This Opportunity Is Hidden In Plain Sight

0:00 Very important question is where is their opportunity? Well yeah, I wanna do an O's Perlman style. I'm gonna write something down. And we'll see if I'm right. Go ahead. Alright, do you write it down? Time it was done. Alright, it's done.

0:13 So obviously there's a big opportunity AI right now. Obviously there's a big opportunity in peptides or like uh biology with AI, something like that. What I'm about not to talk about. It's I did not write that down. I feel like I could rule the world and know I could be what I want to.

0:38 I put my law in it like my day song on the roadless travel never. I was looking at like where um Where's their opportunity right now? And uh when you open your laptop, like what what does your to-do list say? Scheme. Yeah. It's not even a laptop. It's like a notepad. It's the hotel notepad. I don't think most people actually ask themselves this very important question. Where is the opportunity right now? That's like

1:04 You know, I was sitting there as a fourteen year old. How do I have sex? Like that's literally what you should be thinking. You should be thinking uh as a fourteen year old like Which girls gonna kiss me? Where are the girls that might kiss me and how do I get them to kiss me? That's like actually what you should be thinking about. I think entrepreneurs need to think like that.

1:23 It's like Sounds caveman, sounds stupid, but like it's actually the thing. Where is the opportunity right now? You you met me. Back in I don't know. twenty Thirteen, fourteen, something like that.

1:33 Do you remember what I was working on back then? Like the types of stuff I was working on? Yeah. It was a uh The first it was a Bbo which was like a f a past its heyday social media network and then That pivoted into a Twitch streaming competitor or a plug in for Twitch streaming. I don't think you ever t fully figured it out.

1:55 So Early on I was working on like like you said, like messaging apps, social media apps, basically. And um Hey, guess when all the social media apps were made. Between two thousand and four

2:07 In two thousand and twelve. And then I'm you know, so so it's t I'm ten years late to the party. And I'm starting to think about like hey What if I What if I made like a

2:18 place where you could post photos and send videos to each other. It's like yeah, it's called Snapchat. Like hey hey, what if we made a way for you to message each other? Like, yeah, it's called WhatsApp. It was actually created in 2007. And so The things I was working on was the last waves opportunity. No, that sounds stupid. Why would you would do last wave's opportunity? Well, the answer is it's pretty understandable. Because that's proven to work. And I'm trying to I'm so insecure and like have so su such a lack of a spine that I'm just gonna go towards what I think might actually work. And I'm using

2:50 What has already worked, but the problem with what has already worked is in business. What's already worked is is now done in the game of No, that's not true. You just talked about groons. No, no, but I'm saying t what I was working on, like social media, like vent like venture tech is winner take all. It's There's g you know, you don't work on Airbnb. Five years after Airbnb has been proven to be successful, and you're gonna be like another Airbnb. There's not gonna because there's no network effect businesses. The winners have these like runaway escape velocity. That's why they get so big. That was the game I was playing. So I was in the venture. Game.

3:21 Right, doing venture technology companies. And in that I was doing the venture technology companies of the last ten years. Pretty stupid. So okay, what what should I have been doing during that period? Well like During that kinda like twenty twelve to twenty six you know uh eighteen range. Like the most interesting things

3:39 Or basically anything in crypto. Which by the way, it's not like it was invisible to us. Like people in our office loved crypto. And you were talking about crypto. Yeah. I was buying crypto. We just didn't we didn't think of it as like we didn't put two and two together. Everyone has to Google this. That if you Google Sean Purry, there's an article from an Indian newspaper that says famous entrepreneur Sean Purry puts twenty five percent of net worth into Bitcoin. And I think this was any pre-acquisition. I think this was pre-wealth. So like twenty five percent of three hundred dollars. Um So yeah, crypto was a is a was an interesting space to play.

4:13 The other one was basically like um anything in machine learning or uh you know big data. And lastly was like different like new mobile mobile apps. We had one mobile and we had one iPhone engineer. And I company when I joined in twenty twelve. The iPhone came out, I think like

4:29 So like you know, we were we were just not even on Forget about like we weren't surfing the wave. We were in the lazy river and then the ocean is over there and we were just going in circles in the lazy river like idiots. And so I think the m very important question is where is their opportunity?

4:45 Well yeah I wanna do I wanna do a uh an O's Pearlman style. I'm gonna write something down. And we'll see if I'm right. How's that how was that? There is zero percent chance you're gonna get right what I'm about to say,'cause it is so random. In fact, you're gonna laugh when I say what I'm gonna say because You're gonna be like after that huge ramble about big opportunities, this is the thing you just told me? Okay, good.

5:06 All right, down? Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about dogs. I'm gonna close my eyes, you show the camera. You show the camera. I'm gonna close my eyes. Time I was done. All right, it's done. I showed up.

5:19 So obviously there's a big opportunity AI right now. Obviously there's a big opportunity in peptides or like uh biology with AI, something like that. I don't know if those are the ones you're thinking about. What I'm gonna about talk about Grand Theft Auto Six.

5:35 I did not write that down. GPUs and power plants. Okay, these are also good. Uh these by the way, there's not one answer to where is their opportunity? I thought that's what you were gonna say based off of things that we had seen on Twitter. But I am hearing about J uh I there was someone just did a big Stick on on Grand Theft Auto, didn't they? Well the the important thing is the new one is coming out, um is is the big deal. So

6:04 I don't know. If uh let me just do a quick little I'll I'll do the personal story and then I'll do the primer on on GTA. Okay, so the personal story is this. I have this friend to I I don't know if he wants me to say his name or not, so I won't say his name just right now, but I have this friend who was y you know him as well. He was one of the first guys to convince me that I needed to put

6:21 a huge chunk of my net worth into crypto early on. And he was basically saying, like, why aren't you eighty percent in crypto? And I was like eighty percent is insane. And he's like younger than you Yeah. He's like, This is obvious. What are you he's like, what are you talking about? This is what it's gonna be, blah, blah, blah. So he's been early on a few different calls with me in my life to the point where now when he says something that I find outlandish. I have learned

6:43 Through trauma. Of missing out on his pri prior not not fully backing his prior things. Then I should really pay attention. So he came to my house. About a year ago.

6:54 And he was like, Yeah, I'm thinking about putting together a hostile takeover. Of take two interactive. I'm like Take Two Interactive. What is that? Is that the do they make video games? Like, yeah, they make NBA 2K and they make Grand Theft Auto. And I was like, hostile take do you know anything about a host what is a hostile takeover? We won't even do that. He's like, Yeah, uh this will be my first. And I was like, You're insane. All right. So a lot of people watch it, listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Now a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, All right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?

7:31 And Again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea.

7:45 It's a list of a hundred Pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through'em. They're awesome. And it gives you How to start them, how to grow'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think. Dude, I saw the uh the CEO of uh take two. I've uh

8:08 I've had some interactions with the um the New York City guy ripped. Have you seen him? Zelnik, right? Dude, Google him and the word shirtless. Ha Oh my God. No, seriously.

8:19 This isn't like a Sam being weird. Like this is a shtick. Are you sure? This this is not me being cute. He people do stories on how ripped he is. He is absolutely ripped. See, this is what I'm saying. This is not like me just like commenting on men's bodies. This is like sixty years old and he's no, he's almost seventy.

8:39 It's almost seven okay, yeah,'cause this article's from twenty eighteen. Yeah, you're right. Good luck, Hustle. Take over these. My point is he was telling me he was like he's like I think Grand Theft Auto is an incredible asset. And he basically made this case like Warren Buffett. Describing A business with incredible moats.

8:59 So he's like, Here you have a product that's uh you know, the last one when they released it, it blew away all the analyst expectations that they did a billion dollars. In sales in three days. It's bigger than any movie ever created. It's bigger than any video game ever created. By the way, the video game industry is three times bigger than Hollywood. This is the most defensible product in the world. Ten years later It's still selling five hundred million dollars a year annually. It's not like a thing you buy once. They figured out how to make it a recurring revenue business. And there is there's no substitution. So there's not a second place thing that you go buy instead of.

