Brainstorming $100M AI-Proof Businesses

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/c3f10a005ec2ff18

I think the theme of this episode today

Anti digital, anti tech, anti AI ideas.
I feel like I can rule the world and no way
Be what I want to
I have an idea for you, by the way. What?
All right, so Hampton, you've got um
This
community of CEOs in different cities and
It's great. And you're doing great. And it's mostly a it started off online.
I'm so glad you shifted to like in person, which I'm sure was hard, but like painful, but but necessary change.
I've just been thinking about some of these like
AI proof ideas.
I think it's just an interesting lens to be like what
Doesn't really make sense for AI to like improve or or
Um disrupt.
And um
We joined a country club.
And
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I thought I could just keep going.

I didn't think the TSA agent would would ask me for for my fastball there.
Who's we? Like you and your wife, your family or like
Okay.
Like a golf?
Like a golf club. A golf country club, even though I don't play golf currently.
Okay. Like uh the uh the stereotype in my head of like a golf course and like chicken tenders. I think it's a lot of that.
There's a great pool. Okay. Great amenities, tennis court, pick a ball, et cetera.
Okay.
Look, I don't want to talk too much about the country. What I'm trying to say is from a business perspective
I'm pretty fast. Did you have to interview? Did you have to interview? Did they go? We have an interview scheduled in a few days. Yeah. Oh my God. The hardest part, by the way, is there's a dress code.
Oh.
Oh?
It's under armor on it? Are you allowed to wear under armor?
I was like okay, I get full tank, but how about a muscle tank? You guys good with that? That's actually how I showed up for the for the first tour. Cat can't tell them you
host a podcast called My First Million.
I mean, don't be honest. What? Are you insane?
You have to lie.
She knows a lot a lot of the moms from the school go there, whatever. Let me get to my point here. Yes. Yes to everything you're thinking and saying. All right. Let's just agree on all of those things that are every thought in your head right now. How much is it gonna cost? What's your monthly membership fees are something like
You pay
Seventy five hundred dollars. So seven thousand five hundred dollars just to like
initiate. Just to like get your foot in the door. Okay. That's not even the does.
That's like an a well, there's a five hundred dollar application fee. Then it's like a seven seven thousand five hundred dollar
Like an initial
Join the club fee.
And then you pay something like I don't know.
Seven hundred to a thousand dollars a month as a member.
And that's to not even get to play golf. That's like pleb member. Like you don't get to play golf.
If you play tennis, you gotta like use your left hand or something. I don't know. It's not you don't even get everything. So
We're joining as like the basic
Member.
But I was looking at the numbers, I was like okay, so they're basically
Probably close to two thousand members.
At this club?
And so two thousand members times
Let's call it ten grand a year average membership fee, which again doesn't even include the golf.
Is a twenty million dollar annual recurring
Revenue business.
To then have the right to go pay for food there and drinks. To just have the right to go shop there.
And so everything else I think mostly operates break even.
Um, I think they do events like weddings and and and birthday parties and stuff like that. That makes some money too.
But I'm pretty sure this country club
is pulling in something like twenty to twenty five million a year.
In recurring revenue.
Not including
The um
all of the like, you know, whatever margin they have on food, beverage, golf, et cetera.
Which might be closer to like ten percent or something.
And I just thought, man, this is incredible business. And I've seen a few of these now. So I saw that one.
When I first moved to San Francisco
The guy I was working with.
Michael Birch, he
created the battery in San Francisco, which was like
San Francisco didn't have a Soho House.
So he created the battery.
Yeah. Was that good? Was that a good business?
Well I think he undercharges
Dramatically.
You know, he didn't need the money per se he sold you know, he sold his company for like eight hundred million dollars. So he you know, he wasn't doing it for the money, he was doing it for the social.
And I think he didn't want to like make it like a only rich tech guy.
Thing.
So he priced it initially at like twenty five hundred dollars a year. Like two hundred bucks a month.
It's like that's literally less than Equinox or something, you know? Now I think it's three thousand dollars. Is it pretty pretty low still.
One time I went there, I think with you, and I'm not exaggerating. I this is the
The I swear to God this is the truth.
There was a booth.
That had a pretty blonde hair lady.
Snoop Dogg.
And a monk.
wearing an orange like shaw.
Sitting at the same booths.
Like it looked like the Dalai Lama, Snoop Dogg and a Hopkins.
And they were like sitting like this, like leaning in, having a conversation. I don't know what it was about, but it it could have been like world peace. But it was I that it it was crazy. I saw that in real life and I was like, This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean are you
I've seen Elon there.
I seen Jay Z there. It's crazy.
So I saw that that cl that model.
And Soho House, I don't know if you saw it just went private.
Uh, private equity group just came and
Basically took it private at two point seven billion.
And they think
Then in twenty twenty five it'll do something like
A hundred fifty million of EBITDA?
But it's a little confusing. They said not profitable currently, but the
Twenty twenty five forecast is a hundred and
It is a
You know, like hundred fifty million any better.
And so I started thinking about these clubs and I was like, why doesn't Sam
Do th get into this business.
With Hampton. Right. Like why not?
In your core.
One, two, three cities.
Get some real estate, create a physical space.
and top up on the members and then any time a member's traveling to New York
LA, Chicago.
Whatever, Austin, wherever you want to put your wherever your hubs are.
They have a physical place to go work.
To eat to meet, to do whatever.
So I have an answer. So for for one, it's operationally, I think that it's silly for me to my main business is creating wonderful core groups where people talk.
And then this business that you are talking about is hospitality and real estate.
I think the answer is there's a world where we will do it, but it needs to be its own
business. Uh y you you shouldn't mix'em. So uh w a company I was inspired by called Chief, it's it's what we're doing, but mainly for w uh women executives, they had a lot of real estate and it dragged down it dragged them down significantly.
But let me um tell you something. So
There's this weird surge going on, particularly in New York.
Well
There's this um in over the last year or so, there's been something like fifteen or twenty new social clubs.
or co working spaces that have popped up.
