We found the internet's best sales advice

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/d0eb721296e3503b

Can I show you the highest value
comment on hacker news that I've ever seen.
I feel like I can rule the world of no way
Be what I want to
From like years and years ago, but
It's this comment about sales,'cause Hacker News is full of engineers and they're like, Hey, like
You know, I suck at sales, anybody can help me get better at this.
And uh this guy wrote seven points and I just
nodded my head so vigorously that my C four, C five is a little sore. So let me just give you this. So the guy goes, Yeah, there's tons of resources to help you with sales, but I'll start with I'll try to offer some simple tips. Number one.
Sales is a lot like golf.
You can make it so complicated.
That it's almost impossible.
Or you could simply walk up and hit the ball.
I've been leading sales or about twenty years. My advice is to walk up and hit the ball.
Number two.
Sales about people and it's about problem solving. It's not about tech or solutions or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people, it's about solving problems.
Number three. People buy four things and four things only.
Ever.
Those four things are time, money, sex and approval or peace of mind.
If you try to sell anything other than those four things, you will fail.

Number four.
People buy aspirin always. They'll buy vitamins sometimes.
And but it'll be unpredictable.
Cell aspirin.
Number five.
I say in every talk that I give.
That all things being equal.
People will buy from their friends.
So make everything else equal and then go make a lot of friends.
Um number six, being valuable and useful is all you'll ever need to sell things. Help people out. Send them interesting posts, write birthday cards, record videos.
Sharing your ideas of how they could grow their business. Introduce them to people who would benefit from knowing each other and get out of the way. Expect nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically, and people will find ways to give you money. I promise.
Number seven.
No one cares about your quota, your payroll, your OpEx, your burn rate. No one. They care about the problems you're solving for them.
There are more than a hundred trillion dollars in the economy just waiting for you to breathe it in.
Good luck.
Who is this God of Hacker News?
Are you reading any books?
I am reading Influence Again by Robert Childini.
Why are you rereading uh Robert Chadini's influence?
Because as the great Buddhist proverb says
No man steps in the same river twice, for he is not the same man and the river is not the same river. Oh my god. How long have you been waiting to use that one? You start reading books, what can you do? You just start turning turning into a quote machine.
No, but really I think you know
Reading the best books again at different times in your life.
It's a totally different book. You think you've read it and what I found is you you remember
Yeah, shockingly little of books.
And so
Going back and reading great books is um
Is like, you know, the gift that keeps giving in that sense. So so that's what I'm doing.
Uh did you ever read the blog post that I wrote about influence, his book?
No.
Uh in two thousand and fourteen I had just read his book and I wanted to implement what it what he he talked about and he has this rule called the rule of reciprocity, which basically just says
Uh let's say that n uh neighbor one goes to neighbor two. Let's say I go to Sean and I say
Hey, can I borrow a cup of c sugar?
And you say, Yeah, I got you.
The next day if you come to me and say, Hey, can I borrow your car for the day?
Even though even though those two ask aren't even remotely equal, I, because of the rule of reciprocity, am very likely to lend you my car because the rule of reciprocity states that if you do something nice for someone
they are they have a high chance of doing something nice in exchange to you.
Even if the they aren't equal.
And uh that's like how society is is built, one could say, is like based off the rule of reciprocity. So when I was a kid, I was uh twenty four years old, there was a motorcycle for sale, I think for eighteen hundred dollars.
And I went to buy it and I took photos and documenting all of this as I went.
And I was like, Hey, uh you have the motorcycle for eight eighteen dollars, eighteen hundred dollars, let me see it, let me check it out. Awesome.
Oh, by the way, uh I'm really sorry I'm late. I I just I wanted to stop and get a Coke'cause it was kinda hot outside. I got one for you if you want one. Do you want one?
And he goes, Yeah, sure. Thanks. Um
And then uh start talking to him and I'm like, look, I love this motorcycle, but like I'm a young guy, I don't have a lot of money. I know you're asking for eighteen.
Could
Could you do fourteen?
You know, you brought me the Coke, you seem like a nice kid. Yeah, I guess I can do that. And so like there's a blog post where I took photos of myself, like what he was what he was like turned around, like signing the paperwork. I like

Took the photo, but anyway, the rule reciprocity is pretty amazing.
So let me tell you a funny follow up story to that.