9:32 Uh, Grand Theft Auto, if it was ninety dollars instead of eighty dollars or a hundred and ten dollars instead of eighty dollars. It's not like you go buy uh Pepsi instead of Coke. There is no Pepsi. It there's only coke. And so he gave me this impassioned

9:47 So just like some of the numbers. They've sold almost five hundred million copies of the game. So you know, twenty billion in lifetime revenue. Yeah, it's one of the top uh grossing fr entertainment franchises, period. Like all media, Pokemon and Harry Potter and other it's up it's like at that level. It's in the Upper, upper, upper pantheon of all IP ever created.

10:12 And it's the fastest fastest entertainment product to ever hit a billion. twelve years later still doing five hundred million a year. Now a lot of their revenue comes from GTA Online, so they figured how to make it a recurring revenue business. The new game. Which it we've been waiting for for you know ten plus years. Is

10:29 Almost ready. Whenever some of these games like I'm a c I like Call of Duty. I don't play any video games except I like doing career mode on Call of Duty because it's like a war movie. Like it's like a movie. Career mode? I didn't even know they have that. That's like the only one I like. Like infantry you know, like a lower tier guy or what? You like You know, it's like James Bond career mode. You remember like you like hit complete missions, but Yeah. These things are like movies. And so like I don't even own an Xbox. I buy an Xbox to play the game and then I like it sits there for three years, I never touch it ever again, and it gets old and so now when GT uh what uh Grand The Dog comes out, six I'm gonna have to like buy a thing just to play it out for six hours and then I'll never touch it again.

11:08 So yeah, I exactly. And they and it's actually worth it because these are incredible products. I mean they spent a billion dollars just developing the product, like just on the actual like development time. So the you know, the pr projections predictions now are like in year one, they'll do like three billion of sales. They'll probably do a billion dollars of pre orders before they even launch. Well, yeah. Bananas. But you know, there's there's a whole economy around this. And so um I just wanted to bring this up, not because it's the biggest opportunity.

11:34 Obviously if you're saying what's the biggest opportunity? Go do AI. Gotcha. Right. Like if you want to what's the biggest opportunity? Great, go into energy, go into biology, uh you know, go into drug development using A. Yes. Well what's fun to talk about on this podcast is this little economy around GTA six.

11:50 By the way, I think we have uh I think we have Mark, is it Marcus or Mark? Pincus, the founder of Zinga. I think we have him coming on soon, and they're owned by Take Two, so he could give us his take on this. Uh the hostile hostile takeover is that uh the by the way, the hostile takeover has been shelved now. The stock went up too much. So like I don't know if you hostile takeover works, but you have to buy You have to kind of acquire like I don't know, like five percent of the company. Silently. And then like announce your bid and then and you you really want it when it's like Snapchat right now when the stock is just going down, down, down, down, down and

12:20 You can rally support that a change needs to be made. Can this guy come up with a billion dollars? So he was raising h yeah, he was raising, you know, three, four hundred million dollars to do this, but the stock went up. And so then there was no uh W once the stock popped, then there was like not gonna be enough enthusiasm and the price went up and uh you know, the value the the return would go down on on the on the activity. So

12:43 There's a whole economy around this. So there's People who do content around this. There's people who create like mods and tools and data scrapers and Guides and then there's people who who sell things in the game. And like the w we don't know exactly how the game's gonna work, but the game might work like some of these other video games now, where you can s buy and sell in game items. Like outfits or something? Yeah, like skins, guns, outfits, whatever, like the different different aspects of the game. And so there's there's going to be a lot of people who get wealthy off this. There's you know, for example, in the last wave when GTA five came out, these guys made this thing called No Pixel. So they created their own like mod version of the game. And they ended up selling it back to the company after it got really like mega popular. It got more popular than like the real game on uh on Twitch.

13:25 So I just think there's gonna be a lot of opportunity for like If you're in this kind of Thirteen. Twenty five year old range. Yeah, you're you're fun employed, basically.

13:35 There's gonna be an interesting chance to Have fun. Do something that's in your circle of of competence, like in an area you know about. And to actually like learn business by doing a starter business in this little grand theft to auto economy. And I'm saying little, but like It's probably The game is obviously like a you know, tens of billions.

13:55 But the economy around it is probably gonna be in the hundreds of millions. And it's this weird thing where you know it's coming. But it's not out yet. And so there's no like nobody has a head start necessarily in in doing this. And so whoever moves fast Whoever builds interesting things.

14:12 Whoever creates interesting content is going to benefit from this. Did you when you were doing this? You were in the video game world. Who what were some examples of shockingly large businesses that were like accessory accessory businesses for games? So uh well I'll say for gaming. So like there was this company I remember discovering called G Fuel. And like I had never heard of G Fuel. Did you do you know what G Fuel is?

14:34 No. It's kinda like a energy drink type of type of deal. They might be a little shady. The product might not be good for you. I'm not saying any of that stuff. As a business, I thought it was very smart what they did. You are saying that. No, I was like Red Bull. Is Red Bull good for you? No. But like Red Bull can be you can admire Red Bull as a brand in a business. One of their energy drinks is called Shit up collector's box. So Yeah, got three of them at home.

15:04 I don't think that's shady. I don't think the red flags what are you talking about? The red flag is wrapped around my eyes. But they did something really start. They they figured out that Twitch streamers were undervalued assets. That um People were going for influences based off of their like following size. And so as like a following size, the the Twitch streamers on Twitch they didn't have huge numbers.

15:31 But they realized like the depth of trust was insane. Cause when you watch somebody on Twitch, you're watching them live for eight hours a day. These gamers had a lot of influence and the influence was disconnected from their price sheet. And so what G Fuel did was it went to all of them and it ran basically the Nike. Playbook. with streamers. So they would go to the popular streamers, they'd say, Hey, we want to develop a flavor just for you, a shaker bottle that's your colors, your branding.

15:54 And you're gonna get a cut of the affiliate revenue. And they partnered with all the top streamers, which was not that hard to do at the time, even though these guys were really popular, traditional brands weren't coming to them at the time. And so they went zero to a hundred million in sales. And like guys like you and I had never heard of them because they did it just within this gaming bubble, using just the gaming influencers. And so they did that.

16:15 There's obviously like Elgato, which sells accessories for streaming, that now has become even more popular with uh you know podcasting as well. Like they got They got both of those waves. And so Elgato is a is another company that sells like picks and shovels to the streaming industry. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, and everyone is aligned. And you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create the content.

16:40 That someone is you, and it's due tomorrow. Breeze assistant can help. It works right inside of HubSpot. drafting, campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. all grounded in your actual customer data.

16:55 So don't just create content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Wait, can I ask you a question about streaming? I actually like don't play video games at all, but I do occasionally will watch clips of like gamers'cause like it's for some reason it's like fun. I don't I I h I can't figure out why. But these streamers like um

17:17 What's the guy's name? Clavic Clavic Clavicular. Clavicular, whatever his name is. But are they when people watch them, is it mostly from clips, which I do see and find them funny, or is someone literally watching them on their TV Like just walking around Goofing around. Both. But they're just like so they have to be funny all the like all the time.

17:37 Um no. They don't have to be funny all the time. In fact they're not they're not that funny. They do they do do crazy stuff. So like, yeah, you're right. Like So right now if I go to Twitch The top category is called just chatting. The top the top category is people not playing video games, just chatting. The second uh the third top category right now.

17:55 With forty five thousand c live people watching is IRL, which is basically them streaming. So you can watch right now. I will do crazy stunts. I will risk being in trouble. I will go meet these people. I will travel the world. And you from the comfort of your you know, your bed can kind of like Watch me do it. Watch me make a fool of myself. There's one guy who's selling hot dogs and he has eighty people on Twitch watching him. But are they watching this on their comp like

18:19 Well okay, so when people do podcasts, they're normally working out or going to work. when people watch YouTube, it's usually on their phone when they're in public transport or they're just goofing off on the couch or they're watching it on their T V. When people watch Twitch or other live streamers, are they Do they have it on a T V and then they're playing games on their phone? Do they just sit there with the computer and watch the whole thing like a movie? What of the what's the beh what's the consumer habit? Obviously there's like because there's hundreds of millions of people, there's like a little bit of everything, but the three major use cases are

18:48 Young people just on their phone,'cause their phone is their like personal entertainment device. So they'll just watch a stream. In full like on the phone. And it's the main thing they're paying attention to. Then there's like second screen, background screen, which is either you put it up on the T V while you're chilling on the couch. Yeah. And or Like what we saw a lot of at Twitch was like second tab. So like I'm a programmer. My main thing is like I I'm working like all day.

