Philip called him and was like, dude, I can't believe you.
You cut me out.
No way. He's like, you've seen Bitcoin? He's like, Yeah. He's like, That's you, right? He's like, No, it's not me.
He's like, I thought it was you.
If any if it was either of the two of us, if it's you, you're way more technical. He's like, No, it's not me. Who the hell is this?
How cool is that. That is awesome. That is one of the great greatest stories I've heard. They um
It's weird that
multiple groups of people start working on the same thing independently at the same time, isn't it? And they had the same conclusion that it had to be an anonymous creator.
Yeah, exactly. And you know what? The other crazy thing, you saw this Jack Dorsey, like is Jack Dorsey. Dude, that was the stupidest thing, man. Like there was some compelling evidence, but then
What they did was they completely like spoiled the broth by putting in there
Jack loves wearing Japanese clothing.
Like as like examples of why he is Satoshi. Do you know what I mean? It was ridiculous. What's wrong with that?
There was like multiple pieces of compelling uh it's supposed to be compelling evidence that says like
Jack wore a who is Satoshi t shirt to the uh to the Olympics. Like it was just like ridiculous stuff. No, I I thought it was uh I thought I thought it was ridiculous. You didn't think it was ridiculous?
Uh first I did'cause I was like
Jack Dorsey? No way.
Uh
Yeah, well then.
There's this deck, right? Did you read the deck? There's an actual like full slide deck about it. There was a bunch of good points. There was a bunch of things.
in those early cypherpunk communities back when he was like fifteen years old or something like that. You know what I mean? Like he was actually in that. Like it's whoever started this thing was likely in that really small community of about, I don't know
fifteen hundred people that were on those early mailing lists. Well he was
And he w and he was. I didn't know that.
So that was kinda new information. Okay, interesting.
Um
Other things that I didn't know. So there was like
Um
There was uh like a lot of the timing things with when he was starting Twitter and when he was like
Basically the timing of when Satoshi was active and then when Twitter took off and then when he stopped when he left Twitter and he was like, I'm excited about new things and then all of a sudden that was like a tweeted he like tweeted like
Some w someone needs to create this thing or that thing and it was like right when
the Satoshi was creating that thing. Like there was all these like weird coincidence in timeline.
Exactly.
But then there was other stuff where he was like
Look at the code here. That sounds like
Jack's favorite restaurant in San Francisco. Or Jack said he wants to be by the US Mint for his office, which
Twitter it was. Therefore it m I just thought it was uh huge reaches.
There are huge reaches, and I don't think it's true. Uh, but I thought, wow, this is a lot of stuff about Jack Dorsey that I didn't really realize. And like, you know, for example, um
You know, one of the uh I think the the biggest reaches of the thing where they would look at like
Strings of uh
transaction IDs or whatever.
And it'd be like see this says
Um
D two M P
Dude Entwinment Plaza. That was his address. All right, I don't think D just cause D two MP showed up in the middle of a s uh string doesn't mean that uh
Then he's saying, you know.
One dude SF, one D SF. That's right. You know, it's like those are the ones where it's like, okay, I don't think that that stuff is uh that stuff is true. It's like trying to like figure out if Tupac's still alive. Like, did you hear what that he said should shot me. Like he said it in the song.
You know what I mean? But I would definitely go read this deck. The deck was very entertaining and it was presented in a very like serious way. And I just appreciate the seriousness.
That which somebody took uh
Took this uh this research.
Um
By the way, that Two Man Plaza, that's where we were for the dinner. And so I was like, And it was the same day that the thing dropped. I was like, Hey, this is
Maybe I'm the create. Maybe your Satoshi. That should be the takeaway. That was my takeaway. I've got w I've got one more thing for you. Um
Go to Chizos dot com. So C H S I
C H sorry.
Start over Chizos dot com. I spelled it all wrong and it's still got there.
Is it Chisos? Is it Spanish? Chisos. Boots. Do you see the boots?
Incredible craftsmanship. I see
Cowboy boots. Yeah. So uh I own a pair of these boots. I have no stake in this copy, nothing. I just think it's cool. I uh and the the founder is part of like uh
I recently became friends with him, but he's part of my friend friend group in Austin. He was like friends with Nick and I met him once or twice through Nick. Uh his name's Will Roman.
