We found the weirdest ways to make $1M, $1B, and $5B

0:00 So today we're talking about A very specific topic that I never thought we would go there. Sam, did you ever think we'd go here? Uh maybe by episode two thousand, but I wasn't sure if it's gonna happen this year. Yeah, it's a little early. Today's episode is about The business

0:15 Of butts. A guts. Sue the intro music. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day song. On the road less travel, never looking back. So

0:30 Sam, have you ever seen the story about how uh Honestly, actually it's not a it's not an act of desperation to talk about this. It's actually This is us flexing on everybody. It's like, dude, we can take anything. And we can make it entertaining and about business. I don't know if you ever seen Larry Bird one year.

0:45 He was playing against the the Atlanta Hawks and he decided in the second half he was just too good and he's decided to only shoot with his left hand. Yeah, I saw that and for the whole second half. That's this. This is our shoot only with our left hand. To to to try to do a full Great business episode on With the constraint of everything's got to be related to butts and guts. Dude, we actually we you know, we've done an episode on Rose Nama Unis when the UFC fighter when she was doing like her walkout because we thought that was inspiring. We actually should have done a whole thing on Larry Bird trash talking. Doesn't relate to business, but just his ego, I love. Also, one one of the greatest nicknames ever. Uh, and in fact, if I was white, I would try to steal this. You should try to steal this. The hick from French Lick.

1:21 This is one of the greatest nicknames I've ever heard. It's the best. I love like stories where he walks into like the uh the all star room and he's like, I'm just looking around to see who's gonna get second in the three point contest. All right, so we're gonna do butts and guts. That's a that's a framework. Uh that's that's something. Our YouTube team was like, Hey, you guys, we've analyzed the data. And you guys need to do themed episodes. You know, pick a topic, guys. Don't just show up and just shoot shit randomly. You gotta pick a topic. That gets more views. And so we were like, got it. And I think they meant like

1:55 three ways to make a million dollars before the age of twenty five, you know, like U two B type of things. And we're like, guys, no worries, we got it. We're gonna do a butts and guts episode. It's gonna pop off. It's gonna be great. Uh do you have the first first butts and guts story? I have Some butts and gut stories. Let me give you a you go one and then I'll I'll give you a good one. Okay. I'm gonna give you a quick one. This actually

2:17 My wife taught me about this. So A few years ago Yeah, maybe seven, eight years ago. It was before kids. My wife is like, I'm like, Hey, what are we doing this Saturday? What do you wanna do? You wanna go for a hike? You wanna farmers market? What should we do? And she's like, I gotta go into the city, I'm taking a class. And I was like A class in the city. Wha what do you mean?

2:35 And she was like kind of being evasive about it. She's like, No, I'll be back later, don't worry about it. And her sister comes and picks her up and I'm like, What's the class? And she's like It's called the twerk out. And I go home and I Google and I see that there's this amazing business. I don't know if you remember when twerking kinda really came on the scene. Like ten years ago. There was a woman who

2:57 Basically Made it her business. Her name was I think called uh Lex Twerkout. And I her name is Lexi. And this woman was touring the country. And she was making millions of dollars touring the country, teaching women in every city.

3:12 How to twerk. And so you there would the class would be full. It was like sold out months in advance. And you would go and there'd be hundreds of women. And she's like all right, ladies. Put that dump out. And then she's like, and Twerk, let me see your and she's like, get a baseline. The point was, I couldn't believe this. And I started Googling it. And actually there were several stories of women who jumped on the trend. It's like those businesses that started selling PPE during COVID. When the twerk trend started, there's another story of this woman who was a kindergarten teacher

3:39 Who decided to take up, you know, twerk training as a as a side hustle and ended up making millions of dollars and it became a big issue because the parents were like, that's Whatever, that's Miss Miss Henderson. I get a wha what is she doing? And I just thought it was amazing that you could make millions of dollars literally just teaching women how to twerk. Where are they now? So she Initially she was like this is the next Zumba.

4:02 And like she did all these interviews being like this is the next Zoom, but like Zumba was this kind of like Latin dancing thing that they translated into a fitness class. I'm doing that with twerking. And um she started getting all these celebrities to come to her stuff. So like Christina Million was like a huge fan of it. And then there was like, you know, other famous people that I don't really fully know who they are.

4:21 And she was approached by investors is like let's blow this up, let's take this concept nationwide. No no International. And then I think it kind of fizzled out. She's now like tr an aspiring musician. Uh so she's like a a female rapper now. So she's She made her money during during that phase when the getting was good. I don't think it tur it didn't turn into like a a nationwide franchise concept like they had hoped. But I don't know if she just got bored and moved on. Or it fizzled out and the the the numbers started dropping. But at the time

4:49 It was like you had to b you the these tickets were hard to come by. It was like the hottest ticket in town. Yeah. Yeah. So did your wife learn how to twerk? The funny thing is

5:00 already knew how to twerk. She was just going for a refresher course, you know what I mean? Student of the game. Precious uh Instagram story the other day. He was like, My you know, five year old wanted to learn how to play piano. We took him to these classes, and he was getting a little nervous. So Uh Because at the end of like the six or twelve month class you had to do a recital and I said, Screw it. I'm gonna do it too. So he went and learned how to play piano alongside his kid, and I see a video of his kid playing Twinkle S Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars at the recital, and then Josh goes up and sits down and plays like the same thing. And uh

5:39 I think that that could be a good mother-daughter bond that your kids have, right? They could have a plan. All right. So that's my that's my first one. This is just an appetizer, by the way. This is just like This is like warm up stretching for me here. All right, so that's just I just kinda Got my shoulder loose and gave you that one. Go ahead. Okay, fecal microbiota transplants. You haven't heard of that word? Those are four words I never heard together. Yeah. Well, it's three. Uh it's three words, but yeah, you should you haven't heard those three either.

6:14 This I came across this in two ways. The first way was I was listening to a podcast with Shane Smith. Shane Smith was the guy who found advice, and for a little while, about ten years ago, he was like the big man on campus, big shot. And he told this story about how he had colitis or something like that, or Crohn's, some type of um Gut issue. And he got surgery where they took another person's poop, like a healthy person's poop, and they put it into his gut. Have you heard of that?

6:40 No. So it's called that's what it's called. It's called Fecal Microbiota Transplants. And there's a ninety percent effective rate. It's the it's poop or it's not even like the bacteria. It's actual poop goes in. Well, I don't know where you draw the line. Like I don't know, like is it like a minuscule amount or a tablespoon? I'm not sure, like, you know, like how much do you have to like zoom in on the microscope before between poop becomes bacteria, but ultimately it's still like

7:06 poop, you're putting fecal you're fecal matter, you're putting into someone's gut. And I was talking to this woman recently, and she was telling me that she was working on a startup. And it sounded actually ridiculous that this was a thing. But it was kind of brilliant and opened up my eyes. And she was working on this startup where they found a handful of people that have amazing microbiomes.

7:27 And they were taking their poop and you can actually replicate it. Uh in like a petri dish. And sell it to people. And so you can get a surgery or get uh I don't even know technically if it's a surgery. I don't know what the if that would be defined as a surgery, but you basically are taking someone's shit and you put it up in their colon. And it changes their mic microbiome and it has like a ninety percent Uh effective rate.

7:48 And What she was telling me was that their premise is that they're uh thinking about working In a way where people work with fitness influencers. And uh so instead of like someone selling a workout plan or an ab plan, you can sell someone else's microbiome. And let me give you an example. So

8:08 A few amazing ways that using someone else's poop and get one of these like fecal transplants. is for depression, for Crohn's, for uh colitis. Uh uh even anxiety. And some people even think like it can help with autism because people who have a autism, something is funky going on with their b microbiome.