19:11 Boom. While I'm doing it, I have like a second monitor or I just put it in a background tab and I just have the audio going. Yeah, like waiting room noise. My favorite streamer hanging out and I'm watching I I'll glance over when he's doing it, but I don't have to pay full attention to it. So that's like the behavior with the stuff. But it's pretty insane the level of trust. You know, I was talking to a A guy who's twenty-one, twenty two years old. I asked him, I go, You know, back in the day, like you know, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, they were like popular YouTubers.

19:35 There was Casey Neistat. There was you know, Mr. B was like who's I go Not who is The most followers.

19:42 But who has like the minds and hearts of young people? Like who do all the young people agree? Is like the shit. Who do they think is really cool? And so Instantly he was like

19:52 Oh speed. Definitely speed. And he was like, you know, Kaisanot, speed, like these are they're the top. They're the the like both like the the multiplier of popularity. Times. Like approval rank approval rating or uh you know, you f you kind of admire them in some way. And where's he stream?

20:09 YouTube, Twitch. Some some of the guys stream on kick'cause that's like a big competitor that's owned by a state like the casino company. Okay. That's clear. We should talk about this. So Our friends.

20:22 From TBPN. Just had an incredible Two year Right. Less. Less than two years. Eighteen months, right?

20:30 Is it even eighteen months? Is it twelve? I don't know what it is. Our friends at T B PN th so the story is T B P N Which is a Tech. Live show.

20:39 Uh, just got acquired by OpenAI, the makers of Chad GPT for An undisclosed sum of money. People rumor it to be a hundred million, maybe two hundred million. Which is Bananas for

20:51 Not just any product that's twelve, eighteen month old. But specifically A podcast or a show. Specifically one that doesn't even get that much viewership for its actual flagship show.

21:04 And John and Jordy are awesome. I'm super happy for them. Uh, but we haven't had a chance to talk about that. So what was your what was your reaction? Where were you? And what was your reaction when you heard this? Where was I? It's not like nine eleven. I don't remember where I was, but uh I think my reaction is Amazing deal for them.

21:21 I would have taken that nine out of ten ten out of ten times. If it's anything north of a hundred million, take that all day. Um I and my second reaction is they're gonna win even bigger in two years. When the board of directors of OpenAI says Guys, we gotta get we gotta buckle our belts and and get profitable.

21:42 We got to look at why do we own all these things? Whose idea was it to buy a media company? Can we please just say that we're gonna sell it back to him, just give it to them. And we'll own five percent. And they're gonna own it again.

21:54 Okay, so that's the prediction. Not only was this an incredible first deal, but there's gonna be a a Barstool style second deal on the other side of this. It was really dumb. I think it's really dumb for open AI. I think that HubSpot bought a media company, my media company, and it makes sense because they were using it to sell. twenty thousand dollar a year software and there's a direct attribution. When HubSpot bought the hustle, we had ninety, I think or HubSpot had ninety thousand users, I think something like that. Now they have two hundred thousand users, something like that. I don't know for just look it up. And there's direct attribution of where they get their customers and they could say, We got this much revenue from this customers, it came from this podcast, this news, or whatever, this thing, this thing. With open AI, they already have a billion users. I don't understand like how there's like any growth related to this other than it's just a cool thing to own. I do think it was It's very interesting, right? Because they didn't really release any rationale for it. There is no rationale other than it's cool. And you know, after a couple of weeks you're like, I guess if there was a rationale they would say it, right? And I think the the closest thing that they mentioned was um I guess back in the day Apple bought this ad agency.

23:00 And um it was like, yeah, bringing that in house was like transformative for our marketing. And we think that like having John and Jordy and TBPN in house is going to but it's not trans they're they're also saying they're speaking out of both sides of the mouth, right? Because they're like, They have full editorial control. We're not gonna exert our influence over it. It's not gonna become a propaganda tool for us, like We're not gonna use it.

23:24 But we just paid two hundred million dollars for it or a hundred million dollars for it? So so which one is it? Do you think it was a good d uh it's there's no debate. It was awesome for these two guys, right? Yeah, oh incredible, epic for for The T PN guys for sure. Do you think this is a smart move for open AI? Let me make the case.

23:42 Because I think on the surface it's like what? It's a head scratcher, right? Yeah, uh for example, Chat GPT has Something like nine hundred million. Month active users. T B P N might have

23:55 Ninety thousand you know, viewers including, you know, across their on their show, and then maybe if you include clips, it's like A million people see a clip. I don't know. Maybe like um getting an executive to buy open AI is a two hundred two hundred million dollar deal. I mean you'd have to get a lot of but again, who's already not I don't know. Like buying uh like it's not like an awareness play. Like normally it's like media has attention. And you have lucrative product.

24:25 So you use media. to get your lucrative product into more people to to have more attention. In this case, Chat GPT has so much attention. I'm not sure what you get out of that, but I think you know, here's the case, because I think we should you should assume That these very smart people don't do very dumb things as a default.

24:41 Uh, you should try to figure out what they what they're telling themselves. So okay, let's spitball real quick. Even if it's A hundred million dollars. What is that what is a hundred million? out of eight hundred billion. Divided by eight hundred billion, right? Because that's

24:57 The percent of the company they gave up, assuming it's a like mostly stock deal. But that's not how a a disciplined company thinks I would think. Point oh oh one percent of my stock. Two Uh Uniquely talented group of guys.

25:16 who understand media and marketing and communication and like the modern media playbook. And just having them in our office and having them be You know, working on our comms or strategically guiding us. Not going to be a good thing. Is that gonna make our company point oh one per whatever, right? I don't know the math. More valuable like For sure, maybe just one ad campaign.

25:38 For sure maybe could pay for that, yes. One uh insight into how we should be doing our comms differently, one insight into how we should be positioning ourselves. Because Right now it's kind of crazy. America hates AI. Like I don't know if you've seen the Sam Oldman has had two

25:54 Like attack. assassination. They don't just hate AI. I think they specifically hate him. I think I think A, yes, hate A AI, and B he's And then he's the face, he's the hateable face of AI for for for whatever reason. Like he somebody th went drove by his house and threw a Molotov cocktail. Like a week ago. And then went to the office. And then they no, then they drove by and shot

26:16 Like a bullet at his house also. So in like two days later. No, but the same guy who the same guy who threw a Molotov cocktail, they arrested him at the open AI office because he was trying to do the same thing there. He was there too. Oh my God, that's insane. Literally like, you know, uh obviously there's a public perception, uh obviously there's like a a a public brand issue here with like why is AI so deeply unpopular? Like I've I've seen some charts where it's like it's more unpopular than Trump. You know, it's like wow, this is like It's not like it's not like a

26:45 It's extremely polarizing, you know, um uh for AI. So People don't like AI. They don't like uh what's going on with that. I'm not sure exactly why. It might be because of Fear of job loss, data centers being built in my backyard. It's too powerful. The government's watching us. Like what is it? Well, it's that, but also like I I I'm on this weird feed. Where I'm I think I clicked one of them and I'm getting more. There's so many people who are doing these breakdown videos where they're like, I work so hard

27:11 I uh work sixty hours a week. I don't have my parents to support me and yet I still barely have enough money every single month to pay rent. I'm so angry that I'm sh I've been struggling for eight years. I went to college. I did what I thought I was supposed to do and yet I'm still struggling and I feel like I'm always one paycheck away. Which is a totally fair sentiment. I one hundred percent. If my baseline state is a deep s state of dissatisfaction

27:38 Like I'm already satisfied without AI. Right. And now you're telling me I can't get a job. You're telling me that I'm not gonna have a job.

27:47 And that my energy prices are gonna go up. My my electricity costs are gonna go up because they're building this like megawatt data center. And then I hear that They're raising billions and billions of dollars and individual people are getting paid a hundred million dollars to go do this and that. That's what you think is the the kind of the main All after I've spent a decade doing

28:04 What I thought I was told I had to do. It's okay to get debt to go to this college because it's gonna be worth it. I'm gonna get a good a lawyer or accounting job that pays me enough to just live amazing life in a vicinity of a city that I wanna live in and yet I can't have kids, I can't afford'em. I'm single because a lot of them are single now, and I'm still struggling, even though I'm putting the effort in. Why? Why is this broken? That's the sentiment. And then why the hate of Sam and Chad GPD? Is it just the winners curse? You hate Duke because they're winning. Is that why? Or is there something else to it? And also I think people when they see him talk, one of the big sins that anyone who's a public figure can make is being inauthentic. And being inauthentic, uh, is what he screams because what he screams is I'm just saying what you want me to what you want heard. That's one of the reasons why people like Elon, even though he's an asshole, he's very authentic.