I remember you telling the story about the diet coke and the negotiation and how you always bring
Two diet cokes to a negotiation, correct? You've told me this before, like ten years ago. Yeah, I try to bring a gift. Yeah, I try to bring something.
Well I took it as Dyko. So here's what happened. I uh recently
Yeah. I was coaching this high school basketball team, as you know.
And
Anytime I'm doing a project, I wanna try to make it as interesting, as cool as possible. And what I do sometimes is I do things that are maybe like
not the default way of doing things. So I was trying to create content for the team so that the team would have like
Really cool like media going with it. And so the principal and the AD did not like it.
Are you talking about the the post that you made about your
Doing being a coach.
Being a coach, yeah. And how we were gonna try to have this check this underdog team and try to get'em to be state champions. And that was getting we're gonna record the vlog around along the way.
So
Post the vlog, it gets twenty thousand views in the first twenty four hours.
But one of those views was the principal or the AD, they call me and they're like, Hey, you need to take this down. So we'll say, Okay, we'll take it down.
And he says, I want to meet with you m be in my office Monday.
Dude, you're gonna call the principals off. And so here I am.
I thought I was past this, but I'm now in my late thirties.
And I'm going, I'm nervous. I'm going to the principal's office and I bring uh so we're we're recording a vlog of this thing and I I'm telling the vlog I said, you know, my friend Sam taught me this this trick. This little little the law of reciprocity. Like let me put you guys on some game.
Um you know, people have this really high likelihood to return the favor. If you do a small favor for them, and I said, Watch I said
I'm I'm gonna be late to this meeting, but I'm gonna stop and get this diet coke. This is the most important part of the meeting. And I'm like, follow me. A vlog camera follows me and we get two diet cokes.
And we go
And I'm so ready for this. And I get to the meeting and uh we sit down
And I'm like, I don't fully remember the line that you said uh about like how to do it. I think there's a actually a really specific way in the book.
That Rubicotini describes it, which is um
Two people are doing a psych study.
The guy walks out.
And he comes back and he says, Hey, they um
I asked the guy if we if I could have a Coke.
He said, Yeah, so I brought you one too.
Um so it's kinda kinda sounds like very like you know, thoughtful and in passing. And you said a s a very similar thing.
And so I walk in and I just go, he's like, Hey guys and I go
You want to dye Coke?
And then he's like.
No thanks. And now I have two diet coats. I go I have two. I go, I have two and he goes
I'm all set.
And then I
And the vlog camera's on me and it's like the office. I look at the camera and it's like
This is not going as planned. I'm Michael Scotting this.
And then I open up.
The Dai Coke.
Almost explodes'cause I've been like you know nervous the whole time. Luckily doesn't totally foam over.
And I proceed to drink two diet cokes while this guy absolutely shuts down my program.
And so that's the law of reciprocity gone wrong.
That's so
That is so funny. That is so good.
All right, I have a story for you.
Hey everyone, really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, so delegating, having hard conversations with your team, hiring, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that Sean and I use in our own companies.
And they put it together in something that's really easy to read and understand and so
If you wanna just save yourself ten years of headache and heartache, then you should check it out.
I wish we had this a long time ago. It would have helped me a lot, but there should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So check it out. It's totally free and
Totally awesome.
So I told you the other day how I like
For the first time ever I like went out to dinner with someone. Uh and I'm like such a homebody. Well, my friend.
What are you talking about? I visited New New York. You literally walk around New York with a briefcase
And like
You know, business cards and altoids in your pocket trying to meet people riding the subway. You're you're uh don't try to take my stick. I'm the whole body. I just carry the briefcase. My wife's like
Why do you have this of like
To do business. Yeah. Sam Cosplays a businessman in New York City.
I'm doing business, Sarah. I need it I need the case. It's got the crayons and the snacks. Get off my back. Okay, that's enough.
Yeah.
I uh I've been hanging out with this guy named Mark. Um have you heard of GLG?
Yeah. The uh expert network. So you you know, you wanna find out uh
Whether NVIDIA chips are gonna go up or down, maybe we'd call someone in the supply in the one of the buyers who's like an expert buyer who'd give you insights about the industry. Huge business.
Yeah, and I've become good buddies with him. I've hung out with him a bunch because he lives in my neighborhood.