8:26 And you can actually like use this to improve those conditions. However They were doing a study, Harvard did a study in two thousand and nineteen, and they have found that elite athletes, specifically endurance athletes they they have something special in their microbiome, so in their gut, that allows them to have slightly better endurance. Specifically meaning a uh like different lactic threshold. So like Without getting too nitty gritty, like your lactic threshold is like how well you deal with lactate, which means how well when your muscles get like really tense and really sh and you go through strenuous activity, how well your body can recycle that acid in order to k help you keep going. Well anyway.

9:02 They have found that when they have t when they took Certainly. Uh endurance athletes microbiome basically their shit and put it up into another human being. Their endurance is better, something like fifteen or twenty percent longer.

9:15 Uh they can like let's say run for a marathon. And this woman's premise was that she can take hypothetically a Lance Armstrong And sell his microbiome. And I thought that was insane and incredibly fascinating. And I went and looked up a lot of the research. I think openbiome.org. It's a nonprofit that's like leading a lot of the stuff. This all seems incredibly

9:36 Legitimate. Not today, but in the next five or ten years and I thought it was so weird and so awesome. Would you ever do this? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Dude, I like sure, for sure. Like when someone talks about PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, they talk about it like it's a bad thing, and I'm like I

9:54 I want my performance. I would love that. Yeah. I itject me with everything. I I've tried so many things. This is pretty wild. So do you know like roughly what stages that's at? Like people are doing this. People do I think it's a wealthy person thing. I think it's like like plastic surgery, where it's like a a you have to have money to do it. You have to be like in a certain category to justify this. But no, like people for sure are getting this right now for Crohn's and colliders. Okay, so so so hold on. So you said I would for sure do this and this is available. So does that mean Your appointment's booked, or what does that mean? Well, it's soon. Uh what it means is they are doing the so there's like cr for example, colitis, that's a colon, uh

10:35 Illness. You have to have a condition to do it. You're saying Yeah, like that's like one of the reasons. Now to do it for like anxiety or to make me like run a faster five K, I think that's a little bit more elective and like, you know, the money is not in that area at the moment. Like studies are showing that it's incredibly promising. So people are doing it, but it's not like a common thing. That's interesting. Okay, let's move to move to number three. Before we do it, you wanna t take a quick little Walk through history here.

11:01 The the history of butts and yeah, it it's pretty interesting. So Back in the olden days. It was a highly attractive trait, not for the aesthetic part of it. But because it was like rooted oh if somebody has a strong glue strong pelvis Area.

11:16 They're gonna be able to run, they're gonna be able to hunt, they're gonna have a a very long and healthy life. And so People have studied this. They have a a waist to hip ratio. You know the you know you remember this wast to hip ratio point seven is the ideal. Wait, I I think Sir Mixelot rapped about that, didn't he? I think point seven was more of the late. And actually was a thing more for men than for women. So the the

11:43 So appeal of having a a a nice butt was more important for men because they were the ones who needed to go hunt and gather and all that. But then there's also this uh statue. I don't know if you've heard uh I don't know how you say it, but it's the Venus statue. It's literally translates to Venus of the beautiful buttocks. Have you s have you seen this statue before? Let's see.

12:01 Uh it's a Roman statue that was w uh where this woman was just worshipped. For having a great butt. Okay, so I'm zooming in on this the statues, but I mean it's fine. But imagine back in the Roman days. This was This was as good as it gets back then, right? Like they didn't have like that Kardashian genetics yet and the the the surgical enhancements. So this was like

12:25 This was it. By the way, the comments on this are so funny on Reddit. Like literally the top comment just said. What am I on? Stone Hub? Uh it's so good. So this is very like this is mediocre.

12:41 Not even in the same category of someone worthy of having a statue that lasts two thousand years to uh obsess over. But just think about the honor at the time to be immortalized in this way. The average person that was was had a pancake ass, and if this was considered like Artworthy. Right. And then and then there was this this era. So this is not now the Victorian era. So you might think, oh, that was just a phase. No, no, it's all it's just translated. From one era to the next. So this little thing back here, this is called the bustle.

13:11 And uh the bustle is basically this artificial enhancement to make Yeah, to make it look like you have a big butt. And so this was kinda like this uh This sort of like Victorian age or whatever. So this it sort of lasted then as well. And so this has been the thing for a very long time. And then there was a brief period in the 90s. were actually flat butts and s more slim women.

13:31 Became the thing, the Cape Moss era. The Cape Moss era. I not a fan of that era. Not my favorite era. Well Luckily the world came to its senses and then With J Love first, that Beyonce. I I I was I asked.

13:44 AI I was like, Hey, can you explain how this all shifted? And it was like Honestly, J Lo. Um Jalen was a huge influence here. And You know, it led to now what's kind of like gone overboard, I would say, and there's a new business. And that business is related here. So Sam, do you know the number one

14:01 Fastest growing. plastic surgery that there is. Uh I would probably guess. I'm guessing uh it's the uh the uh poopy diaper Kim Kardashian uh what's it called a Brazilian But The Brazilian buttlift, the BBL.

14:15 And so this is a cosmetic surgery. You basically transfer fat it's actually a double win. So you take fat from the belly. And you inject it into the butt. And it is the fastest growing cosmetic procedure. It's growing It's grown eight hundred percent.

14:29 In the last decade. So it is growing very fast. Do you wanna see the guy's face who invented this, by the way? Yeah. Yeah. All right, here we go.

14:42 Uh this is the guy? Uh the happy man. This guy Evo. So Evo invented this. And he's actually kind of a legend in the medical profession. In fact, when the Olympics were in Brazil. Uh in I think twenty sixteen, he was one of the guys like who's holding the torch.

14:59 for like a period of it. Right. Like they only select like eight people to touch the torch. He was one of them. And so he he was the inventor of the procedure. It didn't get as popular though until later when they sort of improved it. Because it was kinda dangerous, it was kinda painful and they they've improved it since then. And now nearly a billion a year. Is spent.

15:17 on BBL's just in America. It is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery. And there's a whole business around it. Actually that's pretty interesting. that people have popped up of recovery from your BBL surgery.

15:30 How m how much is a I I don't even know how much these things cost. How much does that cost? About twelve thousand dollars on average. But if you're in Miami and you want the best doc, you're you know, you're more like thirty, forty thousand dollars to get a BBL. That doesn't seem crazy at all, right? To get like a huge ass that you have for life. Like I like You just called it a diaper butt, dude. Well, but I'm just saying, if you want like your body to be altered forever First of all what are you gonna look like when you're a f elderly woman? Yeah, I don't know. I don't think they've done a long term study on this. Uh, but no, I I think that like I've I've gotten tattoos that have cost like, you know, a quarter of that. So that seems like a steal.

16:08 That's funny. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's uh yeah, it makes sense. I think it seems like painful and dangerous. So there's like a pretty long recovery, and actually there's like a whole business of recovery centers, recovery pillows. Like, check this out. So like there's this whole brand. So like this is like their pillow that you because you need a step a special pillow to sleep on. So people have s looked at it and said, All right, if there's a billion dollars a year spent on the BBLs Every one of those people is gonna need recovery. And they started selling recovery products to them. And I've actually seen this trend happen now with like pretty much every big macro health trend, right? So like We talked about this with Ozempek. How

16:43 When Ozempik as Zempik's trend rise Uh started to rise. People created auxiliary products. So there's Shotzi, which is an app that helps you track your usage. That story's wild, right? That's like a multimillion dollar subscription SaaS business. That's a An app to help you manage your semiglutide injections.