And so have you heard of like Zero Bond? No.
So that's an example of one.
And there's so many of these.
social clubs amongst like young like like
twenty something Gen Z. This is a a phenomenon that is just absolutely killing it.
And it's not new. Social clubs have been around for forever, since the gilded age people have been doing like social clubs since Ben Franklin doing Junto, where he would like meet up with his friends. But what I'm noticing is that there's a whole niche
of co working spaces that combine this social club kind of aesthetic. So let me give you um
A few examples.
Google the Malin.
So it's the word the and then M A L I N.
Before I had my office here, I rented a space here.
And this is like a very niche co working space, absolutely beautiful on the inside, with three locations.
And
Whenever I was there.
It was like a
Buzzing. And like the the
target demographic for these guys are like good looking freelancers.
Like like everyone who worked there was like a hot freelancer. Good news and bad news.
Good news. We like that you're a freelance designer. Bad news is one other requirement.
Yeah. I didn't fit the I C P, but they still let me in. But like uh see why you don't belong.
Yeah, they let me hang out.
There's another guy
Uh in my core group, his name's James Street. So go to this website called thelighthouse dot com.
So the Lighthouse dot com my friend um
owns this agency called uh whaler.
And it's a huge nine figure a year digital agency.
And it's based in LA, so it's like all hip and cool and everything. And they created a little project called the Lighthouse. So the Lighthouse dot com. And it's I think they call it a creators campus.
In other words, it's basically a co-working space for creators. Meaning instead of like just normal desks, they have like cool studios, kinda like the one I'm recording in, where like someone can just like record.
And
In the first year.
A business.
They've done.
Eight figures in revenue.
With one location.
And I'm seeing this pop up like over and over and over.
And then another one is New House. Have you heard of New House? No.
Go click new house and tell so they call they call themselves
The work and social home for creatives.
And so these guys are selling.
Everyone that I've just named. They're basically just taking
A
sliver of what like we work is and who it's for
And then what you're talking about of social clubs and they're combining it because scaling cool
is very challenging. That's what Soho struggled with. You can't scale ex e exclusivity really well unless you own a variety of r brands. Like you're Louis Vuitton and you own like
Ermez and Louis Vuitton and this and that. And so each one it's okay if they're like
Don't grow aggressively.
But
Scaling utility works wonderfully. And that's where
positioning it as a co working space works really well.
But
In New York in particular, but I'm seeing this in in a lot of other places, these social clubs slash co working spaces are thriving.
And we were told
that we work in all these other businesses like that are kinda silly. They're not. The economics can be great.
It's not gonna be like
Right. An eighty billion dollar company or whatever we we were c raised at, but it could still be a an amazing company.
Alright, so
A lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business.
Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like seventeen or eighteen million dollars in revenue.
I started it.
With like
Three hundred dollars. My current company, Hampton, does over ten million in revenue. Started it with actually no money, maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that. Nothing.
And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work.
And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it,
Correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.
There's two other interesting ones I wanna show you.
One is
S slightly related. So w one is
A cell house for
Families with kids.
So I think it's called Beginning Clubhouse. Dude, it's in it's in uh it's in uh New York, right? Yep.
Dumbo. Where what is Dumbo? Is that Brooklyn?
Yeah, Brooklyn. It's like this is where like
Um
Yuppie parents who wear car heart.
Exactly. So
They're opening this up there, which is a
Cell house, but that's kid friendly,'cause you know, all these private clubs tend to be only for like
sort of like either single, you know, young people or like people whose kids are grown up and it's like a
You know family's not welcome.
But as somebody with like, you know
Four or five year old kids.
My entire life basically and the reason we got, you know, our membership for this thing is like we just need a place to take the kids.
as like a reliable spot where they're gonna have some fun and I can like
Have them
fenced in. You know what I mean? Like they they can't they have some stuff too and I I can just chill and like
Take care of you know, whatever.
Oh, you need food, we have food. You wanna swim, you got swim. You know, like you wanna just chill, you want to play some games, we can do that too. Like whatever whatever you need.
So I thought that's kinda interesting. The other one I thought was interesting.
The guy.
Who started Wag.com has a new business. Have you seen this?
He's starting this new thing in Denver.
That when I first heard it, I kinda laughed.
I think his name's Jason Metzler.
He's basically building multifamily housing, so just like a place to rent to live.
But it's called like
I forgot what's called like live pet play or something? Live pet work.
And basically it's like
What he realized was
You know, in Denver there's more
Pet owners then
Than parents with kids.
And he's like, there are n and I think this is true nationwide, I believe, that there's more
People with pets than there are people with kids.
And
For those people, housing often is like very limited. So like
A lot of places that don't let you have a pet.
If they do have a pet.
It's like this inconvenience where like nothing about it is built for
Life as a pet owner in a city.
Whereas what these guys are doing, they're like cool.
You know, dog grooming you know, you basically you rent your plate or you rent your unit. It's like the unit has like a doggy door.
There's like
grass areas at the bottom and on the rooftop to take your your dog out.
There's dog walkers in the building.
So you get like, you know, twenty jog walks a month.
You get two dog two nights of dog sitting.
And
targeting specifically this like sort of demographic of person.
I thought that's pretty interesting. It's basically like
Take normal multi multifamily.
But how do you charge like an extra
Thirty to forty percent of rent.
Every month.
Well
If you make it like a plus for somebody who's like dog obsessed. And you know, dog owners
So I think they spend something like
Six six thousand dollars a year just on their pet.
Alone.
And the inconvenience of living in a place that's like not pet friendly.
is a daily you know a daily nuisance. So I think there might be actually be something to this.
That's interesting.
'Cause all all real estate is just a question of can you buy it where everybody thinks it's worth X.
Right. You buy it because everybody thinks it's gonna generate X dollars of net income.
But you know you can you can do one point three X or one point two X.
And if you do that, you know, and you buy a twenty million dollar building
You've increased the value of the building maybe by ten million dollars or twelve twelve million dollars.