And uh basically GLG, like you just explained, huge business. They filed uh to go public at one point. Um and so some of their numbers are public. It it does something like over a hundred million dollars a year.
in profit and cash flow very
Amazing company. And we were just hanging out. He owns uh another business in the community space now that he loves.
And he sits down and he starts telling me, I'm like, What are your hobbies? What else are you into?
And he told me this crazy story. So I want you to Google something. Google, um, it's called United Hatsala. Okay, I found it. Okay.
Equipment aid, uh looks like a charity of some kind. Volunteer medical emergency services. Exactly. So listen to this story. So he tells me this story. So Mark
He started GLG when he was only like twenty three, twenty four, pretty young guy.
When he's something like twenty seven, twenty eight, he meets this guy named Ellie.
Ellie was either an ambulance driver
or was at the scene where this happened, but basically a kid
was choking on his food.
And the am they called it ambulance. The ambulance didn't make it there in time.
And the kid died.
And he was like
it it really sat with them. He w he was really bothered by that because they lit come to find out that there actually was a doctor like next door or like down the block or something like that. With in like a pretty close vicinity. And he's like it
Really stinks at this.
ambulance took fifteen or hower however many minutes to get here.
When there was a guy right here that could have s like cured this kid and he didn't have to die.
And so
Uh, Ellie ends up starting this very small thing with only like six or twelve people where they basically self-organize and they train themselves on how to do very simple things like CPR.
the Heimlich maneuver uh and and they train themselves on that. And then eventually went to like they could even like do like an emergency baby delivery
And he ha started a nonprofit where he would actually give out these like forty pound backpacks that had like very uh a small amount of oxygen.
uh a baby kit system so or uh uh a baby delivery kit so you can like deliver a baby an emergency, like these like really uh uh essential supplies.
And he starts telling Mark about how he's got this things going, and Mark's like
That's awesome.
This thing could be it. This could be like a really big thing.
And Mark gives them eighteen thousand dollars because Mark was just getting successful, but he's like I have eighteen grand I can give you, but I can be your co founder and I can help commercialize this thing and make this a huge thing.
And so it's been around since uh for the last eighteen years. And at this point, they have eighteen thousand volunteers.
In Israel. It's mostly it's it's only in Israel.
They answer something like two thousand calls a day. And the mission statement is very simple. They say that on average it takes something like twelve or ten minutes for an ambulance to arrive to you. Our goal is to get there in ninety seconds in anywhere in Israel.
And right now I think they do it in like two minutes. And Mark was telling me he's like basically right now we are uh him and I went out to eat.
He was like if you were a member, you would carry your bag with you at all times and if somebody ten floors down
got uh got sick or something happened where uh they had to call in the ambulance, you would be alerted
uh because you are nearby and you could run down and give them some type of need until the ambulance got to them and they could actually do the real stuff, but at least you could be like a life saving thing.
And because of this, this company
Uh, it's a nonprofit. They have saved uh potentially millions of people because they've done this since uh in the last eighteen years. And what's interesting is they started this.
Before
iPhones before GPS. And when they started it, they actually just gave out these like walkie-talkies, like these radios.
And now it's gotten quite sophisticated. So they the the the entire foundation runs off of donations and they are spend many tens of millions of dollars a year.
And what they have noticed is like, for example, through eighteen years of data, they know that heart attacks are more likely to happen in the morning.
Which means people are probably in their home versus the office. And so they know that they need to recruit volunteers who are on call and ready and they're prepared for a potential heart attack within these areas. And they have this they actually did a YouTube video on it. They have this entire uh like AI setup that they know when to predict that something bad potentially might happen and to have their eight thousand
To be ready.
And there's a few interesting things here about this. One
There's this thing called like good it's called good Samaritan la laws.
We have it in America, they have it in Israel, which basically just says like when you're on an airplane and the captain goes like Is there a doctor on board? Could someone help me?
Uh, as long as that doctor acts in good faith, they can't be sued by the person.
You know, as i it's is it called the good Samaritan law where it's like as long as so
But
If you are on there for pay, meaning if you're a professional, like I'm paying you money, there's an exchange of goods for you to do a service, you could potentially be sued. So Mark was like this thing, it needs to strictly be a nonprofit.
He said the second thing. He was like in Israel, what's cool about this, he's like, We have uh super orthodox Jews who are doing it. We have not secular Jews who are doing it, we have Arabs, we have Muslims, we have Christians. He was like, I've noticed
that what has brought us together is not just us sitting around talking, but I can get all groups of people to come and work together on something and and and get their hands dirty. And it really brought us all together. And he was explaining this in a very altruistic way. And I totally got bought into it.