And this company
You bought a thousand dollar pair of cowboy boots?
Mm f I think five hundred, five hundred or six hundred dollar pair. Um
A year like a while ago.
And um
This company, he owns the whole thing.
And he was explaining to me at like we were hanging out and I was like, dude, this is a good story. Can I talk about it? So he gave me permission. But the company does like low seven figures in revenue. And the way it started was he worked in tech, like at a normal tech company, quits his job, moves to Mexico to learn because Mexico's where a lot of like great boots are made.
Like spends years there, like learning the craftsmanship. Like apprenticing? Yeah, apprenticing. He's like, I want to learn how boots are made and I wanna make
Bespoke boots. That was his dream was to make
The smoke boots. He's a Texas guy. He's like a ho he's kinda looks like a cowboy.
And he quits his tech job, moves, learns how to make boots.
creates this company called Chisos and he was telling me the other day he didn't he didn't he didn't say this, but I got this read on him that he's a little burnt out. He was like the company's like growing
Ten to fifteen percent a year. I own the whole thing. And he was explaining his vision. He was like there's Tacovas, which are like kind of cheap, but they sell hundreds of millions of dollars for the boots. It's a startup.
And then there's like bespoke bootmakers who are just mom and pop stores. He's like I wanna be a little bit closer. I wanna be closer to bespoke than uh than to cova. I don't wanna be uh I don't wanna be cheap. Like I need the highest quality and I refuse to sacrifice that quality, but I wanna I wanna build this into a huge company. And I was like
Do you spend on marketing? Do you do this? And he's like, No, we don't do anything. I just make the greatest boots and I Google
The boot name, Chizos Boots, and like Reddit and all these other companies or all these other like forums are talking about this is the best boot on earth. And I see all this and it starts formulating in my brain, I'm like
This is it, my friend.
You have it. Like the hard part is done. Like surely there's some type of like nerds out there that can help make this company big. But
I thought I'd bring this to you because I criticized
the D to C world a bit when well, I have that criticism often uh about the this world and how there's not enough emphasis on product creation and story and things like this. And it's mostly just arbitrage. And I came across this and I was like
That's an example of something that I think I don't know anything about this world, but I think could be blown up and be made made pretty huge.
Yeah, this is really cool. By the way, great branding by this guy. So like
Dude, here's everything go.
Go to their website. It's very clean and like this like sawed in half video, like
What I like about this is
A I love that story of moving to Mexico to like apprentice and actually like learn the craft.
And I just
kinda want that to be like a T V show. But the second thing is um
Sometimes the people who are really good at making the product
Can't show it.
There's little stories of
Ben's brother.
But
Into a restaurant.
Or like help co found a restaurant um where they live in in Phoenix.
So we go there for lunch and
We're there and it's his brother and it's and I was like, So why'd you do this? He's like, Well, the chef is amazing. He's he's like, you know, recognized as like one of the best chefs.
So he's he's this great chef. He's like I just really believe in this guy's product.
And I thought we could turn it into a business.
It's like the problem is when you partner with these artists, sometimes they don't A know anything about how to like
convey that or show that. And B, they just won't compromise like price or quality or whatever. Just uncompromising. It's like, bro, like
We need to um
Like we need to make this like we're so expensive compared to everybody else. Like that's a but nobody really un
Uh is that we're so expensive and that's hurting our business.
And I was talking to him and he's like he's like, for example, he holds up these tortillas. He's like
You know these tortillas?
Like these tortillas cost this much. I forgot what it was, like whatever. Let's call it two two bucks. Two dollars a tortilla. Most people get their tortilla, it's like twenty cents.
And I was like, Well why? And he's like
Because he demands that every morning
We get fresh tortillas that are trucked in from Mexico.
And I was like
Wow.
That's awesome. Why don't you tell anybody that
He's like what?
Well, you should like
Tell people the
We truck our tortillas in fresh from Mexico every morning.
I'd gladly pay two dollars if I knew that. Your problem isn't that the chef

You're not marketing this in a way that actually tells the story of why I should why this food tastes better than anyone else.
And why this is fresher, why this is more authentic, why this is better, why this is higher priced.