If you're able to do that well.
And so I just think this was smart because normally the way they do these value ads is
You have to build more units.
It's like that's how you're gonna generate more income is I'm gonna have to spend a bunch of money to build more units. This was like
No, I'm just gonna like position it.
as being great for this type of customer. And I know that that type of customer is willing to pay a little more.
For these additional
Perks and services and spaces. How much money did they this guy raise?
I saw he's raising for the building itself.
N
For like the head coat.
Like it's a real estate play, right? So he's like
We're buying this building.
Already it generates this. We're gonna add these things and then it's gonna
You know, it'll generate this once when once we have it rented. We
We have confidence gonna be rented because
Yeah, here's all the demographic trends in our favor.
I always get nervous when tech
People go into real estate.
That that always freaks me out.
I tried to do the same, by the way. I had an internet company and I try to like I I tiptoed into it and I
And I bought some real estate.
And I just wanna like I could put this on the record.
My hit rate for anything that I've done on my own, real estate wise.
It's I'm oh for three. I have lost money on every single one of them.
Well, uh operating yourself is is always different, right? Like you
You tried to
be the real estate developer, right? You try to do the execute the
Project plan yourself.
And there.
You're just at the beginning of the learning curve.
Like I I probably the last twelve months my best investment.
Across everything. And I you know, like I mean all the
AI stocks and all that.
My best investment by far has been my real estate investments.
But I'm not the one operating. Yes, investing in other people's stuff.
Yeah.
When I'm just an investor in someone else's work, it's been wonderful. I I agree. That is wonderful. Any time that I have tried to operate it, oh for three, I've lost on every single one of them. And every single time I think, What am I doing?
I can make a website for zero dollars and that can make money more money than I've just made off of investing seven figures and having to work really hard and stress over making
Significantly less or no money. Yeah.
Have you seen any other of these like um
Social clubs that interest you?
No, but I just think it's gonna be more and more popular. Like all of the
Trends seem to play in this favor, right? So it's like
If you have
remote work which was like pretty
Niche before.
Then it became everybody and now it it's a some new normal.
But it's still way bigger than it was before.
So you have remote work.
You have AI that's disrupting other types of businesses.
You have like
generational declines and like
Number of young men dating, number of people who are like married, number of virgins, uh, you know, people with social anxiety and depression, like
All of those numbers are just like going in the wrong direction.
And so things like whether it's run clubs or social clubs, like
It just seems like the core desires they tap into.
are not being met and like those problems are
Like I'm not surprised at some of the
examples you had and some of the numbers. Like I think it's really impressive.
But I'm not entirely surprised'cause I think people do need this now.
If I'm a young person l listening to this and I uh wanted to get into this, I've been playing around with like copywriting and an idea for this. It just doesn't work for Hampton, it's a little too aggressive.
But I was reading this book called Bowling Alone and it's all about um
In America
Uh up until roughly the sixties.
The average America American was a member of a variety of clubs, like the PTA Rotary Club, which most people don't even know what that is. I don't even know what that is, I've but I've heard it. Uh like the Elk Club, like all these clubs that like we've heard the name, but we're not entirely sure what they were. The average American was a part of like one point eight of them. Voter turnout.
uh for the Kennedy election.
was an all time high. I think it was like seventy eight percent.
And the trust that the average American had in uh a random other American was also at an all time high. And since then there's been this slow decline.
Where club um affiliation is
really low PTA is a is a good like kinda litmus test that it has very low participation.
voter turnout is low and the the amount that we trust one another is low. And there's all types of hypothesis as to why this is the case. One strong hypothesis is the suburbs.
So when you are out in the suburbs where or you don't live in an urban environment, you have less interaction with your neighbor and you don't really get to know them as much. And it's a little bit more like this is my land, this is my territory, everyone else stay out and let me worry about me.
uh that type of energy versus if you live in a building or an urban environment, you sort of kind of have to understand we're in this together. And that's one of the theories.
And I was thinking if I was wanting to start a club in this space, my tagline would be
Join.
Or die.
And this idea that
as AI and digital gets more popular.
You a young person crack interaction more than ever.
And that you will literally live longer if you have a community of other people who you interact with on a regular basis. Right. And so I've I was thinking that like this line join or die has sat been sitting with me for like three or four weeks, where you can do all types of campaigns around this idea of like you owe it to yourself to be part of a community.
And you have to get out from behind the screen. And I think that like the average twenty two year old is yearning for this so badly.
I have a few notes on your tagline.
But we'll do that offline.
Yeah.
You're not a fan of join or die?
Didn't do it for me, but
I'm sure there's others who will like it.
Dude, just imagine like some like
pretty lady named Kaylee who's like serving chicken tenders and she like serves and says, Thanks, Sean, enjoy your tendies and fries. Join or die. Join or die. Greeting. I think Brian Johnson's got don't die, so you're you're almost infringing there. So
We gotta be be a little careful.
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Alright, back to the show.
Okay, I have another idea that's um
I think the theme of this episode today

Anti-digital, anti-tech, anti-AI ideas.
Okay.
And so here's another one that
our friend Trunk uh was tweeting about. Did you see this thing that he was tweeting about yonder? No, what's yonder? All right, so check this out. Have you ever been to a like
Maybe a stand up comedy show.
Or music festival.
Yeah.
Into a pouch. Yes. Sieva uh buddy, he used to date a girl like ten years ago who worked at this company. Do you remember this? She like told us all about this company and I was like, That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
And now it's you. According to Trunk, which I couldn't verify elsewhere.

Basically like three hundred million this year in revenue.
Just putting people's phones in vouches.
And
You know, it's this great example of one of my frameworks, which is like anytime the pendulum swings too far in one direction
It creates the demand for the opposite.
Right, like you know, Newton's physics is like
you know, every force or whatever has like an equal every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. So it's like
Every trend creates
An equal and opposite trend.
And I think as we all have just become completely addicted to our phones.
You know?
Six to eight hours a day of screen time.