28:54 With Sam, it definitely feels you're just telling me what I want to hear. That's the perception. Yeah. Which he admits to, by the way. He says I'm horrible at confrontation and sometimes I'll just say things that I think you want me to hear. Yeah, but I think he's saying it a slightly different way. Um

29:12 I mean I think Chad GPT is an amazing product. Uh I think that TB what the T V P N guys did W John and Jordi did, I think is um Nothing short of incredible. And that's putting aside this exit. If they had never exited.

29:23 We were saying this before, like I think what they built as a just a brand and the f the fun they had. The brand they built. the way they captured uh people's minds. And I would say like the way they broke The right rules. Like what's the um what's that phrase where it's like, you know, amateurs don't know the rules, pros pros know the rules, and the masters know which when to break the rules.

29:43 If you look at a couple of the things they did, it it's kind of incredible. So First. They change the uh the the playbook for for put the podcast. It was like Nobody's watching the show.

29:54 We don't care. We produce the show the shows P the functionality of the show was to produce clips. So what everybody else was doing in the industry was Let's post clips. To promote

30:04 And the clip's job. is to promote the the real show. The long form show. And I think they inverted that. Um I they didn't say this. I'm putting words in their mouth, but let me speculate for a second.

30:15 I believe what they found was that It's not that the clips job the clips are there to promote the live show. It's that the live show is there to produce the clips and the clips is the product. And we do this four hour live stream as a farming exercise. To just farm. Twenty great clips a day.

30:31 And if we do twenty great clips a day and we're on your feed where you're already browsing and where you're hanging out, and we give you 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds of entertainment of insight of a great soundbite. Well, that we've done our job. That's the show. The show is this distributed thing, not one central long long form thing. Right. Like the way we and most podcasters think of our show is what we do is like the podcast listening to the hour long thing is the thing. And we're gonna use social media to hopefully

30:59 Draw you into the main thing. They did it the exact opposite way. They're like we'll sit here for fo for four hours and talk. The product is the cli You know, that's the end product uh that we're actually trying to create. So I think that was great. I think going all in on Twitter was smart.

31:13 And interesting when nobody else was doing that. I agree. I think, you know, they uh hey, for the record, I I made a prediction uh three years ago Do you remember the prediction? Yeah, you were like um Every social media platform.

31:27 has like their star creator, somebody who was born on the platform, becomes super famous and super you know successful and wealthy. from the platform. Instagram had it, YouTube had it. Vine had it all the platform. And you were like Twitter Who is that on Twitter? We were like kind of Couldn't think of who's who's that person, that Twitter star.

31:45 And your prediction was That there will be I don't know exact prediction, but something like that. Well, I said that there's there's an opportunity to do that. Somebody's gonna do it and they're gonna, you know, make a billion dollars doing this, essentially. Yeah, so it and it wasn't totally wrong and it wasn't a brilliant prediction, but uh it was just an observation, but that uh I still think it can happen. I think that there's like by the way, TP TBPN was tiny. Even on Twitter. Like it's only in a very s niche of niche on Twitter. I still think that there's that. For example, I think that It's not in my world, but like sports Twitter is awesome. I think uh political Twitter Twitter is I I I don't I don't like it, but it's an awesome category to be in. Like there's awesome, yeah. Yeah, like there's still like those those categories.

32:26 Can I give you two lock in stories I think anybody can take,'cause you know, we we like to nerd out about media. But most people don't care about media. Yeah. Um Can I just tell you two John stories? So I I don't know Jordy as well as I know John. So I uh I was in a mastermind group. I created a little mastermind group. For

32:44 Media like guys like me who are like Content creators. And we had this text group and we would do these calls and at the time John was doing a YouTube channel Where he would do like um Uh explanation. Yeah, the history of Donald Trump. The history of Xi Jinping. Pretty um pretty good stuff.

33:01 High quality. Um and it was actually getting like a lot of views. Like his videos could get like a million views or two hundred thousand views, two million views. So he was like doing well too. He was like successful at it. We had him on M FM during that point. It wasn't married to it. It wasn't like this is my thing, I'm gonna do this forever. He was exploring. And so I was kind of helping him and talking through, like, what are you thinking about? He was like, Oh, I think about this and this and this. And he tried several experiments before he landed on TPPN.

33:27 So the first thing was Massive credit for walking away. From the metrics. So like How many subscribers does he have on YouTube? Four hundred and fifty th four hundred and fifty thousand and his last video did nearly one million views. And it was people still don't under it was about Visa. So a a pretty nerdy top, but he did a good job. But that's like a high quality audience. This is

33:49 I would say imagine financially, I'm sure this could have been a huge success and he had half a million subscribers. That's a lot. So so you had half a million subscribers who's doing videos that are getting a million views. But it wasn't What he wanted as a c as a creator, as like the artist in him. was not like this is it this is the thing I want to do for the next ten years.

34:06 And he walked away. And I just wanna point that out because walking away from that and then not just walking away from that and s trying to build back up to that, but like When you're doing TBPN. And you're Going live every morning.

34:18 And you don't get to go on vacation'cause you got to be live every morning. You're You're s dressing up in your suit. You're showing up at the studio. You're preparing. You're doing sixteen interviews in a row. You're uh you know, you're then going into cutting the clips, you're preparing for the next day. And you look at that number on your live stream and you've got Three thousand people watch today. Do you know how hard that is mentally?

34:40 As a creator who was just seeing that same number on YouTube be one million. Did he say Two thousand and Show up with enthusiasm the next day. He I mean, I didn't bring it up like this with them, but like I can tell you why. Because when you're doing the thing that you actually enjoy doing, you'll sustain even in the face of the bad results. Right. It's like for him, I think talking to Jordy is fun as hell.

35:02 Talking about venture tech was more fun than talking about like the history of Xi Jinping. I think he's like more in that the scene of like for true tech. And I think having the creative freedom to like build the brand and the show the way they want it, I think was fun for him. And so like I think the fun sustained him when the numbers would have been discouraging to the average person. That's the first part of like

35:21 Massive credit'cause as a creator, I know how hard that is. I know how hard it is to go like Naval has talked about this that the hardest the true masters Are people who can go back down the mountain? and start again and take a new path. Because going back down the mount mountain once you've climbed up once is like you know how exhausting it is. You actually know what goes into it.

35:39 And it's so hard to give up the vantage point you have to go back to being a beginner again and and seeing where that new road might take you. The second one. I invited John to um our basketball camp. People don't know this. John's like Freaking like six eight or something like that. He's huge. He's like the tallest guy in the tech industry. And I was like, Oh, dude, you should come to our camp. It's amazing. We got All these amazing the founder of Airbn and Reddit and uh you know, uh Mr. Beast, and then this famous, this famous guy, this famous guy, like

36:07 You should come, man. We want you to come this year. We'd love we'd love to have you. And he's like, Oh, that's amazing. He's like, I just got to figure it out with T V P and I was like, Dude it's two days. It's over the you know, it's like just like Thursday, Friday. You'll be back. They'll be fine.

36:20 Also Who cares? T PN. It's nothing yet. It's just a baby. Right. It was like at that time they weren't even doing the live show. But wasn't this like two months ago? No, no. This was the entire year. Oh, got it. And so at the time, all they were doing was re replying to tweets. They didn't even have their show yet. It was literally a a Twitter account where they would reply to a tweet with them in nice suits recording a response to some an interesting tweet somebody had.

36:44 So there wasn't even like we have to be alive. It was just he was just like, I got momentum. So first he asked me, he goes, Can Jordy come too? And I was like, dude, we're super constrained on the the like number of people. He's like, can we come and could we record from there? And I was like, I don't know, man, I'm not sure like Well, there's no there's no miss. I'm saying incredible for him at that time to turn down that in invite to be like no, even forty eight hours.