17:04 And there's there's more too. So there's people who are selling drinks that are like Ozepic plus plus. So it's like oh, you're on Ozempic, take this to manage the like manage your gut health while you're on on this or to Um to actually accelerate the benefits of it. And so they're piggybacking on the trend and creating, you know, sort of like these like trend surfing products. Have you tried it yet, by the way? Is that big?

17:27 No. That's shocker, man. I I still I microdose it every once in a while, just a little bump. Biggest slam of of slam of the week right there. New segment, slam of the week. No, I just I meant because it's like pretty amazing. Like it's a if you tell someone it's shocking you haven't tried a Zempic.

17:44 You know what that means? You know what that means to a fat person? I I not I'm not alluding to that at all. I'm just saying that everyone had I dude I had the funniest funniest thing. Uh so I did this blood test and I got back this result and it was like oh dude like your T S H levels really high, your thyroid levels high. Really high. You gotta like Work on them. Mine was high two. And I was like

18:04 Oh. Sweet, I got a thyroid issue. That explains it. I was like, it's not me. It's not my own lack of discipline and self-control that's the problem. It's the I got a thyroid thing. And I was with Ramon at the time and Ramon was like, dude, every everybody wants to have a thyroid issue. I was like, it's so true. Uh I do you think you'll ever try Ozempic? I don't think so. I don't think I would, mostly because I've heard such mixed things about it. Some people swear that it's like

18:34 one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It has all these other benefits and it's like, you know, kind of a no brainer. Uh, other people like it's gonna kill you and like sort of mess you up for life. I have no idea where the truth is in the middle. And if you have a way to solve the problem without it, seems like you should just do that, right? Like, you know. If you don't if you don't need to intervene, shouldn't. And uh I'd like I'd like to prove to myself I could do it without it is kind of where I landed.

18:59 Yeah, yeah. I mean I'm okay taking the shortcut. So uh yeah, it sign me up. Um Okay, I think this is a good transition for you to tell me about this research you did on uh On our next butts and guts business.

19:12 All right. The big one. The big one you've been researching. The one the one you've been uh been a big fan of for a while. I I have been a big fan on of this one for a while. Okay, Sean. Zoom zoom in zoom in on those guys for me. These guys are are are

19:27 Are the man. That's who they are. You know what I mean? They do. Well, you know, these guys uh they got it going on. So the guy on the left is James Fu Bin Lu. James Lou. James, I think he started Chig, uh the the textbook company where he got wealthy.

19:45 And then he worked at Amazon and a f couple other companies, but he's like a one internet one uh web one point oh OG. So he made uh a lot of money. uh being early uh on the internet and he and he just crushed it. And now he runs this thing called Longview Capital. The guy on the right is Raymond. Zage. So he Raymond Ray runs a hedge fund. And he's also a big shot. He lives in Singapore, so he must be incredibly wealthy because I'm sure he's there for some type of like tax reasons. But he's definitely a billionaire. So those two guys are responsible for one of the best turnarounds

20:19 In a long time. So those two guys are the largest shareholders in an app called Grindr. Uh An app that It's beloved by many.

20:29 And an app that I had to download for research purposes only, which I need to put that disclosure there because every single financial analyst who I saw talk about this app. They put the exact same thing and I found it hilarious that they put like a f a disclosure in there saying I only downloaded this for research purposes. But anyway. Do you know your buddy James? What what's James's last name? James Courier. So James Carrier had a partner named Rick Marini.

20:51 Yeah. And and these two guys created uh a bunch of apps. They created uh Tickle. Which like got huge. It was like one of the first viral apps of all time. And then they helped create Monster. Was that another one? Or no Branched Out. You remember Branch Out? It got to like. It was like LinkedIn built on top of Facebook. Yeah, they create these like viral apps, right? They were kinda like the OG guys of going viral, actually.

21:14 And that's actually uh where your old partner from the guy who founded Bebo, I believe he worked there. So it's like this whole like Silicon Valley. Yeah. So Rick Marini in two thousand and nineteen, so I hung out with Rick because he uh spoke at HustleCon. Rick Marini is just like a very corporate looking guy. And Rick Marini made this announcement.

21:35 That him and this other guy named Jeff With the backing of Ray and James. bought this company called Grindr and I had heard of Grinder. But it was one of those things when I'd heard about it, I was like, Oh, I I forgot that it was e even a thing. And they bought this app for

21:49 Six hundred million dollars, I believe. Was it public or was it private? Do you know what I mean? It was private. And interestingly, it was owned by a Chinese company. So it was started by just like a guy, like a gay guy in LA, who was like trying to solve his own need. He like wanted to meet dudes and created his app and it just grew organically, but it wasn't like that well run. Very interestingly, a Chinese company bought it. Uh a Chinese company who helped make Clash of Clans. And they were accused the Chinese company was accused by the US government of blackmailing users. So for example on Grinder you can say They have like weird features where you can like be a closeted gay guy. So you can like not give away your full identity to other users, or you can even like say I I do or do not have HIV.

22:31 And they were accused of blackmailing their users. So basically The US government accused the Chinese company of using the user's information nefariously, and they said, You've got to sell this thing. And that's where Rick. This guy named Jeff. And then James Lou and Ray stepped in and they bought this company for six hundred millions million dollars. And right away they basically fired everyone. So uh in one of their like proxy statements, they said they replaced something like ninety percent of the staff.

22:56 And they rebuilt this company. And I think when they bought Grinder at the time, it had like two and a half stars on the app store. And these guys stepped in with uh Rick Marini and Jeff being the the guys uh at the home, and they turned this thing around. And they turned it around so much that if you Google grinder stock, it has outperformed every other dating app. And so basically if you look at Bumble, Bumble has a billion dollars in revenue. They're not worth nearly as much, I believe, as Grinder. So it's it's worth Four point six billion right now.

23:28 And the stock is up thirty percent this year, a hundred fifty five percent. year to day and over the last five years a hundred and twenty percent. It's been a very steady increase, this app, like since they're spac. They're actually one of the the handful of spac. Uh

23:43 good stories. You know, spacks got popular when in what, twenty twenty one and like they all sucked. Uh these guys have absolutely crushed it, and I was reading about their turnaround. And what they did and it's pretty freaking amazing how they've uh they've turned this business around to to be as successful as it is now. And I thought it was interesting that like when it went public

24:02 This dude named James, who's a I think he studied like literally rocket science from like University of Michigan. And then Ray S uh Zage, who runs a hedge fund out of Singapore is the first billionaire of the crew to the first guy who's involved to become a billionaire. Does Rick still run it or no? No. No. I think they're out.

24:22 I think they like did a proper turn around and they bounced. And like it's pretty obvious like why it works. Like You know, it's sort of like drying like have you ever played Call of Duty or James Bond? And like have you ever seen like on the top left There's like a map with like red dots and you just run to that like dot for immediate action. That's like pretty much what Grinder is. So true. So way back in the day, I think twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, we were uh when I was at Monkey Fernando, one of the apps we were trying to build was a a dating app. And we had this idea, we were like, I think it was called like

24:53 I don't know it was a horrible night. It was like get out there or something like that. It was basically like uh A dating app where instead of messaging people you actually go on dates. That was the premise. Okay. This is before Tinder had come out. And the iPhone there weren't there weren't any mobile dating apps really. popular'cause again I like I said, even Tinder hadn't come out. There was a couple that were doing okay, but I'm downloading a bunch of them for research.