I don't know how many times I open my phone, but it's gotta be like, you know.
three hundred plus times a day or something s something just really embarrassing.
This has become a huge business. And it started off so the story here is
This guy started this in San Francisco.
And he's a former soccer player.
And I guess the way the story goes is
Which you you never know with these startup origin stories, how much of it was made up. But he was at a music festival
And somebody was taking pictures of somebody else who was intoxicated.
having a good time, but like, you know, shared without their consent or whatever.
And he was just like, Man, it's like messed up. There's just like phones everywhere now.
And he's like, We should be able to go to a f concert like this and feel like, you know, be present.
Feel free to blow blow up.
So he goes to his like in a lab, he starts sewing he thinks about like should I do lockers?
Should I do, you know, bags?
And he comes up with this idea of a magnetic pouch. So it's a small pouch about the size of a phone.
And it can only be un has a magnet seal and o can only be unlocked by this like
Base. You know, you have to tap it on the base to get the thing off. Sort of like when you shop at a store
And they have the like anti theft thing on it and the the
Cashier has to take that off so you don't like, you know.
Spray yourself with ink or whatever.
It's basically that for phones.
And he starts hustling it.
And he's like, All right, who needs this the most?
He's trying to do music festivals. He's going door to door.
And
In San Francisco. And then he finds out that Dave Chappelle
has been talking about how he just
hates that people are like, you know, on their phone, they're recording his
His sets where he's working on material.
And his business is to have these specials, but the whole thing would get leaked on YouTube.
And so he asked a comedy booker in Cal in uh San Francisco, he's like, Hey, can you connect me with Dave's team?
And he goes and he demos it to Dave and Dave's like
I'll try this. We try it at one show.
He loves it. People are way more present.
They're not on their phones and his stuff doesn't get leaked.
So Dave starts using it. Which was a huge that was a huge deal. I remember when that happened in San Francisco, Dave Chappelle is g making everyone lock their phones in a bag. Yeah, it sounds like the headline.
And it's on the extreme. Yeah.
And any time an idea sounds extreme.
It's what Seth Gooden would call remarkable, meaning worth remarking. It's a
Unusual thing.
And so
It continues to grow there. But that was gonna be a small business, right?'Cause like how many
Stand up comedy shows are there. How much how much these comedians even make? What can you charge?
And then the big break came.
With schools. And now seventy percent of their revenue.
comes from schools.
So like a Minnesota school district pays.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
To get these for all the schools for that.
Schools become a cell phone free zone.
Where students come, they lo they have to lock up their phone to enter.
Or leave it in their car.
And then
You know, now they're focused during the day. Now they don't have that distraction. They don't they're not texting each other, they're not bored in class doing that stuff. And the stats bear this out where like kids are happier.
Their uh grades go up.
And the teachers are happier. They have a better environment.
And so they started doing this, you know, schools all around the world.
And so isn't this crazy that this little business, putting your cell phone on a pouch
is now this three hundred million dollar
Jug or not.
Like how cool is that?
It's uh for for for one, like um I I would have
I would have thought this would never in a million years work. Now it seems obvious, but back then I uh like it's one of these ideas where it's like, dude, maybe you should go get a job and like no not fool around with like sewing these bags.
Um, two. Have you used one?
Yeah,'cause at comedy shows they always make us do it. I hate it, but you know what what emotion do you feel? Rage.
And anxiety. I feel rage and anxiety.
Like I remember one time when my wife was pregnant, I went to a Dave Chappelle show
And the lady
uh handed me one and I was like, look, lady, my wife's like three weeks pregnant. I'm not giving you my phone.
And I tried to hide it and sneak by and she ran me down and she goes You'll be fine, dude.
Or sorry, uh three weeks away from from giving birth.
And uh I was like, I'm n I have to have my phone. And and she goes, um and she turns sideways. She goes, Yeah, me too. And she was super pregnant. And she was like and she was really pregnant. The lady working at the counter, she goes, I'm pregnant too. Put the phone the bag. And I was like I was like, Yes, ma'am. Uh yes, ma'am. Uh
But I felt extreme anxiety. Uh which which means I need to use it more than I thought. Um
they should use this. And you wanna know something crazy? It lost. Most parents wanted their kids to have their phone.
Yeah, yeah. There's like a argument about whether it's safety or like personal property. There's arguments against it.
But I I mean
It seems like the market reaction is that it's
Working overall.
Of obviously, yeah. And uh
I just think it's such a such a simple idea. Also
I was watching something the other day and Ed Sheeran was like, I haven't had a phone for five years.
Isn't that crazy?
He was like what does that mean? He was just like I don't own a phone.
He's like when I had a phone
People were just like calling me or texting me all the time, or I was just using
Social media all the time.
He's like it was really hard to like make music.
So I just got rid of my phone. He's like if someone needs to reach me
You know, I have a manager that'll come find me if you really gotta get to me.
But I haven't had a phone in five years. I was like wow. That might be like
You know when you read like David Goggins, like pull up record. I thought like the Ed Sheeran not having a phone for five years is like up there with any sort of like
Ultra race or or pull up record.
Can I propose an M okay? Oh shit. Yeah. Listen.
Last summer we did uh
What do we call what do we do? The M first summer bod chat.
My first muscle.
I have to think of a of a of a good name for this, but the challenge
is we're gonna we gotta we should pick a Saturday or Sunday, or just one week we could do it. You have to go on a twelve hour walk.
And you can't bring your phone or have a conversation with someone.
Twenty four hours.
Twenty four hour phone fast.
No, a twelve hour twelve dude, imagine easy being
Dude, I promise you it's not easy I would bet so much money. How far you could go.
You have to be outside of the house and your phone has to be in your bedroom or whatever. And you can't be with your wife. You gotta be by yourself.
You have to be by yourself. You can't have a conversation. You can't talk to a stranger. You just have to be outside by yourself, walking around wherever you live. It doesn't matter. Just go sit in a park. But you have to be by yourself for twelve hours. I would bet my life that you can't do that.