37:06 I gotta just be locked in. I gotta just like there's something here. I just I don't wanna lose any momentum. And as a founder, as like a is uh anybody who tries to like make a project happen, the amount of like manual cranking you have to do at the beginning to get something off the ground is like so underrated. And I know that me, I would have been like, ooh, I got invited to this cool event. Oh, all these cool people are gonna be there. Oh, it's only a couple of days. It won't be that big of a distraction. Like whatever, I can come back to this. Like

37:32 I would have done that. Pro like mad props to him for No I got I gotta stay with this. And so he stuck with it. He's he so he didn't come.

37:42 He stuck with it. And when I texted him about this, uh about this outcome, about this like incredible outcome, he goes, It's a testament to the great lock in. And I was like the great lock and it that's what really what they did. They just locked the Yeah. For twelve months. They're like every day we're gonna be balls to the wall.

38:01 at doing this thing. And it doesn't matter if other people think this thing is important. We think it's important. It is a testament to the great lock in. So I I give them all the credit. That's amazing. Have you seen this other drama? It's kinda cool. So Jason Lumpkin, friend of the pod, he said, uh Okay, it's weird. Now I don't see TBPN on my P on my feed as often I did a few weeks ago. Anyone else noticing the same? And there's like tons of tons of people which Yeah. It could be conspiracy theory because that's usually how things work. Like you're like, Oh, I don't see it and like, dude, like like people tell us all the time, they're like, Oh, I don't listen to the podcast M FM anymore. I'm like, Well, our numbers are like through the roof high. So someone is. Um That's a juicy story. So you're saying Elon, who's got a competitor to open AI.

38:41 Maybe uh It would turn down that knob a little bit. It doesn't seem crazy. Does it? Yeah.

38:48 It doesn't because he did he It's been proven he did that with Substack. You know you know the story? No. He tried to buy Substack. They didn't cut the deal. Founder walks away. It's like

38:58 Dude, total respect. You're Elon Musk. This is amazing. But like We just we want to be independent. And then the next like day. All traffic to Substack from X goes to zero, essentially. They basically shadowband Substack links and then they bought review, they launched their competitor of X Articles, they like did a whole bunch of things in that so

39:19 It is not beyond Mr. Free Speech. uh you know must to to put his uh you know um what is it what do they say put his finger on the skip put his thumb on the scales to tilt, you know, to be competitive with with other products. So I would not be surprised. If the T BP invisibility going away is is not a conspiracy theory and in fact is a is a fact. I wouldn't be surprised, is what I've put it. I think in two weeks, so right now Elon and um Sam Altman they're uh in a lawsuit. And I believe it goes to I don't I'm I don't want to sound I'm I'm an idiot, just so you guys know. Like I don't even know I don't know how courts work, but like is it the deposition? Is that the thing where they get the best clips from when they're in like a small room and then they're gonna ask him like has it like what size is his penis?

40:07 Like can you describe his penis? Like it's like gonna be insulting. That's like what the best videos online are about. Uh but anyway, they're doing something uh that's something happening is happening and it starts next week, but I I do I think that I think that starts in two weeks, though. Hm. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing how s uh I I I have some friends that are basically like They get sued.

40:32 And then they won't uh they're like we have to settle this because We just don't want to go to disc we don't want discovery. 'Cause Discovery is like unearths a lot of stuff. And so like one of my f one of my absolutely favorite accounts is uh internal tech emails. Yeah. Did you f you follow this on Twitter? It's just like one of the best accounts. And it basically just nicely formatted goes and digs through all of the discovery that happens in these like antitrust cases. And then you see

40:56 Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg. Texting his, you know, CFO about buying Instagram versus Snapchat and how much they should offer and what if he says this and then let's no, let's try this instead. And you could basically piece these together and see the internal thinking and conversations, the stuff that's never public. This is the real stuff. That goes into to the strategy behind a lot of these companies. My sister's a corporate attorney and she's represented a lot of the guys that you just mentioned. And she always tells me don't text or write stuff because it's gonna get discovered. And so One of my jokes is her and my wife and I are all in a group chat. I love to say the most offensive things.

41:31 Then I'll say hello to the person doing the discovery. Sir, it was humor. Like this is the top pin tweet right now on internal tech emails. It's from Elon Musk. Subject Re Honest thoughts.

41:47 This is his email to Sam Altman. Guys, I've had enough. This is the final straw. Either go do something on your own or continue with open AI as a nonprofit. I will no longer fund open AI. Until you've made a final commitment to stay, or I'm just being a fool who's essentially providing free funding for you to create a startup. Discussions are over. Right. Or um the next one.

42:06 Zuckerberg texting Elon Musk. Hey, quick heads up. We sent a uh letter to the c uh California Attorney General supporting your lawsuit against OpenAI. Someone, not us, leaked the letter. It'll be public in the next hour. Wanted to make sure you heard this from me. Evan. Okay. Zuck.

42:22 I have an idea to run by you, not urgent, but let me know if there's a good time to call in the next few days. These are these are these are my Epstein emails. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company. And you realize two things.

42:44 One, you've done something great. But you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. I've outrun my peers. Which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in.

43:01 My company Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs. who are gonna hold you accountable Call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way. Because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find.

43:19 And if you can find them It's hard to have this explicit time, this explicit place where you sit down, where the rules are clear that we are here to help each other and to be one another's board of directors. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're gonna be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying Shit. I barely grew in business and in life.

43:39 And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and I know this stuff actually works, whether you work with Hampton or you get your own group on your own. But having a group like this, a group of people who you meet with in real life once a month It can change your life. It changed mine and I know it will change yours. So check it out. joinhampton.com

44:05 All right, I have a story that I think is gonna be Rap Your Alley. You're writing a book on this topic. So have you heard of William Randolph Hurst? Do you know who that is? I've heard of like the Hearst family. I feel like I've heard that. Yeah, let me give you a little bit of background on this because I went into reading about the story because I wanted to learn about how to build a company that can last two hundred years, which he has almost done. But you're gonna like it on how to manage creatives. That's like a big learning that I've had from this. So check this out. So William Randolph Hearst, I think he was born in something like 1860, I forget the exact year, but around there. Uh the reason I liked him at first was his father was a Missouri miner.

44:37 He kind of moved out to San Francisco, where you live, where we used where I used to live, to kind of make it big in the mining industry. And he had like a boom or bust type of um career where he found a little bit of gold when he was like 40 and became quite wealthy, lost all the money, and then when he was sixty became the richest man in America. So he basically like married this amazing young woman named Phoebe, got her pregnant and basically only saw her like once a year, plus the kid, but she like was out in the mines up in like Yosemite Valley, like mining and like his kid and family, his wife was down in San Francisco just kind of living their life and The kid's name was William. William Randolph Hurst. And there's this amazing book called The Chief that I've been reading about it. Have you ever seen the or have you ever heard of the movie Citizen Kane? It's regarded as one of the best movies of all time and the main character in the movie is based off of William Randolph Hurst. William Randolph Hurst was a larger than life character. So he went to Harvard

45:30 and uh like kinda took over the clubs uh system. Do you know what that is? Like basically it was sort of like Frats. The skull and bones. Yeah, like times ten. It was like Fratz times ten. It was like uh where all the cool kids would go to and but they like had a ranking system. They even would rank like the best clubs. And he was like a very natural leader and also he was very rich. His parents gave him like a lavish allowance and he just like spent and spent, but generally seemed like a good guy and was very well liked. And so he convinces his father, dad I graduated college. I need something to do. Can we please buy the San Francisco examiner? Which at the time was one of the uh I think it was an important newspaper in San Francisco, but it I don't think it was the biggest, but it was kind of like important and and mismanaged. And it was like let me buy it. Let me do this.

46:11 So his dad's like, All right, dude, fine. And his dad was actually on board with this because his dad wanted to run for office and he was like, William, run the newspaper, help get get it popular and then just like promote me. And William did it and it worked. His dad became uh a senator of California and it and it worked. It was very effective. But William Randall first, he realized that he loved newspapers. He loved him like crazy. And so he builds up the um the examiner a little bit. And what he did was sort of

46:36 what modern journalism and media is today. Have you heard of this phrase called yellow journalism? No. Sounds like a insult. It's not. Well, it's it's it it sounds racist, uh which is what I it's not racist. Uh so basically, uh up until like the early nineteen hundreds, so newspapers were boring. They were just like facts. They were just like uh sheets of paper with like black text. with the headlines were not significantly larger than the text. And if you go and look at old New York Times articles Or or like if you ever seen like Archive New York Times, you'll kinda notice this. There weren't photos at the time. But this was a big deal because

47:10 Radio and movies weren't a thing. And so newspapers were how everyone got their information on a daily and weekly basis. And so the news indust in industry was had this massive Tam, but like It wasn't like the most exciting thing. And so William Randall Purse, who's this young charismatic guy, he was like Make the headlines bigger, add photos. And then the phrase, if it bleeds, it leads, it came from that era and he was the guy. So there was basically him and this guy named Joseph Pulitzer. You've heard the Pulitzer Prize, right?