25:13 And the most popular date mobile dating app at the time was Grinder. So download grinder. Okay, let's see the you know I'm here for the I'm here for research again. I'm here for Just find out what is the user experience. And dude I don't know if anybody's ever seen this. It is a very uh stunning user experience. Not like any other mobile app you ever downloaded. As soon as you load the feed

25:32 The feed is basically pictures of people's You know, private parts. And there's no like a there's not like a profile picture of their face. It's just that. And you're looking at that and then you You c like you said, you click the map mode and it's like oh

25:46 There's a dude over at Nordstrom's in the dressing room right now. It's like you know, this thing says like green. He's he's open, he's ready. And it's like what? It's like point three away, right? Everything was based on a distance away from you. Where there's a dude. who's DTF right now and I was like this is the most aggressive thing I have ever seen in my life.

26:06 I couldn't believe it. Uh like there's no other app works this way. Do you know this you know the stereotype thing is a perfect analogy. It was the only other thing that ever worked that way. It's like uh imagine the stereotype of like twenty construction workers like cat calling a girl as she walks by and like The woman being into it and cat calling back. Like it's like immediately Yeah. Like uh So they were talking about in their like in one of their reports, they were basically saying they're analyzing the onboarding time of Hinge and Tinder. They said it was like fifteen minutes and twenty two minutes. And they're like with our thing with Grinder, you once you sign up. Within A hundred and twenty seconds you can go meet someone.

26:44 Uh, and so like they're they're optimizing for speed. So like it's it's really all I mean, it's it's just a hookup app, basically. Like uh I was reading like a funny article. Have you ever seen those articles where it was like Uh it costs, you know. eighteen hundred dollars a month to be a woman. You know, we gotta get our hair done, we gotta get nails. A guy a guy did that. He was like it costs twelve hundred dollars to be a gay dude in Manhattan. You gotta like do this thing and then this thing, and then you need your forty dollar a month subscription to grind her. Like it's like

27:08 become like a uh It costs to doing business to be a gay guy and like t to t to have this app. Like it it's it's table stakes. And they've completed the niche. I'm on Rick's LinkedIn right now. So he's a four time founder, twenty five years of operating experience. The guy's a Harvard Business School graduate, blah, blah, blah. He built tickle.com. They sold it for a hundred million dollars. And then it says he's the managing partner of Catapult Capital. It's a private equity firm. That focuses on consumer tech and then it says in May twenty twenty.

27:35 They partnered with those guys that you talked about and they bought Grinder for six hundred million. He became the COO. They rebuilt the team and every single system and process grow grew revenue and even about eighty percent. Uh improved the app rating to four point six stars, blah, blah, blah. And after two and a half years of hard work, it went public with a market cap of more than two billion. So in two and a half years, they turned six hundred million. Into two and a half billion. It's wild, right? And this is something that interests you, I I know, and a lot of our guests, which is like buying companies. Like we talk we've talked about that a bunch, and I know it it intrigues you. It definitely intrigues me too. And but for some reason you don't hear about this in Silicon Valley a lot.

28:10 Dude, we gotta have Rick on. Rick is a Rick is kind of a legend. We need to have him on the podcast. Rick is a le legend. He's real low key. Uh I've I've hung out with him only a handful of times. Uh he's got a lot of like style. Dude, he looks like Patrick Dempsey. He looks like Patrick Dempsey from Grey Anatomy. I was about to say he looks like McTruby. Is that the guy's name? Is that what his real name is? Yeah, so he looks just like him. And like I'm I'm friends with him on uh I'm friends with Rick on Facebook and he just like recently posted a photo of him and Patrick meeting and he said Finally we meet. Uh everyone says that to him. He looks very much like him. Uh that's he's cool. This guy's cool and

28:43 This someone was joking and they're like the one of the reasons why this stock uh confuses a lot of people is because financial and uh bankers and stock analysts, it's all straight dudes. Uh like they are like this isn't like Well, it's not s it's not something that they're like potentially using in their life on a daily basis. And so it's kind of like been a little bit under the radar. Oh yeah, dude, Bumble's only five hundred million.

29:07 Right. Yeah, so ten times bigger than this. It's ten times bigger because it there's a bunch of reasons. One being like gay guys earn like twice as much as uh uh Straightman uh straight men. Dude, all of Match Group is seven point eight billion. Grinder alone was 4.5. And they have way less and and they're working with a population that's like ten percent of of America, you know I'm saying? Like it's like

29:32 There everything about this is sort of like Bumblebees aren't supposed to fly. Sort of an underdog story. You're kind of inspired right now. Yeah, man. They've killed it. It's grinder stock. It's wild, right? That's what I'm saying. You don't hear about these turnarounds at all with like a lot of Silicon Valley and internet companies and they've they've nailed it. Yeah, that's wild. Okay, I have one more. It's not really a good one to end on, but I'll do it anyways. Well, first of all I'll do two quick ones. Dude wipes?

30:01 Oh my God. Great idea. It's insane, right? You're gonna say it you're gonna say it's gonna touch the nerve of someone. You need to say the stat this is so uh d here's an example of uh so one time we had this guy messaging Sean and I, and he had a company called Hostage. Hostage tape.

30:20 Yeah. And it was where you put tape on your mouth and you go to bed at night and it's supposed to make you like breathe better or sleep better, whatever. And I think Sean, I think you and I had said You know, he messaged me of ton of times. We both said you're an idiot, you're an idiot. And then he texted us like updates and it was like eventually like twenty million in revenue in like two years. And it was like the initial the initial gut reaction we had was like Wow. Uh

30:41 Th this guy is so stupid and then he like text us, he's like, Hit a million in revenue and it was like Oh my God. People are so stupid and then it hits th twenty million in revenue and you and I go We are so stupid. Uh that is exactly how I felt when I saw the dude wipes Number. Uh their revenue number. Can you say what it is?

30:59 So twenty twenty four, they didn't Two hundred and twenty million dollars in revenue. Insane. Insane. Who would have thought? And but look at this. Uh actually I gotta show you this. This is hilarious. Uh as you're saying this, so there's a I'm on an article. Uh

31:14 And this is this must have been made by the team itself, but it it's literally a chart of their growth. So check this out. It says Dude wipes, now over two hundred million. And it there's a slide. It says twenty twenty, forty million. It says There's a call out. When the experts said our growth was done It might as well just said with Sam power said this is stupid. No, I even Yeah, I mean I would have said it was stupid the whole time. Yeah.

31:38 Pretty amazing, right? Back when we started the podcast, I don't know if they sent you they sent me a giant Yeah. Package of dude wipes. That has la it's now twenty twenty five. We started this podcast like in twenty twenty or twenty nineteen or something like that. It's been like five or six years. I'm still living off those like a prepper, you know, rationing out dude wipes, dude. I've I've these things have la they sent so many, it's lasted for so long. And so it's everyone knows it's just a it's what you wipe with and it's wet.

32:03 It's like uh like a like a baby wipe, right? Yeah. I I don't actually know. I don't know why maybe that's why they've lasted so long. I don't really use them. I actually use them only on my baby. But it's blushable, right? I think that's the key difference is that a normal A normal wet wipe is not flushable. You're not you're not supposed to it'll mess up your toilet. I think dude wipes you can. And it's basically like an alternative to the bidet, right? Uh you don't need

32:24 A bidet if you use this, I think is the idea. Oh man, this is a great story idea. We definitely should have focused on this one. I cannot believe how they grew so fast. Well where did they did they grow through retail or uh online? I mean, I think these things become an everything story. I don't know their exact story, but I just know they did a lot of like guerrilla marketing. They're sort of like manscaped in that they They use the disadvantage of their brand being kind of seen as a joke. as an advantage to be able to do sort of like

32:51 shocking or, you know, like interesting marketing in order to like You know, Basically like bro marketing, right? It's like how do you do bro marketing to grow? Like Liquid Death did this, Manscape did this, and I think these guys are another one. Dollar Shave Club was another one. That that did this. So pretty impressive. So they're they're impressive. Tushy, which is uh the actual bidet company.