I'm not trying to kill you, dog, but I think I could do that. I don't think you can. I I I you would cheat. There's one hundred percent I believe with dude, you cannot go and just walk around and not have a conversation with someone without your phone for kids. You don't understand my kids are on my phone.
At least half the day.
'cause I use it to like
Sebate them and like subdue them like a tranquilizer dark.
So my kids are already on my phone all the time. I don't have my phone with me most of the time.
But I a challenge accepted.
I think we should do this.
The phone fast.
It's I I think I mean twelve hours just sounds like child's pla child's play to me, but I I I you know I I you can have a conversation. You can't you by the way, you can't use your like laptop.
No screen.
Yeah, you no device and no conversations. You gotta be but you gotta be by yourself. So another as I'm scrolling TikTok late at night.
I see this other video of this guy who knows
He went.
Six weeks, I think.
Without looking at a screen. So no computer, no TV, no phone. Six weeks this guy did.
And he he was you know normally you'd be like
What do people say? They're just like oh I felt so much better, more present. You're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know, but whatever.
This guy had one other interesting thing which he goes
I tested my memory before and after.
And he goes, I was fiftieth percentile roughly in memory memorization.
I'm now ninety ninth percentile.
He goes, and I did it's not like I practiced memory. He's like I was just like not looking and not distracted all the time.
And I learned to be more present and now my memory is ninety ninth percentile.
I had a I had to write a bunch of copy and so like basically from like after dinner, so like at nine PM to like midnight, I basically like you put your headphones on, you plug in and you just have to like write and get the work done. And it's a really fun way to get in the flow. And I hadn't done that in years.
And it is incredible how hard it is to focus. When was the last time that you focus and you shut out all the distractions, you turned off Slack, you turn off the it's really, really, really rare that I do that. Very rare. And when I was in college, I would do that every single night.
And it was awesome. Like that's when I would do my homework or like my paperwriting or whatever, like from you know, Monday to Thursday, like eight PM to one AM, that was like work time.
And it was a very rewarding experience to do it.
It was the GPA.
Dude, I swear to God, I graduated college with a four point oh.
Did you really? I I got a D in entrepreneurship class because I missed like a presentation.
But I got I got virtually A's in one hundred percent of everything. I took c college seriously. That's amazing. In high school I gr yeah, I worked really hard. I went to a bad school.
I went to Belmont University. Uh like you never even heard of that. But in high school I graduated with a two point three. And then I when I got to college, I was like, I'm gonna take this seriously. And my nighttime work sessions were holy for me. It was like I felt I it felt marvelous. And I never experienced that anymore. Do you ever experience that?
That absolute focus.
Phoneless focus? Yes.
So what I started doing
And I would say my hit rate right now is maybe one out of every three days.
I do this legit.
Like totally legit.
Which is I wake up and I do it first thing in the morning. So I go no input.
So I don't look at my phone. I don't open up my computer.
I grab a pencil and a pad.
And I'll do one of two things. Either I go for a walk first.
So take if my dog's like up.
I'll take my dog for a walk.
Come back.
And then do this?
Or I'll just sit at this chair over here in this room.
And I just write my it's like morning pages, right? Like it uh and so I'll
Try to create something.
Pre-input.
And I'll do different things. So it doesn't matter what I create, what I write.
It's a yeah, I stole this from Tim Ferriss. He told me something about like
Said something like a creative gym session.
Just like the way you'll go to the gym. And like, you know, if I go to the gym I don't
Use my phone most of the time. Like I'm I'm off my phone.
For the majority of it. Um
And you're just doing something for an hour, right?
Doing that at at a creative level. And so I've done it where I write jokes.
Like
'Cause I learned this this is how Seinfeld started his day for forty five years. And so I was like, Okay
Did that.
I'll
Sometimes just write my food plan for the day. Like what am I gonna eat? When am I gonna work out?
Just kinda get that make that front and center.
Sometimes I'll write like a blog post or I'll just
Right, you know, stuff that I'm like thinking about like
Little loose ends about each of the businesses about like
Oh, you know, I should probably do that. Or
You know what, we're being stupid about the way we're doing this, or you know
Wait, this is working. We're not doubling down on that? What?
I did have a conversation, right?
And so I'll I'll try to do that. But the biggest thing for me isn't just the focus, it's
being pre input to any
Slack.
Twitter, whatever. Email.
Nothing.
Tex.
What what time in the morning?
Usually starts at seven.
Now that school came back on.
I go at
eight and do a drop off and then like ride my bike.
Drop'm off, come back.
So that's you that's kind of cut it now where it's like basically only one hour instead of the ninety minutes.
Yeah. I think we should do uh the MFM challenge needs to either be the walk thing or morning pages. I think that's uh quite helpful. All right, so in the YouTube comments
Settle the debate.
Twelve hours or twenty four. Just write twelve or twenty four.
Of a no phone a f a phone fast.
Just like people do juice cleanses.
They they do other uh you know, like silent meditation retreats, whatever.
Ours is just a phone fast and then
Sam has this requirement that somewhere in that window
You gotta go
Be by yourself. What's the what's the uh
The famous quote like
All of your problems, all of man's problems are because he can't sit in a room by himself. For thirty minutes.
That's what I'm suggesting but twelve hours. Who who said that? We'll name it after them.
I don't know, Abe Lincoln.
Pascal.
This is the new Pascal's wager.
Blaze Pascal said this. So the new Pascal's wager is can you do this?
I think just sitting for thirty minutes though and writing on with pen with a pen and uh paper
is probably even more beneficial. I think that
Like you have mentioned wanting to write a book.
And in my head I'm like
Man, writing a book, that would require like three hours a day of just not talking to anyone and being zoned out.
That is what is h that is what is holding s me or I mean I don't really want to write a book, but like if I were to write a book, that is what's holding me back is not
And a good idea.
Not can I write it's
But that requires three hours a day of silence. And I think that that's pretty messed up that
That is the reason why
People can't do their best work. I met up with Tim Urban
In Austin and you know, big fan of his blog and he was writing a book at the time and I was asking him and he goes he just made it sound so simple. He goes
All I do he he said the same thing. I wake up.