47:38 Uh Joseph Pulitzer, another St. Louis guy. He started the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and then eventually bought other newspapers because newspapers were kind of like software companies, except local software companies. You start one in one market, then you go start one in another market, and another market, and another market, and they're subscription based and people will stay for decades. So it's a very good business and it's like a land and expand type of business model. It was Joseph Pulitzer, who's like the man, and then this up and coming young Hurst who's funded by his dad. They go back and forth for years and years and one of the ways they go back and forth is through this thing called yellow journalism. Basic the s the idea where is they put cartoons in their newspapers and One day Hearst made the cartoon like a yellow guy, like he wore like a yellow shirt and the yellow background, and he had these huge headlines like for example, one time a US Navy ship was bombed, and we weren't even sure if it was the Spanish who did it, but he was like the Spanish were the ones who bombed the thing.

48:30 And that is one of the reasons why the Spanish American war started was because Hearst riled up all these people using this. The yellow thing means it says uh style of reporting that prioritizes eye catching headlines, scandals, emotional narratives over factual news to boost circulation. Get started. Like you said, Spanish American war with Pulitzer and Hurst. Yeah, so kind of interesting stuff, right? No. He was a he was a crazy man, Hurst.

48:56 He was sober, he didn't party. But he loved women. And he loved. Spending. So at the peak of his uh the Hearst media empire at this point, like

49:06 decades down the line of doing it, he owned so many different newspapers that something like twenty percent of America got their news from Hearst. He was spending the equivalent. Of twenty million dollars every single month just to live. And a handful of time. Yeah. The a handful of years he spent two to four billion dollars building homes. So Ernest Hemingway, you know uh I think it was Ernest Hemingway or or another like reputable author was like, If God were to come down to America and build a home

49:34 It would look like w one of Hearse's home. So he was famous for just being a insane spender. So at one point he's not spending in the building case, right? He's he's just Uh he's doing it as a business, he's selling the homes or no, he's just building'em to have'em. To have'em. So his empire, he was amazing at building companies, and he was amazing at spending all of the money. He was famous for telling his accountants

49:58 Just find out where the money is from. And he was also famous for collecting, and which is what I'm going to talk about. He used to collect journalists. That was one of his skill set. He would find talented people. The i the thing is is he he collected everything. So he collected homes, he would collect rare coins, he collected cars, he collected exotic animals, he collected everything. Have you heard of the Hearst Castle? No. The Hearst Castle, Google Hearst Castle. So it's a forty thousand acre estate in middle of California, not quite middle, but cl like uh a little bit outside of LA, on the water of the ocean, and he had uh this thing called Hurst Castle and he had zebras in And camels and polar bears. He had a zoo there. This was his personal home. And it was so big that when he died, he was like, I can't give this to anyone because it costs too much to run it. I'm just gonna give it I'm just gonna give it to the California government and they're gonna turn it into a museum. And that's what Hurst Castle is.

50:48 But okay, these numbers you're saying are kinda crazy. So you said twenty million a month. Two to four billion annually of spending. The best way to describe this is Imagine imagine this. Imagine the those numbers don't even work. Twenty twenty million a month. Two hundred forty million a year, but then he said two billion. Give me I just explain these numbers because I said was uh he he he he was quoted as saying on average he spends X amount a month, which is the equivalent of twenty million a month.

51:15 But there was occasional years where it was up to two to four billion when he had huge projects like the Hearst Castle. The money all came from the paper empire or money all came from the paper empire. So he used the Company like his piggy bank, which wasn't wrong because he owned one hundred percent of the business. So he's able to do that. The problem is, imagine this. Imagine Uh so at the time he was actually grew to be one of the top ten richest men in the world. Which let's say it's Jeff Bezos. Imagine the government saying, Jeff

51:45 You owe a lot of people a lot of money. We have to put Amazon under receivership. So like the bank is gonna like run it for a couple of years or you could still run it, but like we we have to like step in here and get Everyone's gotta get paid. And that happened multiple times. So imagine that one of the largest companies in the world when Hurst is in the s in his sixties and seventy years years old, for multiple times for two to three years in a row, the government would step in and be like, dude You gotta pay these people. So like we're we're gonna put you on an allowance'cause that's how big of a fish she was. And that happened multiple times.

52:15 I'm just looking I'm looking at all these I'm just looking I got seven tabs open right now because I gotta see what this guy's doing. Google Hurst Mansion Santa Monica. This is just like the photo. is just gonna be insane. So he you it's no longer there. But he literally had a

52:33 a a mansion. It it's hard to even fathom. But literally on the sand to where you walk out the front door and your feet are in the water. It looks like a it looks like a resort hotel first,'cause it's on the it's like on a beach. And it's as big as a hotel. So he had dozens of these homes. But not only that, he had the most expensive art collection on earth. He had the best car collection on earth. He had everything. He loved collecting. Let's review. What do we love?

52:59 High charisma at a young age, leader of men. took over the Harvard social scene. We like that. The second thing you like is Land and expand, newspaper monopoly Third thing we like. Media

53:12 Innovator. Yeah. Why are we just doing transactional informational news? Let's sell stories, baby. Let's sell emotion, creates this yellow journalism. trigger some wars. Ah, it's okay, whatever. So that's the third interesting piece. Then the fourth is lavish, extravagant spending, man of taste collecting cars.

53:30 Animals, clothes. Jewelry, homes, all the things that we like. So w there's a lot we like. There's a lot of things that like If it his Tinder profile matches our uh what we like uh here over here on MFM. So so far so far so good. Well we haven't even got to the part you mentioned, which was about like Creatives. And I don't wanna um we don't have to dwell on this, but I don't I can't give him a pass. He didn't like the Jews. So Joseph Pul Pulitzer

53:55 Uh he used to call him Jusph Pulitzer. Like he and he also he also had um hi hi hi before Hitler was um Before the nineteen forties happened, Hitler was like a a leader of Germany who like revitalized Germany. And he had Hitler as a columnist and everyone knew Hitler was anti Semitic, but they didn't know that he was um Like killing Jews. Uh so anyway, he doesn't get a pass. So he did a lot of bad stuff there. Um but you know, we're gonna talk about a whole man.

54:23 So um and so I'll last I'll tell you what what Hurst is today, and then we'll get in the good stuff. So Hurst now Um, they are a media company, but it's still family owned. I believe it's one hundred percent family owned. I believe it's the they do something like uh fifteen billion dollars a year in revenue. And what's interesting is when he died, he set up this amazing trust. And I think it's the largest trust in America that's like this, where the trust runs the company. And basically the trust um has um Six

54:50 n uh non family members, six family members on it, and those are the ones who vote on the company. And it appears to be quite well run. So Hearst now owns Cosmo Cosmo M magazine, which you know they own I think they own GQ and a bunch of other magazines, but they also own twenty percent of ESPN. Yeah. That's worth like twenty billion dollars. They own half of A and E. They own like a lot of local news stations. They own Fin Finch ratings, which you probably don't care about, but it's like a be B to B boring thing. They still own a ton of stuff, including the original newspaper and SF that he bought. So it's still a prolific company. And interesting story. They tried they didn't try to buy the hustle, but when we were selling the hustle, we met with them and my wife, her mom and dad, lived next door to the Hearst Tower. So they own this beautiful tower in midtown Manhattan.

55:34 And I slept at her mom and dad's house when I had the meeting and the next day I go to the meeting And they're like, Where'd you stay? And I was like, Look out that window. That's literally the bedroom that I slept in last night. Like most of it. So so uh you mentioned two things. One was Managing creatives. I'm curious about that. And then I have a different question after that about You said you wanted to build like a two hundred year company and I wanna ask you some questions about that too. So first give me the creative part and then we'll go the other way.