33:10 is like also a nine figure, you know, over a hundred million dollar a year business. It's basically like an attachment you can you can turn any toilet into sort of like the Japanese Kind of like fancy toilets by attaching this thing. So Tushy is one. But there's also another interesting one. This is less less fun to talk about, but I guess like it I found it pretty interesting. Can you go to gastromaryland.com? My buddy Diego, his wife used to work at this place and he was like, Dude, these like

33:36 It's like a clinic. That's just for doing like colonoscopies and gut cleanses. Cold cleanses, this sort of thing. Kinda like a standalone

33:47 Practice. That's just focused on colon health. And he's like, dude, they're booked up like Yeah. They poked out like you know months in advance.

33:57 And he's like, I think that and we were talking about we're like, this is actually like a really good like franchise concept, because everywhere you see locations of these is one in San Francisco, not not the same brand. But I I looked up one in San Francisco. also like very popular. And I just thought, Oh wow, this is interesting. In the same way that these like Med spas have become a big deal and meds med spa's have become a big business, which is like these kind of like places you go for all these different aesthetic procedures.

34:22 I think you're gonna s have the same thing. I think you're gonna have basically gut spas. And I think more and more people are gonna go here and they're gonna look for help with their all their, you know G. I issues and their uh digestion issues and their health. That's wild. And Are you you're a year older than me. Have you gotten your first cola colonoscopy? Have you done any of that yet? No. Am I supposed to? What age do you get that?

34:43 I don't know. I haven't done it yet either. I think we're forty. So we're a few years away. We have a few years. Uh not looking forward to it. You want to do it together? Do you guys allow doubles? There's like a couples. Couples colonoscopy that we could do. Like a put us out like testing like all the This is really fascinating. I there's another one that's in this. So I was like, Oh, this is like interesting as a franchise, there's a private equity play. Oh, of course, too late. They're the private equity guys are always on top of these trends. So if you look at this company exact sciences. they do something called the coligard tests and they just crush it. And so they do colon cancer screening. They have like a a non invasive way to do the test.

35:21 Two point seven six billion in revenue last year. What from this uh this private equity backplay. Have you seen the the guy on Instagram that just asked like He's he's like the most challenging person to talk to at a party. He's like, Oh, that's nice. Are you guys PE backed? I worked at a PE firm. No, but that's hilarious. Are you PE backed? Oh yeah, just'cause I'm a partner at a PE firm. Who owns you?

35:48 Um This is insane. So this is billions of dollars in sales. Yeah. Oh my God. This is wild. I mean, just in this episode we've basically talked about like

36:00 Ten billion dollars worth of Guts and butts businesses. Which just really shows like you can If you if you can't figure out a way to make it, it's on you. The opportunity is literally everywhere. There's products like dude wipes and stuff that seems like jokes. There's things like BBL cushions for after BBL surgeries, right? Like where you just had to spot a growing trend and say, okay, what what's the next product that they would need, right? The Warren Buffett question.

36:25 Then what? What happens after the BBL? You know, that that was a question that you could have asked. uh you know, the grinder turnaround, these guys who who made this huge play. Isn't it like Doesn't it kinda blow your mind when you he when you realize like, oh man, there is like an infinite set of possibilities that I could go into if I wanted to, you know, build a successful business.

36:45 There's really like no excuse. My in laws live in this really uh nice building in New York City. And they're really successful, you know, they My mother in law's a Haitian immigrant. My father in law's a high school dropout who started a moving company that boomed and it killed it and allowed him to acquire this really fancy apartment. And I'm sitting in their lobby.

37:04 And I'm like, How many units are in this apartment? He's like Two hundred? And then I'm like, well, there's like ten thousand buildings like around here. Like I don't you know so many so many buildings And I it's just amazing. I'll be in the lobby and I'll just start ha having conversations with random people. And every person you're talking to, you're like, Well, you must have had many millions of dollars to buy this apartment, meaning you're you're you're very successful. And you hear about what they're doing for work.

37:27 And there's just a million ways to make a living. And there's so many of them. I remember thinking like Well, my in laws, they're they're one in a million, right? They're they're the they're the American tree and the success story. But everyone around me is one in a million. And it's just absolutely astounding to hear like all these stories of these people who just kill it in the most random ways that you never would have guessed it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like those you know, those like TikTok channels where it's like, Hey man, I just want to ask you, what do you do for a living as they get into like a nice car.

37:53 And it's like really, really shallow, but the the general idea of actually what that person is doing is correct. Which is You could basically go reverse engineer what people do. You can ask them. People are generally pretty open about what they do, well, you know, how they made it. Generally they had help along the way and they're willing to help somebody else who wants to be helped.

38:11 And um you know, success leaves clues. You can actually go and start to see patterns or see opportunities and say, Oh, okay. Uh, you know, just like the way I saw that after the Ozempic trend, people built these like you know, auxiliary side businesses. Now I see the same thing on the BBL side, right? Like Then when the next procedure, the next tr health trend or or uh You know uh health and wellness trend happens.

38:30 You could do the same thing, right? You'cause you've seen it two or three times before, so you're ready to act when that moment arises. That's kind of what I hope that like You know. If people listen to this podcast just listen for the laughs, I'm flattered. But if they

38:42 Listen and sort of start to see the trends and start to see like you know dots that they can actually go and do the things like Yeah. Be be that listener. That's probably only one out of a thousand that actually I mean, like what what do you think actually? How many if a thousand people listen to the podcast, how many do you think go from Not having their first million to make in their first million during their like tenure listen to this podcast. Well, we've had dozens or maybe even hundreds of people messaging us say us we inspire them to do X, Y, and C. Sometimes I think a large percentage of them were already doing something amazing and they're just using that as an excuse to like Uh but uh I would say that I would say there's at least fifty people of the

39:17 I don't know how many people have listened, tens of millions, millions. Who I think there's gonna be at least a hundred people that have made a million dollars from what they've learned from this podcast. What do you think fifty to a hundred, at least? I mean that number is shockingly low, right? Let's just say on just the full episodes, I think we did a Somewhere between twenty five million Roughly roughly twenty five million. views and downloads last year, maybe thirty million.

39:37 I don't know how many that d obviously there's a bunch of repeats. So let's just even take the low end. Let's just pretend For just math. Tá. A m it was just a million people. It was a million individual humans who listen.

39:49 Take out the people who were already successful. Maybe that's the top. Ten percent. That were already very successful. So now you have nine hundred thousand people left.

39:58 Of those nine hundred thousand, how many do you think actually like end up making it. Achieving what they wanted to achieve. Okay. Uh out of nine hundred thousand. Uh achieving like for example being worth fifty thousand dollars and now they're worth one million.

40:13 Yeah, get get get to a couple of million bucks. Uh life changing money. Well, from nothing to two million dollars in the course of four years. Uh. I think the threshold uh Probably two or three hundred, maybe. What do you think?

40:25 Is that too low? Yeah, I think it's a low low. I I would say maybe a thousand, but Maybe maybe a couple thousand, but it but you're right. A lot of them would've got there anyways, where we're just as you know, a little bit of wind in their sails. We're not like the the we're not the tide, you know, that's actually like pulling them there. So I think it's higher, but I think it's because

40:42 the type of person who would listen to this probably was already gonna be they're probably seeking knowledge and m inspiration and and and try to make shit happen and so they were gonna make it happen either way. So it's gotta be h I think it's a actually probably a much higher number. There's some sometimes there's people who message me. And they will like I don't know if they're saying this just to like win favor, but they'll be like, uh, you guys inspired me to do this and that.