And for two hours all I do is write. I don't need a perfect day. I don't need eight hours a day.
He goes, I need two hours. That's it.
And in those two hours I might write
Two paragraphs, two sentences, or two measly pages?
But if I just do that every single day for the year
It just stacks, right? You do that for three hundred straight days.
You've written a six hundred page book.
And he's like
I can just sit down and write.
The equivalent of two pages.
It's not even like a
Yeah, like a book page is even smaller than like a you know, Google Doc page.
And he's like two hours. Like if you don't have two hours, like then you're not serious about this.
And uh that that really stuck with me. So I started that's you know, part of the inspiration.
Running my company Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses. And I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets.
Emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other.
It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape.
So here's my take.
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And that's why you need to know about a no-code platform called Bubble.
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So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to zero code.com. That's zero code as in the word zero and then code Q O D E. Again, code is with a Q and tell them that Sam sent you.
Do you know who um Robert Caro is?
Yeah, what did he write?
So Robert Carl, I think he originally was a journalist and then um
His first big piece of writing was a three book series on Lyndon Johnson, uh the president after J FK.
And each book was like eight hundred
Pages.
But then his big world famous bit of writing was called The Power Broker. And it was on a New York politician called Robert Moses.
And um
Obama has since written like the foreword for the most recent edition of The Power Broker, just to give it an idea of how uh influential this book is. Many people
uh regard the power broker as the greatest biography of all time. It doesn't matter if you're interested in Robert Moses, the guy uh or not.
The fact that this man packed
Every single sentence with like the best research.
Uh for like I think it's fourteen hundred pages. That's it's like a it's like a modern marvel. That's what like that's like the clout of this book.
And he did like a funny things. Like he would go to like
If he's writing about a location, he would go there and count the amount of people coming in and out of the location. So when he wrote about it, he could be like
fifty eight people came that day. You know, like he was like very specific. But anyway
There's a museum ex uh exhibit that I went to this past weekend.
Where it was a whole exhibit written about or or on Robert Carr writing the book
The power broker.
And one of the main parts of the the exhibit was his process for writing.
And what he said that he did was he had, you know how like um a lot of our parents or teachers used to have a desk calendar where it's a big calendar where it has all thirty days on a piece of paper.
And so his goal was he goes
All I need to do is write one thousand words every single day.
They don't have to be good words. They can I can throw'em away.
But what I have to do no matter what and write to write this book over the next three years
one thousand words every single day and I will achieve my mission. And they have the original notepad, uh his like calendar in the museum exhibit, and he writes on it.
He says twelve hundred forty three words today.
thirteen hundred this many words. And he writes it and you see a big X on it. Right. And when it it's like an X on the on the block, and then how many words?
And the they showed August and it was like he missed one because he was like
had flu or something like that. But it was like it looked like a chain of like, you know, X's, which I think Jerry Seinfeld once referenced. Um and it was incredibly inspiring.
That greatness
This book being the great thing.
Uh, which i it's one of the best biographies I've ever read. But greatness comes from a very simple process
Of one thousand words every single day.
He's a genius and there's all this amazing amazing stuff.
But that was probably the cornerstone of actually going from idea to
a great work with sticking to that thousand words per day. And that is a very attainable thing. It's hard to do, but that is a very bite sized way of looking at an epic project, which which I found very inspirational. I love that. There's a uh another great one that
Is like that. Have you heard the Steve Martin banjo story?
No, what's that? Okay, so the Steve Martin Bandit. He crushes. He crushes on the bench. So Steve Martin tells the story.
I got like a coach or a teacher or tutor.
And the teacher or tutor was sort of like honest with him.
And was like, um
Yeah, you don't have like a ton of natural banjo talent, just so you know, right? Like he was pretty
Frustrated with his progress.
And what he did was
He's zoomed out.
And I just thought this is like so such a powerful simple mental trick where he just goes
All right, look, I suck today.
And I'm probably gonna suck tomorrow.
I'm probably gonna suck for the next three months and six months or whatever. He goes
But here's the thing, I really want to play the banjo.
He goes, What if instead I just committed to playing the banjo for forty years?
Because
If you anybody who plays the banjo for forty years, you can't suck.
And it just took all the pressure of being good off his shoulders and let him just
Be like, Yeah, I'm just committed. I'm just gonna do this.
For forty years, and of course I'll get good. You know
Then I don't have to have these like
daily doubts or questions or h hesitations or moments where I want to, you know, give up because I reset my expectations.
And I love that story. And by the way, he like wins a Grammy
for a song where he play he's playing the b manager like you know five or seven years later.
Um so you know, it like obviously worked out really well, but
I love that kind of forty year mindset'cause it applies to basically everything. Like I felt this with like diet or fitness. It's like
Easy to get frustrated on.
Yeah, I was doing well, and then I sort of traveled, I fell off the wagon for two days or whatever, and it's like
Two two zoom outs have helped me there. One is like
Look, it took me thirty seven years to get in this shape. Like it's okay if it takes a couple for me to fix it, you know what I mean? Like
That's all right.
Um and then the zoom out being like
Instead of just doubting like can I do it? Will it happen? It's like
So I'm just gonna keep trying this.
For the next decade.
Do I really think it's not gonna happen if I just keep like giving this by all for a decade? Like, no, of course it's gonna happen. Of course I'm gonna fix all these habits, I'm gonna get this good workout routine, I'm gonna do all the things that I know I need to do.
And I think it's
Very helpful because
Most people will
quit early, but they don't quit early because they're weak. They quit early because they're beating themselves up and they have the wrong expectation.
Of how long something takes or how easy it'll be, or how like
You know, whether they deserve it or not, whether it'll happen for them or not. Right. Like if you knew it was gonna happen.
When your Uber says it's nine minutes away.
You don't get panicked that it's nine minutes away. You just sort of accept that it's nine minutes away. You see it coming towards you.
Versus if
You're doing some project and you have no idea if it is even is gonna happen.