56:02 So W here's what made him interesting. So Hurst was um he discovered so much talent. he was famous for hiring the best people and at one point there was even in like um A congressional hearing of like Should we?

56:17 Is there like a monopoly for creative talent? Like is that like a thing? And so like people actually like questioned if that was a thing because he was famous for hiring the best people. And a couple of people who you'll recognize are Mark Twain. So he was very early in being one of Mark Twain's first employers or first like promoters. Jack London. uh famous writer and a bunch of like these really great people.

56:37 And There's a h a whole bunch of others that aren't particularly relevant to everyone now, but they were relevant then. And he was famous for basically personally recruiting these people, paying them more money. How is he finding them?'Cause there's no social media back in the day. There's no portfolios. How does he Even figuring out.

56:55 Who's the diamond in the rough? What would what would he look at? So this is where it's interesting. And I think that both you and I can identify with this a little bit. Even though he was like a clickbait guy. And he would sensationalise stuff. He still loved words. And he loved like beautiful prose. And so he was a very uh It was like a dichotomy dichotomy where he like was like all about like

57:14 building big and like flashy headlines and also like beautiful, like isn't this beautiful? Look at the sentence this this this author wrote. And so he would find, like for example, there's a story where he was based in SF, he found a little pamphlet that this one like twenty three year old journalist in Oakland wrote And he wrote he like read it and he immediately went to Oakland and he personally recruit the guy. And what he was famous for was A personally showing up. So at the time Imagine um Imagine, you know, I think Phoebe Gates is like in the news now for being a startup founder. Imagine Phoebe Gates knocking on Sean's door like one year or six months into M FM and being like'cause she read my blog, you know. Yeah, it's like and and her saying like you got it. You got what it takes. And he did that. He was famous for that. He would personally find these people. So he actually cared about that. And two, he paid really well.

58:02 Uh he was famous for like he's like my philosophy, which I think is a good takeaway. We see this time and time again. We're seeing this with Facebook super intelligence, and that's to a way bigger extreme of like Getting the best people under one roof, even if it means that your profits are gonna be really tiny or break even or at a loss. It normally Tends to work out. And that's what he did. And so his

58:22 Newsroom was famous amongst the guys who loved actual news as being the best talent. And he let them do what they want. Additionally, what he was really good at is he would take cover for them. So for example Um, let's just say that like Or for like you and I, right? We work with HubSpot on this. There's been multiple times where Where we maybe have done something a little bit cr um

58:43 Controversial. And like if HubSpot were to be like dude I don't like what you said, but I got your back. It's cool for you to say like whatever you want. Or imagine like Howard Stern in Serious Radio and Howard Stern saying something crazy. That that's what uh he did all the time. So there'd be times where they would say sh something shitty about the sitting president. And Hurst would be like it's cool, dude. You're you're safe to say that. I got you. And so he got like he did that all the time. So he was um He got loyalty that way. And yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about because I know you're writing a book on creativity. And so I I I'm the reason I'm interested in hers was because of the legacy thing, but also the uh managing creatives. Because I'm managing creatives now at my company and I have set these like hard deadlines.

59:21 And these rewards for them. And I'm learning when I'm learning about managing a creative team, that's the exact opposite of what I should be doing. And so that's why I was like learning about rent rent up her. So my my rant a little bit on him is done. Well, I think collecting talent. I think managing creatives is different than collecting talent. I think collecting talent is actually the The more important part uh of of of the equation and the part that I think everybody wants to do. Let me ask you, you started this by saying I'm interested in these

59:49 Like multi hundred year. Kind of companies. 'Cause I wanna make Hampton that. What Did you take away from that side of it?

59:58 Well I think that when When I tend to care about things, I care about a ton and also I care about it not at all. So like Do you say also or either or? Also.

1:00:08 So it's like I care, I care about it. I really want it to happen. I love it. But like if it doesn't happen, I'm like Nah. You know. Right. By the way, the that's the perfect disposition for an entrepreneur. Like yeah, so it's like de a a a d a deep desire for the outcome and then a complete detachment from the outcome as well.

1:00:24 Yeah, so that's sort of So it's I that's h sometimes hard for me to explain to people, but that's how I feel. Where I'm like, I want this so bad and then if like it rains that day, I'm like Uh, I was looking forward to play baseball, but video games are fun. You know what I mean? Like it it doesn't matter. Um, but anyway, I'm interested in it just because I think it's A fun to surround myself with people and I think having a company is a great way to decide who I spend my days with. And B, I do want like my family to be proud of me, and I would love to have something that I can bring them into the fold and we have an excuse to work together. So for example, uh Hurst Junior was an entrepreneur, his father was an entrepreneur. There was some bonding that they had where it's like even if they weren't in the same company, they were still in the same family and they each had overlapping companies, there was like this really cool

1:01:07 relationship that they had that I think is great. So that's one of the reasons why I'm interested in it. I've told my kids Um That We're gonna work together, but in the reverse. So I think most people who, you know, build business and become successful, they wanna

1:01:22 You know, they want their kids to inherit the business, to take over the business. That's the I would say default. That's not my plan. Other people wanna leave money and be like, You start your own thing, but I will like This will enable you to chase your dreams. That's also not what I'm gonna do. I I'm more of a believer in the Warren Buffett money, which is uh Warren Buffett philosophy, which is you give your kids. Enough to do anything, but not enough to do everything.

1:01:44 To not enough to do nothing. Sorry. So so that I believe in Uh But the th but the w what I've been telling'em'cause I uh for my son and daughter who are old enough to kind of Understand. They uh I'm like, Yeah, you guys you guys can go do whatever you want. You can make movies, you could build things, you could do whatever you want to do.

1:02:03 It'd be cool if you guys work together, but like, you know, whatever we'll see. But I was like, I'm gonna work for you. I was like when I retire, my goal like I wanna be I'm gonna work on whatever your I'll be your intern, basically. And they're like, but you're gonna have to pay me. And I'm like, Okay, I guess I'll pay you then. I will pay you. Uh how much you wanna pay? They're like, You have to pay me ten, ten dollar bucks. Which is what they call money. And I'm like, all right, I'll pay you ten dollar bucks, but I'm gonna come work for you. And I think this is actually a better plan. Than being like

1:02:28 I will have this empire and you will someday run this empire simply. I'm open to that as well. You know, you know, whatever. Just as long as we can be together. Right? Exactly. Exactly. And I figured figured the best way to be together is for me to be their voluntary like In turn of whatever the whatever they're trying to do in life is gonna end up being better for me. So that that's uh I just wanna throw that out there as like an alternate view to the traditional to traditional path. I just wanna ask you one question'cause you're learning about all this creativity stuff. So Sean's writing a book on

1:02:59 create the creative process. That's cool. But tell me about managing creative people. Are there any tips on that? Well, most of what I've been studying is the individual. So how do you how do you reach your max potential of being able to make dope shit?

1:03:15 So like anybody in any endeavor doesn't actually matter what what endeavor you're in. Like we think of artist as like whatever painter, musician, whatever. And obviously that's True. you know, a hundred percent of their value and and sort of output is gonna be based on their Creative work. Um, but you know, even if you're a uh CEO or an entrepreneur, you're creating a company or creating products.

1:03:36 Um honestly, even if you're a dentist and you have a dental practice, like you're gonna either you're gonna be undifferentiated or you're gonna be differentiated. Like it's the it's the game of stand out. And so do you care about standing out? Do you care about do doing something that is Beyond normal. And if you do, like you probably want to untap. as much of your potential as you can. So I've been first studying

1:03:55 How do you get yourself to do it, which is like I would say eighty percent of the battle. Then the second is group dynamics. So how do you in a creative how does a creative team work? To make this work, which is kind of like when Pixar makes movies. And they have the brain trust and the directors all have to learn how to actually give feedback to each other. And how do you show somebody something at a raw stage? And how how do you bring it up and how do they interact with you so that one plus one equals three, so that the product gets better.