And um so that became like a little like one of our our core things that my my little team me, Ben Diego, we talk about this all the time. We go,
Uh, we call it the tortilla principle. It's like
Uh we l when we look at businesses that we're either gonna buy or own businesses, it's like where are we chucking in
Tortilla is fresh from Mexico and are we doing a good job of telling that story?
And almost always the answer is no. Like the things you do in your business.
That are like the blood, sweat, and tears to do something great.
You take for granted because it just seem like table stakes for you. And you're not even telling the world about why you do that or what you do there, why you're different than anybody else, why you've gone the extra mile there.
Yeah, Joe Sugarman, one of my favorite copywriters. He was like, I I used to sell so many of these particular watches. I forget which company. It was Picasso, maybe. Uh, and they were like, We
And he was like
We make this out of this aluminum.
Or they were ex the Cassio was explaining to Joe Sugarman, the copywriter, how they make their watch'cause he was like, Tell me everything so I learn and he was like, Yeah, well we you we use the space uh the space grade aluminum to make this watch and he was like, Wait
So this aluminum is strong enough for spaceships. He's like
Yeah, but like every watch company ever uses the exact same stuff. It's like
So
And and then they were like we and then this courts movement w is special for this reason, but again, every company uses that. He's like
Space Age aluminum.
Precise quartz movement.
Like that and that became like the that is what sold a lot of Casio's Casio watches and Casio the makers
It's called the knowledge complex. When you
know too much about it, that you think that that's not interesting.
And Joe Sugarman, an outsider, a copyright, was like
No, this is so interesting. And that's what someone needs to do. If Google Will Roman, that's the founder. But dude, look at his website. You you started your story with
This guy worked in tech, had an everyday job.
Wasn't for quit his job.
moved to Mexico for three years to learn the art of boot making. Guess what?
Not on his website. I know.
Three years of marketing collateral.
That he's not using, right? Like uh that's a thousand days of his life that he's not putting on the website.
Like even if you even if you click down the more tab, you're right, it's like more, our story. You go to Mars Story, it's like true small business. Hi I am Will.
I'm a hard working guy, passionate about craftsmanship. Guess what? Everybody says that. Guess what everybody hasn't done.
Moved to Mexico for three years and apprenticed in this boot factory. I was like I was like Will
Do you use Reddit?
He goes, Uh, I don't really know how to work it. I go, Let me show you something. If you Google
What's the most if Google comfortable cowboy boot read it.
The top post
Someone asked that.
And
Chizos, the top line.
It says this is the most comfortable boot I've ever worn and there's a hundred and seventeen comments agreeing with that.
Top post.
And he's like, Oh, that's awesome. He like saw that. I was like, Are you insane, man? This is it.
You have it this guy doesn't have a TikTok, is that right?
I don't think so.
Does he not know that like every niche
nostalgic profession is now like the coolest kid on TikTok.
Like if you plant
Like
Beats or something like that. If you have a beet farm Dude, there's like Victorian porn where it's like people like wearing like you know, like old doll dresses. Like you know what I mean? Like there's like
The weirder the better and the more physical real world the better. Go look at epic gardening, right? Like if he wants to do this, like go go teach people about this, go show them the process, show them how the factory looks like, show them
Cutting a boot in half. Like stuff like that I think would be would be just fire on on TikTok.
And I I only brought it up because I the story was amazing. I also want to go on record as like
This might be like another like of our like uh feather in the cap where we called it moment. Because I do love their boots. It's so good. And I love meeting people who
Mm.
Eighty percent of the work is done.
This other part a lot of people could help you and and get it done.
Um and and maybe not that eighty percent of the work is done,'cause like actually eighty percent of the work is the marketing and like operations, but it's
They did the one hard thing that others aren't willy really willing to do. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like it's like a great product. Like the product is good.
And we did this in my sushi restaurant. So the the restaurant that we started, we started as an online virtual restaurant, right? Before DoorDash and Uber Eats, but we like create a website.
We would drive people to the website.
And you would order sushi and like we would make it in a commissary kitchen and we deliver it to you in like under twenty minutes.
And so we had our menu and we go and we'd meet with uh
Dan Arielli. Do you know who that is?
The author.