Right. Like then every day you have this sort of am I in or am I out? doubts.
I think that like there's like a list of people
So this is like a business show. So we talk about business and money a lot, but
There's like a list of people who I learn more from that have nothing to do with any of that. And I think like a Steve Martin type is one of those people.
I think that um
when when I hear that story, so like I have a um a few like
Bad habits.
Which are
strengths and weaknesses, one of them being I put time limits on goals.
So I have a milestone for where I want to be like every five years, and that helps me stay focused. But also I feel immense pressure of like
I have to hurry up and I gotta get it.
And so it's cool to hear a story like this of something where you're like
You change the frame to where
I'm gonna do this now for forty years instead of
Five because if you do something for five years
That like changes I could break five years down quarterly.
And then if I could break it down quarterly, I could break it down monthly. If I could break it down monthly, then I could break it down daily. And that is where both structure and anxiety comes into play. Well, I think I I used to be like, Well, which one is it?'Cause I know the deadlines
And the time constraints helped me.
But I know they also feel bad and I know when I go over them or I don't have the results in time.
Feels bad, man. What do I do?
And then the Naval quote kinda cleared it up for me, which is
Impatience with action, patience with results.
So the forty year story isn't
I want this to take forty years and I'm gonna spread my work out over forty years. It's
The result is inevitable over a forty year span.
Now the day to day actions I'm gonna be quite impatient about. I'm not gonna let myself be super p patient about
Taking steps and moving forward and trying, you know?
So you have to be able to hold
Both those polar ideas in your head at the same time.
And this is so common. Uh
Almost everything you have in life.
Like all the sort of best things come when you have to hold two truths.
That are polar opposites.
In your head at the same time.
And so I I think this is one of them. I think I I think I heard you say that on a podcast recently.
I learned that from Joe Lonsdale, I forgot what he calls it, like dialectics or something like that. I don't know. Maybe that's like Scientology, but
Um that sounds a little too I think that is that that sounds a little too philosophical, uh like a philosophy class stuff for me, but I think I'd prefer the Sean Way. Let me let me read this to you. So he goes
I'm not by any means a philosopher.
But I've worked worked with some talented people who who, you know, are in that discipline.
There's an idea of opposing truths at extremes. It's a powerful concept that I've learned to appreciate in my twenties.
So he goes, My personality has sometimes been called a little intense.
And what I spent a lot of time reading, discussing, or thinking about an area, I'll often appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true.
They come to very firm conclusions.
Then later I'm exposed to an opposite strong view.
And I find this
Countervailing view also very persuasive. And I found this confusing. How could both extreme
contradictory viewpoints to be true.
And then this
Great thinker, GWF Heagel.
Said.
Truth exists at different extremes and the actual truth is a complex interaction between the two.
So like, you know, he he goes, Most people are sloppy thinkers and opt for a middle of the road when they're faced with two opposing extremes. That compromise is less accurate than if you had just picked one of the extreme polls.
That were that were quite persuasive. But the wisest stance will incorporate both of the opposites within itself.
Do you have an example of like of like two opposites that you you

The example we just gave of like
Patient versus impatience, like oh it served me so well to be impatient and like
I don't know any successful people that
Consider themselves super patient.
But then at the same time you go talk to those people.
And they're like, Yeah, I was working on this for nine years before we, you know, had a breakthrough. It's like damn.
These people take pretty long term time horizons also.
So how is it true that how can they be impatient and have a very long term time horizon?
It's'cause both things are true, just in slightly different ways.
What's another example? Yeah, I've got a couple of them. One of them is capitalism. So like
I'm super pro capitalism.
Uh like I love making money. I think building businesses is great. I think kinda a little bit everyone on their own is awesome.
And then other times in my private life, I'm like, I wanna be like a socialist. I just wanna share with everyone. Like I feel bad that uh
My I don't want my cleaning lady to ever want to go without. I want to make sure that she is paid above and beyond, even if it's not what the market demands. And I get angry at capitalism. And I I feel like that's kind of like
There's
Polar like
One, I'm like so pro capitalism, and two, it's like
Uh man, I just want everyone to like
get paid more than they do and uh to be wealthy and those but you can't have both of those. Have you ever experienced that?
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Uh you know, you have uh
sort of head in the heart and di you know differences in that in that way.
Another another one uh that he gives as an example that that's true for me is like
The difference between depth
And with so it's like
Do you be a generalist?
And you're able to like kind of go pretty broad.
Or do you go for depth?
You know, and it's like, Well, there's no one answer.
And there's obviously virtues to either path.
And you wanna do both, but you can't do both at the same time. It wouldn't be like
It wouldn't be true. You wouldn't be sort of you defying physics if you're gonna try to do that do both of those at the same time.
And so
You could see the value in either end of the extreme. What you probably don't want to do is the middle.
Where
You only have a handful of subjects and you're not very deep in any of them.
Here's one that I think you probably struggle with as well. I struggle with this all the time.
Which is creating legacy.
So like if I go to a museum and I see someone's name on the museum, like
War
or someone who has a business that's lasted for two hundred years, I think.
I want that legacy. I want to do something great that everyone knows my name.
And on the other end.
Nothing matters. You're gonna die. You will be forgotten.
And like
I would say fifty percent of the time I think this is all irrelevant.
All that's matters that is that I hang out with my children and spend time with them.
Because I'm gonna die very soon and no one will remember me.
On the other end.
Create something that matters. Do something that's great. You know, like do you feel that way? I think every entrepreneur, by the way, e no matter how successful they are, even like
the billionaires we've had on, I bet a a nice chunk of the time they think.
F this. Like I'm out.
Also it's like
If you go down that road and you're like, All right, you know, either none of it matters
Or this matters the most.
You're so you're the most persuasive person you know.
And so you know exactly how to convince yourself of either one of those arguments at the time that it justifies doing whatever it is that you want to do, you know? So you can't trust yourself in that way either.