41:02 And they have made more money than I have off this podcast. And I'm like, shit I should have just done that. Uh, but there's been like two or three or four examples. Have you ever had one of those? Yeah. The other day there's a f uh A guy who listens to the podcast, he's Probably worth I don't know.

41:23 fifty to a hundred million bucks. And I find out his new startup is an idea I said on the podcast not long ago. And I was like, dude, let me invest. And he's like, I don't know. I was like, I gave you the idea. That idea's my idea, actually. I should be letting you run this company. I know that there are so for example, Mixergy, Andrew Warner, uh a buddy of mine

41:45 I attribute a lot of my success to he used to interview people and I learned about newsletters via Mixer G and Andrew Warner and a hand and there was like eight interviews that he did on that topic that I like literally used to like plan the business model. And so I have done that with other people for sure. Of course. Uh I've did it with Mixer G and I you know what I do it with now? Uh is founders, David Sender's podcast founders. I use that like

42:09 a a crazy amount for inspiration and also education. Who do you listen to now, actually? I don't listen to founders uh regularly. Like once in a while I'll put it on. I like what he does, but I don't play that game. James Curry had this great phrase he goes.

42:26 Some people are you know, you you gotta decide what game you're playing and I forgot the couple of options he said, but one of them was like the you know, the great life. Like you're trying to build a great life for yourself and the other is the global global greatness game. It's like you're actually trying to compete at like a sort of global level to do things that impact the world and he called it global greatness. And that's like what a Elon and and that's what the the people on founders played. Whereas I'm actually playing the great life game. It's like how do I

42:51 create a great life for myself and my family. Like that that's the number one objective, not proving myself or you know, like becoming Just like extreme outlier of success. Just objectively. Only in the career space. So who do you listen to to to fuel help fuel that?'Cause even like I've always wondered like

43:09 You know, I'm I there's a lot of people who look up to us and then I grew up and I still look up to like way more people who are way above us and I've always wondered I wonder what they what they listen to. Or where they get this motivation from because even like The biggest the big shots have some type of uh Like

43:24 Rah listen. Yeah. So I I think everybody does. It's a lot harder. to find somebody in the great life bucket. 'Cause usually part of the great life bucket is you're not. Going round in.

43:34 You're you're not you're not as famous and you're not Yeah,'cause it's not that famous to be like, Yeah, and he's a great dad. He actually like You know, every day at four, take some time, goes to places, you know. I put I put Jesse Isler in there though. Jesse Isler's just content. That's exactly what I was gonna say. So

43:49 But it's not from his content,'cause his content really is more about like kind of how to make it in life. But I can't hang out with them all the time. So you know, I gotta like it. But you don't have to hang out all the time. Like so for for example, me and Ben, we made a list. We said, Who are the five people that we think We kind of really respect, we admire, we love to hang with them and we wanna We want our world to look a little bit like it's to be inspired by their world that they've created for themselves.

44:11 Jesse was one of those guys and I said. Uh let's make an excuse to go hang out with him. So Hey, let's just wake up and do whatever you're gonna do. Let's hang out. Let's talk. I'm gonna And he did, and Jesse was like, Cool, yeah, anytime. And uh and Ben did, and then he kinda like shared his impression of it and he was like, Yeah, and we pick up a lot from that. You pick up a lot from going to someone's house. So what did you pick up?

44:33 Ton of energy. So like a b a huge part of it is how much energy the guy has and like it's like what do you want out of life. So it's not just the things you achieve, it's like the type of person you are and what it's like to be around you. Jesse the type person super high energy. laughs a ton, like very funny guy and always like, you know, doesn't take himself or life too seriously.

44:53 He's got his hands at a lot of pots, but in an interesting way. So for example He has this one business. Uh,'cause I have this tension all the time. I have more business ideas than I have time. So like how does somebody like Jesse do this? And I really like that his career was really varied. So he You know, he had his jingle company.

45:09 He was like a rapper for a while, then he did Zico Coconut Water, then he did his Private Jets startup. That was like his big intense one. Was it linear, like this, then that, then this, or is it blended? Love your pronunciation of that. Uh, it was like finance. Yeah, like Bob Lanier. Okay. It was it was Lanier. So yeah, he did them one at a time, not not all in parallel. And then over time, now like, you know, he's got more things in parallel. So he's got his calendar business, his speaking business. He's got his twenty what is it? twenty, twenty nine or something. Twenty nine zero, twenty nine? Yeah, so that's like his kind of like his fun races where it's like people get to run or they get to do the equivalent of hiking Everest.

45:47 Uh, but you don't have to go to Mount Everest to do it. You could do it in all these different cities all around the country. And so we looked at that, we were like, Okay, so what is he actually doing there? You sort of reverse engineer he's like, dude, I he's like I take the things that I already want to do for free, right? Like my passions, like his one of his passions is like out being outdoors, running, doing these races. He does that anyways for free. uses business savvy to wrap a really interesting brand around it. So instead of just being like it's just another race.

46:11 Naming it. The height of Everest. And letting anybody have that sort of bucket list. The semi bucket list item of hiking Everest, like that little branding thing, that positioning. Was genius.

46:22 And with that he had the way he started that business, I guess it was like his buddy Who was like, Oh, I really want to do a business with you and he goes, All right. We'll do a business, but here's the rules. I'll help you with it, but The operations of this business. I wanna work one day a year and I need to make a million dollars.

46:37 So that's the constraint. We're gonna work backwards from a business that has to f has to satisfy that constraint. And I don't know if literally it's one day a year and it's a million dollars. I don't know if that's the i l literal definition for for Jesse's involvement or his like level of uh how much he has to work on the business. But e even just hearing how he approaches that changed the way I'm approaching some of my businesses. Cause I have I have also people who want to do things with me and I have a bunch of ideas that I I used to think it's all or nothing. It's like no, there's some other ways to do this.

47:05 You know, like Zico, the coconut water brand, he was not the operator. There were other operators. He was just a certain type of energy and hustle that opens certain doors that change the trajectory of that business. And so I have a business right now that's like that. I have operators that run it. And I just did a certain set of activities, these door opening activities that change the trajectory of that business. So I'm trying to learn from him how you have it all. How do you have the he's got you know, he's got four kids, I think, and he's

47:29 He's very involved as a dad. He has his own fitness thing. He's got the good marriage. He's got the fun life. He does these adventures with his friends. And he has the businesses and he does interesting investments. It's like okay, I wanna Go hang out with him, download his b blueprint. And I can't get that out of a YouTube video or a podcast right now the way the way I can with him. That was such a long answer and it was so good.

47:48 I'm sorry and you're welcome. You could have said like uh you know like how stuff works or like serial. But there is no podcast for that. In fact, I would hope that this is the podcast that's closest to that, right? Because it's the thing I'm trying to achieve. So if I'm just talking about stuff that's Relevant to me along the way. Th the great life, you know, uh by your by your own definition. Then this should be it. But like, I don't know, where would I go? Who who who has a podcast like that?

48:18 I don't know. You know, like I like I don't I don't watch a lot of modern wisdom, but I watch Clips from Modern Wisms. Chris Williamson's podcast'cause I think he pulls wisdom out of people. And I think wisdom is what's lacking, not knowledge for for me. And so like I'm

48:33 Trying to avoid knowledge based things and look for wisdom on how to live a l like a life well lived. And so actually uh the real answer to your question is it's not podcasts. I read a lot of books now. And I w I really w I really wasn't reading books at all like two years ago. I had like two years ago, I distinctly remember us doing a podcast and I asked you you were telling me about this book that you read and I asked you a question about it. You're like, Well, I don't know. I'm I'm actually only ten pages into it. You did a whole spiel on this podcast or on this book and how amazing it was.