Yeah, he's he wrote this book called Predictably Irrational. So he's a behavioral economist. And he just happened to be he was a teacher at Duke. We were Duke students. So we get in with him. And like normally companies pay him whatever.
six figure, seven figure contracts to like consult with them.
He's willing to meet with us'cause we're just like three, you know
dumbasses that were like in at like at school.
And we go
Dan, we wanna
Like drive more sales, you're the guy.
What should we do?
It's show me your menu. We we look we show him the menu and he goes, Oh, okay.
You wanna you wanna make more money?
Um
You you want more people to buy from you? Raise your prices.
The what?
He goes, uh we go, but like, you know, we thought we could make it more accessible, more affordable. That was the whole pitch. We won the business plan competition by telling people we're gonna make sushi more accessible, more affordable.
It goes.
Yeah, but when somebody looks at this they just see cheap sushi.
Um so which people don't want which is the worst sushi. Sushi's the worst type of sushi. Exactly. So he's like, that's not what you want. He goes, and so we and by the because we were the reason I bring this up, we were an online restaurant. So we could literally A B test. Now we didn't have the tooling. We weren't like smart enough to even know what an A B test was. I didn't even know the phrase.
But we would literally switch it by day. So we would do day one, we would show menu A, day two, we would show menu B. Then we would look at the number at the end of the day and be like, How do we do? And um
So we raise prices.
And not only did revenue go up, but conversion rate went up.
So we we actually converted more customers and more money per customer. It's like oh shit, okay.
Dan, what else can we do?
He goes.
Um, sushi and the wine industry. I forgot the name he had for it, but he goes, they create their own language around their products.
And we go, but that's why it's so inaccessible. I don't understand what any of that stuff means. He goes
Exactly. But if you do know what it means, you feel smart and you feel like an insider.
And we were like what? And he goes, So we tested three three models of language. So we had what we had before, which was what we thought the accessible version, right?
Um the Philadelphia role.
Salmon and cream cheese wrapped up.
Tastes great.
I that was like literally how we used to write.
And then we have the next one, which was
He's like so s same Joe Sugarman principle. He's like
Um, do you freeze your salmon? And we're like, No.
Awesome.
Fresh, never frozen.
Atlantic hand caught salmon or something like that, right?
Same role.
Same salmon. More words.
Boom, conversion rate up. Like, oh God, it works. This is true.
And then we w we just kept doing the same thing with the whole menu. And it showed me two things. One
Man, restaurants should really A B test their menus, and I don't think they do a good enough job of this.
And B
Uh
You can like the same thing can be sold.
Just with uh with better words with better marketing and like dramatically change your business. It's not like
Just something you slap on at the end and that's good enough. It's like no, you will get this like
multiplier on on on success based on how well you do this one thing. It's not just like a ten percent improvement. It was like a two X, three X type of improvements you could get by stacking these on top of each other.
What was your cute way of explaining cream cheese?
Um
I don't know. I think we might have just not even not even mentioned it, just put it at the end. And a smooth You know the other stuff.
Yeah, I remember like and the funny thing was with salmon, it was like we were so excited about fresh
Never frozen salmon and it was like our calling card. Not like those other guys. They're just frozen
Frozen salmon.
Um, and we used to go even further away. We don't we don't even have a freezer in our restaurant. That's how fresh this is.
And then we like met uh the chef and he was like, You need to freeze a salmon, it kills the bacteria. We're like, Oh shit, sorry. Whoops, well and also flash frozen salmon to kill all the all of the bugs. And like all s like w have you ever seen the documentaries when they when the Japanese catch the salmon that they're gonna use for they
Drop it into the boat that has it like it's a freezer. Like they freeze them like
Yeah, flash frozen like I I remember like learning of that. I'm like oh
Shit, everything I've been told to is a lie. Um
All right, that's it. That was a good pod. What do you think?
Yeah. I mean th this was a good uh
It's a good catch up. It's fun to fun to hang out, fun to talk. And I feel like
I don't know if other people feel this way.
But
Just debriefing interesting people we met.
And the way their mind works or the little schemes they got into it's
Kinda my favorite thing. Well, I stole it from you where I actually started writing, like I'll write notes. Um
Right after I meet someone.
Even if you don't refer back to it, it's pretty good.
It's good. Um, all right, 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 law in it like my day song On a road less travel never looking back