Yeah, it's like being hungry at the grocery store. It's like, Well, I'm feeling down today, therefore nothing matters. Therefore I've gotta let it put down. Exactly. But like that that is like the dichotomy that I face probably the m I I I I am
I am more often
Then not
On I more often than not, do I feel uncertainty around those two than I do feel certainty. By the way, can I also just give you some props? I think
You're
Robert Caro museum visit that you did.
You're
You know, these uh these clubs, these housing things.
Did you you have a
Crazy.
bag of knowledge and interest. That's just like really insane to me. Uh like that's really
I don't know, inspiring and uh interesting. Like I just can't believe
Like I don't know what is your
Filter.
For what you get like interested in, but the result of it.
Fascinates me, you know, which is why we've been able to do whatever
Seven hundred episodes of this podcast.
Well, and by the way, i it uh the the props are vice uh go both ways when I hear like you tell the story, I'm like How did you know this? Can I but basically what it comes down like I I I
I tend to find something that interests me.
And then I'll create a semester.
Around it.
So where I'm like, this interests me, I'm gonna follow my nose.
And I will like pretty systematically read about it.
uh from like nine to ten and I just follow what interests me.
Right now I'm oddly interested in like beauty.
And art.
And so I can give you an example. I um I live uh in New York City now on the upper west side.
And I purposely moved into a building from the Gilded Age, because that's my favorite era. And my neighborhood is sort it's very weird. There's a little bit of the Tism coming out. Uh but I am in awe of all these buildings that were uh built between like 1895 and 1920.
And so I have been using chat GPT and I've been going from building to building to building. Like I'll just walk around at night and like learn about the building and ask the doorman. I'm like, tell me everything about this building. I want to know all about the architecture. I find it so fascinating. And the other day I started watching this guy
I'm gonna say this in a crude way and if he makes it to him, I just wanna say
Guy, I'm sorry, but I I've got to say it this way. But do you know the Indian guy from Mean Girls? His name's Rajiv.
Do you remember that? Maybe kind of.
Yeah.
I'm a huge fan of his. I'm only saying it in a crude way because this is how what most people will the rapper guy, yeah.
Yes. Uh his name's Brajiv. So R A J
I V
Um
He has a YouTube channel right now.
Uh that I love. He's basically like Bob Ross, but he's been talking about um
Um
Pottery.
And
calligraphy and like kind of beautiful things, things that don't typically do well on YouTube, things that are really fast, uh or the opposite of fast. So it's not fast paced, it's very slow. And he's been talking about architecture now. That's like one of his latest things, buildings. And I realized in one of the videos that he lives down the street from where I now live.
And last week or uh on Sunday, I was at a coffee shop and I saw him.
And I go
Hey.
Are you Rajiv? I just want to let you know.
I love your YouTube channel. It is so good.
Uh, what are you doing? He goes, I'm just getting coffee. I was like, Well, I have a seat right here. Me and my daughter are are gonna have coffee. Would you like to hang out with me? So I sat with an hour with this guy.
And he told me all about the neighborhood and all about the beauty of like the architecture. And that is like where I'll learn and like get stories is I'll just go up and like talk to him or find another person who I love. And uh
It's it's been a blast, like following my nose of like what interests me. That's hilarious.
That's amazing.
I spent an hour with this guy.
No, well I had there was like I had the best seat in the house and I and I go, Do you want to sit down and just like talk and hang out with me?
It's like oh great are you at work.
But anyway, I've been uh that that's usually what I what I do to like learn is I like get up. Usually what I do, I meet a former actor turned like cultural expert at a coffee shop. That's not what you usually do, right?
No, I immense myself. Like I get interested in like a topic and I'll immense myself and then I go out and I talk to people about it. So I do field trips. This was a lucky field trip, but I would do field trips all the time where it's like I'll hear about a museum doing a thing or I'll fly somewhere.
Uh that that's why I like to learn.
Yeah, you should um
Publish more of that. I think that's great.
Well, that's cool.
I guess I should. I never really thought.
of it as particularly unique. How do you when you read a book or a topic, what do you do?
Um yeah, like kind of a similar thing, just a little less structured as in like
I think my attention span's a little shorter.
Meaning like
Once I once the idea clicks, I get this extreme high
Of feeling like I just learned something cool or know something now.
And then I want to go do it.
And I don't want to keep researching.
And then also and also
It'll lead me to the next thing, which is totally unrelated, you know.
Like I had this whole
phase on the creative process, which was reading about Seinfeld and the banjo story and all this stuff, like
Super, super into that.
And then it'll be like
Old school marketers. And then it'll be, you know
The posterior chain and like why my hamstrings are so tight. What what should posture actually be? And how do I fix that? You know, like it'll just be like random stuff like that where I'll get
Yeah.
A similar season, but I think mine are shorter because I am less
diligent about doing it.
Yeah, I I my preferred way of doing it is if I think I'm going to be interested in a topic, I try to research like
Roughly three to six books.
On the topic.
And I commit to going deep on that.
Because I don't want to be persuaded when it gets
Like I don't I want to make my decision in advance that I'm going to consume instead of Yeah because otherwise you have the problem I have, which is like anytime you hit a lull
Where you just like are not getting like
amazing feedback loop of learning new things or, you know, finding something interesting.
It's easy to eject'cause this was a voluntary
thing anyways. It wasn't like for a specific outcome or result.
Whereas I think I would be better served if I did it your way, where I like
pre commit the time and it's like, look, I can't do anything else during that time. I'm just gonna keep keep wandering around here.
'Cause I bet.
I'm giving up at the first lull, but there's still like a lot more gold.

carry on, you know, if I if I just wander keep wandering for a little bit longer.
And oftentimes what people tend to do is they think that researching
what to research next or researching what to do next is actually productivity when it's not.
Productivity is actually doing the thing.
But yeah, Ren hey, Renaissance Sam.
What can I say?

All right.
That's it. Go ahead. Hit him with the line. That's it. That's it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
I'll put my all in it like my days off. On the road, less travel, never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
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Billion dollar moves. All right, back to the episode.