49:05 And so now you read books? Now I read books. That's great. So put some respect on my name. Uh and I'm a book reader. What you tweet is what you're interested in. And I noticed that you have been saying you want to spend time with dead people and dogs or something like that. And then you also tweeted, uh you said, Why do you why do people like history? Like you couldn't it was like something where you're like You read something historical and you're like Wait, I kind of like this, but do I like this? Why do I like this? Like, what are we doing? And then someone like

49:39 had a great answer uh that you put in your newsletter. You said um it's uh knowledge wrapped around a story or something like that. And uh It just I was like, Oh finally, Sean is clear like uh starting to read historical stuff, right? Is that right? Whatever you're doing, I tend to do about seven years later. So so I I would probably be getting a a fecal transplant or whatever in seven years. I I should just book that in now. Wait, are you reading history now? I'm reading anything that's interesting to me. So like right now, one of the books I'm reading is is the The Warren Buffett biography, but that's for a specific reason. But which one? Snowball or the other one?

50:12 I'm reading Snowball right now. Snowball's good. It's really long. It's a thousand pages. In order to read a thousand pages, you gotta like really love the person. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause that's like three months. Well that's cool. I'm happy you're reading now. I'm happy you like books. Can we tell you some other books I'm reading?

50:29 Yeah, I would love that. I'll give you one more. That's good. Let's see. Have you ever read Seneca's Letters? I think it's called like Fifty letters of a Roman stoic. That that's pretty good. I like that. So you're reading Stoicism. That's pretty cool. So Meditations and Marcus Aurelius and all that stuff. Just just the book I mentioned. That's just the one right now. Oh, I read this book called Kill the Cat. And it's about how to write a screenplay. And I found that pretty fascinating.

50:53 Of like how people write movies. Have you ever read Five dysfunctions of a team. Yeah, by Patrick Leon Patrick L. Yeah.

51:01 I think that's kind of an underrated book. I read that book and I was like, dude, this book really describes w an experience that I've had in like, you know, the cor in corporate life and in sort of management life. And like I think Charlie Munger He stole this idea. It's Charlie Munger had d gave a famous speech that he stole from someone else, which is like I don't know how to live a happy life necessarily, but I'm gonna tell you how to live an unhappy life. Right. Step one.

51:23 Have envy. And like he like explains like all these like attributes you should have to be unhappy and just avoid that. And that's what uh that book is cool. He tells a story about the five teams that you know every uh or five things that losing teams have. It's pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, yeah, I'm reading books now. That inspires me to reread that books. I don't remember the five dysfunctions. Especially you're operating a company now. I think it's like very useful when you're operating a company'cause you'll be like, Oh, yep, we're doing that. Oh yeah, I did that.

51:51 So what I do right now is whenever I read a book I go and I download it and I convert it from uh Kindle to a text, so a text file. And then I upload it to chat GBT. And I can reference it. And so I'll like

52:05 For example, with this five dysfunctions of a team, I'll type out like Interaction I had with my company, or I will screenshot an email interaction that I've had and be like, What would Patrick say about this? Can I show you something amazing? Yeah.

52:17 So I told you that was like did I convince Diego, who my buddy Diego who live there. We hired on my team. I convinced him to move out here. And I didn't know what would come of it. I but I just knew working in person's could obviously be more fun. And I don't want to have like I'm not trying to have like an office. Like I still work from home, but he like comes over and we don't have a big team. It's our team is very small. Me, Diego, Ben, and my assistant. And so

52:38 How do we actually like work? This is something amazing he started doing. So he just drops off like once a week these binders. So it just says scratch the itch? And in this. He just pulls. A bunch of like

52:52 Super interesting either blogs or articles. Then he knows that I'm gonna like That maybe uh we even have a channel where we put stuff like Oh, I'm gonna read this later. But he prints it out for me. He marks it up. And so I'm going through it's necessary like our own book club, but for blog posts.

53:06 And so it'll be like, oh, it's uh, you know, an annual letter from nineteen ninety nine, Bezos when the market crashed, or two thousand when the market crashed. And then it'll be like Uh, here's like an actual like a really interesting Uh in a very interestingly explained Uh

53:21 It's technical explainer, but not too technical about how like chat GPT actually works. And so I have these, which are not books. But it's just amazing brain food to have. Two years ago I almost launched a business that would sell that. What I what I thought about doing was instead of doing a newsletter like

53:39 in your email, I thought about doing a physical newsletter and it was literally going to be a binder and things that I read and my notes on them and why they interested me. And I think that that ta that tactile experience of doing what you're doing right now is wonderful. It's it's a total game changer. Plus it's curate. I mean, I this is lucky, right? Like it's he curates it, he marks them up for me, he organizes it, he delivers them to me. Like Yeah, you know, like this is This is like my version of luxury. Like what's a Gucci bag to me? This is a Gucci bag. Uh right. Like this is like you know right up my alley. Thank you so much. I I can't even believe it. He does that once a week.

54:09 Uh, he does it just like at random. There's not even like a schedule, like once roughly once a week or every two weeks. He'll he'll drop one of these off. That's amazing. That's actually pretty cool. Hold it up. I actually like how he like makes it look Scratch the itch.

54:22 And what does he say at the bottom? Uh then it's a it's a Charlie Mugger quota. It says go to bed smarter than when you woke up at the bottom. And then uh That's amazing. It's amazing, right? And the bright colors. He makes it look like an eighth grade, like an eighth grade like binder. That's awesome. You want to see something else he's doing? Hold on one second. Show you the soon.

54:38 So you might see just like this box of little truffles. Little chocolate truffles here. So we call like a What? We were trying to just we did we were trying to describe what we like to do. It's like what what do we what do you really do? What are what are you really good at?

54:51 It's like what's the common thread across all the shit you do? And one thing we we were like, uh somebody had this analogy of a truffle pig. They're like, You're like a truffle pig. You go and you just sniff out these little like tru these little like truffles. These like high value like Things and so He delivered this. I thought it was chocolate, but actually it's this little thing. You unwrap. And inside he's printed out.

55:13 Like a Just like a a a a golden nugget. Just like D is Diego your co worker or does he run the daycare? We're big into like as the world goes AI, we're just super like tactile everything. It's like no no, we're gonna do everything like very analog. We're either gonna be extremely AI and digital or extremely analog. And ideally, we take the things from The digital.

55:37 But we pull them out and make them analog. Like if if you could see on my wall right now, we have like Things that are printed out that are like of this month's kind of like different things that we're we're learning and we're diving into What are the biggest you know, what are the biggest things we want to not just Read it, nod and say, Oh yeah, like okay, that's

55:53 Gee, that's cool. And move on. In fact, can I just tell you this real quick. That's the number one takeaway I have so far from the Buffett biography. Is that when he was eight or nine years old, he read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. And he knew he was like socially pretty awkward, right? The guys like buying stocks at age seven. He bought a farm when he was 14 years old. Like he wasn't a normal kid. And so he

56:13 Uh wanted to be better socially. He didn't know how. He reads this book. And there's this line in the book which basically says Unlike most people who would read this book, nod along and say, Gee, that makes sense. And then put the book away and then forget about it. Like never do anything. Warren made it like his like religion to study this book. So he would read the book, he would go immediately try to apply the principles.