1:04:21 versus your ego getting bruised or them taking in a different direction or you feeling shut down or somet something like that from raw early work, which is usually not great. I haven't even worried about the other side, which is kind of what you're talking about, which is how do you hire and manage that talent. Because that's not like been the focus for for what I'm looking at. So I don't have a lot to share there. I actually think there is a interesting, you know, just to props to you. I feel like with the hustle. You spotted a couple of people, right? Like a lot of people now have seen Steph Smith on our podcast a bunch, or Trung has become a famous person on Twitter. And like you found these people as

1:04:54 Diamonds in the Roth. You brought them in. You empower them. You're forgetting one of the more popular ones. Who am I forgetting? You

1:05:03 Bro. Bro, bro. I came to you. Yeah, sure. Fair enough. Okay, you can you can have that. Well we'll give you that one if it helps you. But I think you've done a good job of that, like identifying what is A plus talent. And I would say like the biggest thing When you said that stood out to me when you were talking was

1:05:32 You talked about paying people more. And This is like one of the great asymmetric Arbitrages that exist. Which is that

1:05:40 The person who is truly great. is worth somewhere between ten and a hundred times. The average person. But they'll never cost ten to a hundred times. Only only maybe now with the AI researcher thing where the AI researchers are making like

1:05:56 hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Maybe now they're getting paid their actual worth, but like in uh in every other industry in all of history, it's like The A plus person versus the B plus person. Is getting paid.

1:06:10 Ten percent more, thirty percent more, fifty percent more, even a hundred and fifty percent more, Max, but they're generating you know, one thousand percent more uh uh of of return of work. And so the The The mindset shift has to be there of like The whole game is find the best people.

1:06:28 I'll give you a little story. So I was before this podcast I was telling Ben'cause I've been hanging out I'm in Austin, I was hanging out with Ben. And I just said I said, Hey, what of our what of our conversation in the last twenty four hours Do you think would make Like be useful for people on MFM.

1:06:41 Um not just entertaining, but useful. And he goes, Oh the thing you said about Um one of our companies. So in one of our companies We kinda hit a plateau. So we got into the like twenty million plus plus range of revenue.

1:06:56 Which is great because we were growing fifty percent a year, but then we plateaued. And I had stepped out of the company. About two years ago. And so the question is like What

1:07:06 What do we do? And I had told Ben, I was like, We're at a little bit of a pickle. Because To be great in that type of a company. Let's just take let's just use the acknowledging you're doing of Hurst, right?

1:07:17 To be great in the newspaper business. You have to make the most compelling Media. Right. Stories that hook people.

1:07:25 That get people to become daily readers. If you don't do that, it's pre hard. Like, what are you doing? That's the main thing. And so Identify the main thing and then either The person who's doing it has to be like

1:07:38 The world class figure it outer of that. So it's like You know, you were this with the hustle, I feel, initially. Which was with the hustle. Like I remember you wrote this style this writing style guide. And you're like, This is how we write. This is what we write about.

1:07:52 This is what's a good story versus a yeah, a story we don't do that other people might think is good, but we don't think it's good. This is what a good headline looks like. This is what a bad headline looks like. And You were the figure outer of the main thing that you needed to get right in order for that business to work. In let's say e commerce, like I I don't know if you saw Grooms just sold the like Gummies Company or whatever.

1:08:12 And they sold for a billion dollars. And what was that like uh it's like they just picked the right category with the right model. Obviously a bunch of things have to go right when you get a a billion dollar exit in three years. So I'm not gonna say you isolate it to one thing. What were the main variables? The main variables were like, yes, they're in a great category or like supplements are a great category. And then Secondly, they were in like a uh they were on trend with like greens, basically. So like you have athletic greens, but then you had greens as gummies.

1:08:38 Um and yeah, the product as a gummy is good and differentiated. But like look A lot of people were sp basically saying like The genius of Groons was That they turned athletic greens into a gummy. And like, guess what? Like a lot of people can do that, would do that. If that's all it took, they would be copied.

1:08:56 Like that. You know, it would be it would be trivial for somebody else to create a gummy, a product equivalent of w of their product. The thing that was really hard to copy was their marketing excellence. And basically the dirty secret of all E commerce and D to C businesses is that they are World class

1:09:12 I just don't marketing funnels. It's like they're world class at the Facebook, TikTok, Google ad game. Going to a landing page, getting you to buy a thing, and then emailing you incessantly and texting you nonstop until you buy again. They were good at that. They're not just good. They're they're they're world class at that. And so anyways, back to kind of like the useful lesson. The useful lesson is Figure out what the main thing you're gonna have to get right.

1:09:33 That's gonna be like seventy percent of of the of the battle. And then either the founder has to be so world class at it that they're gonna do all the hard figuring out. And then they're gonna Like delegate to anybody else like to do the work, but they're gonna do the figuring out at each at each step. So for example, people don't know this, but at the hustle when you started

1:09:52 Um you know, you started with the event and then you had to figure out how to the what was the main thing for the event? It was like get speakers. That I can use to sell the tickets. And you were just constantly playing this game of like Can I get a badass speaker and then can I tell the world that this speaker's gonna be here and that they have to come and buy this ticket to this event?

1:10:09 And then when you started uh before you started the newsletter, you were blogging. And it was like we have to have these v articles that go viral. And being great at going viral is gonna be the thing that is either gonna make this company successful or not successful. Right. And then you had to grow figure out then when you switch the newsletter is a different thing. But let's just take the going viral part. You gotta be world class at that, or you're gonna have to learn how to recruit world class people at doing that thing. There's only two ways to win.

1:10:31 You are the world class person. Doing the figuring out? Or your world world class recruiter. To get the people who are gonna do the figuring out. There's really only two things to be great at with that.

1:10:41 And so in terms of like Your question about Hurst of like what what stands out to me is it sounds like He was a world class recruiter. Of the great people. And we often hear about companies that are the opposite where it's just, you know, the the the gene the person is the genius, the product genius or whatever. But like you go look at Apple or any of the great companies that do things over time, or like I just read the Elon biography, same thing.

1:11:02 Like Yeah, he's spectacularly smart. No doubt. But it's the legions of really world class people. That he's able to recruit.

1:11:12 bring in that are actually gonna be able to f uh, you know, develop the breakthroughs. Yeah, that's the other skill. So what we just did is an example of a Podcast Aliop. So I did a good job driveling down the court and just lobbing the ball up in the air and you just slam ducked that shit and brought it home. That was a very good job. Uh the the the All right. Is this it? Is that the pod?

1:11:32 Dude, I had them. I had a midlife crisis yesterday. I was we were at the uh as I'm staying at this like nice hotel and we were at the pool And there was a girl there who was just her friend. It was her and her friend and her She just was like t clearly taking like Instagram like Influencer picks.

1:11:48 It's like Pretending she's having a good time. She wasn't having a good time. But she's like pretending, she's like posing as if like a really fun thing was happening and her friend was like getting the right shot. And then they would like quickly like Drop the drink and then you know, be like, Okay, all right, next we need to Okay, come over here.

1:12:03 Make it look like I'm doing this. And that was happening right next to me. And I was laughing at her, mocking her, and judging her, and then I was like Guess it's not so different what I do as I like. My vlogger is like right over there for my YouTube channel. I guess 'Cause it's not that different what I'm doing. I just posted a a video on my new YouTube channel of me like working out.

1:12:25 It's not that different, I guess. D the worst is now that I am an Instagram superstar is when I'm walking on the street and I'm talking to you. What is the worst part of now being an Instagram superstar? Is walking on the street and talking to a camera. And then the worst part is the people if I'm around the same person. And they hear me do a second take until they know for a fact that I'm not on a FaceTime. Uh that is the worst part. And they know for a fact that I'm not good enough to do it in one take. Oh my god, that's the worst part. And they know for a fact that I'm self conscious about it and felt like what I said was a little bit wrong and that uh I'm insecure and I wanted to do it better. And do try again.

1:13:03 Like honest question, is the la is the Loss of self respect worth gain of influence and money. Yeah. All right, carry on then. Yeah. What are you talking about? Is that the stupidest question ever? That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

1:13:32 I'm put my law in it like my days off On the roadless travel never looking back Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor. It is a podcast that we want you to check out. It's called D to C Pod. It's hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas. And this is a podcast about all things direct to consumer, D to C. It's e commerce stores, it's how you optimize your brand. And they're talking with founders, marketers, and the platform creators. About all kinds of things that you need to know for D to C, you know, website conversion, paid ads, Facebook ads, consumer trends, email marketing. If you want to know the stories behind your favorite brands, this podcast is for you. So check it out. Listen to D2C Pod, wherever you get your podcast.

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