56:34 He would regularly come back and reread the same sections again. Because it was like really important to him to actually like get the wisdom out of the book and not just the information. He even taught a class on it. Exactly. And I thought If there's one predictor of success, it would be that. And I think If there was one superpower to have

56:51 over the batch of other smart people who are also listening to podcasts, also reading books, also on Twitter, et cetera. It's I think most people do exactly what he said. Most people just read something, they nod, they say, Yeah, that makes sense and then they just move on with their life. They don't actually like internalize it or do anything with the the thing that made sense. And uh or if something's like kind of obviously true, they're like yeah, I get that, I know that.

57:14 versus like, Yeah, you know that, but do you do that? No, you don't. So you don't actually know it. And I I I I find that that one trait about Buffett is so important. And that's like one thing I'm trying to do is is I'm whether I'm reading or learning anything is like Can I develop the skill of noticing The big idea. And then not just moving past it.

57:32 Like taking that big idea and being like I'm gonna work on this idea until It's like playing a piano piece. It's like until I could play this You know. Fluidly From memory, then I n then I actually know the song.

57:43 And there's not uh they didn't act on everything, but they did a good job of find all they had like a Like a bank of stuff. They had like their spank bank for uh for investing. And so basically like uh there's a story about how Munger had a barren subscription and uh this guy who worked for Munger was like, Yeah, he read this freaking newspaper every week. For fifteen years. And he told me that

58:07 he got an idea from it. He goes this is the one idea I've ever gotten from Barons. He goes, I've been reading this constantly, looking for this one idea and I just found it and it took me fifteen years. They did a really good job. Am I not supposed to call uh can we not say IDS Bank Bank? No, that's beautiful. I loved it. I saw Ari roll her eyes. That's what it is. If I just said a bank of ideas, everyone's gonna be thinking that. Dude, did you watch the m actually the second Monish episode that I did? Yeah. In it, he pulls out the Moody's manual. He's like when people say Buffett read this, this is the thing he was reading. He showed me it's like size four font. It's

58:41 And he reads page by page. It's like not even a it's not a book. It's not something you're supposed to read page by page. And he did. And he was show then he's like, Oh, then he read the J Japan Company handbook. It's like the version of Moody's for Japan, because he wanted to look for companies in Japan. And then The bet that he made was insane. So he reads that ja Japanese book and he notices he's like Hm. So there's these exchanges in Japan, like the stock market exchanges. And they basically have a monopoly. Like nobody really builds new stock markets and you can't really get a new stock market off the ground.

59:09 And he's like, there are these incredible businesses that are kind of undervalued. And then he went and he borrowed Like Five billion dollars in Japanese yen. And bought

59:20 All of the exchanges. I bought like a a chunk of all the exchanges at like a zero percent interest rate. It's just like this unbelievable asymmetric upside trade. That has just paid off in spades. And I feel like people don't even talk about that. Like if you talk about Beth Buffett's bets, it's all just like Geco, Coca-Cola, sees candy, like That Japanese trade is unbelievable.

59:42 Maybe I should read uh Snowball as well. I I I've read hi the shorter one. Uh I don't even think that's in Snowball'cause that was more recent. But I should read us I should read Snowball and we could have like a book club. talk about it because uh he he interests me. He he doesn't even interest me always like I don't wanna trade stocks, but I just love his I think that I think he I think that just how you describe Jesse, that's not quite how I would describe Warren because he was he his personal life was a little wacky, but there are so many like philosophical things that you can learn from him.

1:00:09 Totally. Totally. By the way, last night I uh or I was watching UFC on Saturday night at like on the East Coast, it's like Freaking at midnight. And I opened up my living room door to let like some air come in'cause it was kinda hot or whatever. I just wanted like fresh air.

1:00:25 to watch UFC, you know, as one does. And I uh I was sitting there And I saw I thought I saw a moth. Like Flying around, I'm like, damn. That get that moth out of here and I kinda like swatted it.

1:00:37 And then I saw it again and I didn't really pay attention. And then it took me about forty five minutes and I was like Oh my God, there's a bat flying over my head in my living room right now. And I jumped up and I flipped out'cause that's a that's a weird phobia. Like bats just are one of the scariest things for me. And I run out of the room and I wake up my wife, I go, Sarah, that's a freaking bat in the room. I have no idea what to do. And I um

1:01:00 I put like a hoodie on and like all these gloves and I run in there and I open up the door again to see if I can like get this bat to go outside. And the next day I had to go get a rabies shot. So last night I was in the E R getting a frickin' rabies shot. M. My wife and my little girl had to get it. And it's insane. It didn't even touch you, right? Why did you have to get the baby shot?

1:01:20 Rabies has a one hundred percent fatal rate. So if you get rabies, you die. Okay. And Do you know how many rabies Deaths there are in America a year. No idea. Three.

1:01:31 Three. I was gonna try to lowball it with a hundred. Three. There's there's about as many shark attacks uh that end up and a killing, uh that end up with you dying. There's like none. And every doctor I called, they're like, You have to go get this rabies shot. You have to go get this rabies shot. And I was doing the math and I was like, Well, let's say that there's like First of all, like the odds are that it bit you and you don't know about it is like super low, right? Like like so it had to have bit you and I had to but not realize it. And I'm like, Okay, you thought a moth was a bat and they're very different sizes. So you know Yeah, but imagine sitting in your living room and seeing something in your peripheral, you're like I think a moth just flew in. Uh and then I was like, Oh my God, it's a rat with li uh arms. Uh it was just f it's freaky. And

1:02:12 So I had to go get the stupid shot. And I was thinking of the odds and I was asking Chat GPT and they were like there's probably like a point zero zero one percent. That you have rabies right now? But I had to go get the shot and it's incredibly painful. And you have to go four times. So I've got to go back in the next three days for the next four four like four. Four times? dude, it's ridiculous that my kid no, she's gotta get it twice. It's a very painful and like my kid wasn't even in the room. It's just ridiculous. And I just realized I gave in to so much fear mongering.

1:02:42 Because like the like sixty thousand people a year or or something like that die from driving cars, right? And I'm like, I'm not afraid to do that. But I and there's three people die a year from rabies and I went and got this freaking rabies shot and my arm is killing me. It was such a painful shot. And it costs twenty five thousand dollars if you don't have insurance. These shots are twenty five grand. So it was uh what's that? Seventy five thousand dollars worth of shots that I had to get last night. For freaking rabies. Is that ridiculous? You know, I don't know if you ever see those like uh memes where it's like They have like a silhouette, like a ghost of a person's face to like make it transparent. Like we just need RFK's face just

1:03:19 Shaking his head at you for for what you just did. But like it's it's such a like there's so many cognitive like uh There's so many like biases or whatever, like flaws that I've made, like thinking flaws, like regarding whether I should go and get this or not. But just the idea of like me foaming at the amount because they say that when you when the thing about rabies is when you ha show symptoms, that means you're you're going to die. It's too late. Uh it's too late. Yeah, so maybe maybe it was not a bad decision. Maybe you know, you avoided potential ruin for a pain in the arm. That's okay. Have you ever gotten that?

1:03:51 No, no, no. That's never happened to me. She said this super absurd scenario. You're like, does that happen to you? No. People get baby shot all the time. First of all, I'm I'm not from like the nineteen tens. I don't like open up the doors to create like a breeze. I just turn the air conditioning on if I need to if I need to know the breeze. I wanted to pee in the yard. Yeah. Dude, they need ravies to get away from you.

1:04:18 You live with this fair old man. Um Butts and guts. That's it. That's the fun. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to. I put my all in it like my day's all on a roll, less travel, never looking back.

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