And I was like, Why aren't you in America? He's like, Well, we actually did try to, but we started in two thousand and nineteen or twenty, like right before COVID, and it it was a false start. So we just haven't we just haven't made it here. But he's like, This one hundred percent could work in virtually every city in America. And he was like, it could even work in rural areas. He's like
Uh in rural areas they have volunteer firefighters, but it was really fascinating to hear all about this stuff.
because I think that, you know, we talk about money and for profit stuff, but if you are like a social entrepreneur or something like that, this is a really interesting opportunity. And hearing him describe this, it was amazing.
Dude, so cool. I mean I was reading the stats about it just now, it says
They basically handle one call every forty five seconds.
Crazy, right? The scale of that's crazy. There's only there's only like eight thousand
volunteers or nine thousand volunteers. So that's a lot of
Coverage. I mean two thousand calls a day.
And you only have nine thousand volunteers.
Everybody's busy. This is not like a once in a blue moon.
Uh you know thing. This is this is wild. The average response time is three minutes, their goal is ninety seconds.
Um that's nationwide and uh
twenty four seven coverage, which is pretty
Pretty in incredible. It kinda makes sense in a way, right? Because
I mean what a cool like you asked him what are your hobbies and he told you this story.
Which is hilarious'cause you're probably like
He's like, What about you? You're like skateboarding. But but like for for people, I mean
To be able to be like, Yeah, I saved a life.
Today.
Or this is your purpose, right? I mean what yeah, like what an inc uh where else can you get that? That uh that would be actually like really meaningful for people if they felt like they could join something.
Where they can actually do that.
Well, think of uh the people who have like kinda crappy jobs that they're not particularly motivated by. Like this is something where you're like, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I can do that non motivating thing. That pays the bills. I'm so thankful I have this
Yeah, like I have this thing that like I'm I am needed and my m and and I actually have a literally a life changing impact on people.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's crazy. I thought you were gonna say in the US they just
pivoted to DoorDash. It became DoorDash. Well this is the founding story of food delivery. Uh but I thought this was awesome and I was pretty inspired. Like hearing I I think he said that he goes, we have uh 8,000 people who are part of the network
And um he's like, We're growing. He's like, We're gonna keep on growing. He's like, um
And he's like one doctor who is probably doing okay, but he's not wealthy. He gave us four thousand dollars. And he's like, I got this line where I tell them this because I believe it to be true. He was like you giving us four thousand dollars is the best donation we've ever received.
Like the fact that you are willing to do this, it is so important to us and and that's how they've grown to be able to spend tens of millions of dollars a year.
Very cool.
Very cool.
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Let's see, do you want a lightweight you want something quick and fun?
You want something a little more
Give me full and deep.
Did you see this amazing
It's a master class of PR.
By uh Bernard Arnaud.
I didn't read it.
What happened? It happened this morning.
Okay, so
So I don't I don't normally pay too much attention to this stuff, but check this out. So
I saw this from uh Lulu uh I don't know how Lulu Chang, I don't know how you say her last name, Mr. V. She's like the kind of go directly.
Um
Founder she she she's like she was doing PR at Andrew and now she has her own fund and whatnot. Is she the one who has the handle where it's like here's how you should and should not address
Uh like PR issues. Yeah, yeah. She's just like constantly giving founders like advice and her her philosophy is go direct philosophy. So anyways, check us out. So
The backstory is that Bernard Arnaud, who you you know probably better than I do, he's the
The Titan behind um
The luxury conglomerate L VMH.
And every once in a while he's the richest man in the world.
Yeah, he he's kinda yeah, he floats, you know, between number one and four and the richest men in the world.
And he writes this
Post.
Um and it's just
Title.
Merci, right? Thank you in French. And he t he basically says
So what happened was
This um
Publication in France.
Did this like year long tr kind of sort of expose.
On his family, and they tried to make it as like juicy as possible. So they dropped a six-part investigative series called The Empire of Bernard O'Neau.
And it was talking about how it
basically paints him as the last royal dynasty of France.
And it describes like tension between his second wife and his son in law, and how their Sunday family dinners are like, you know, palace intrigue type of thing.
And how they're you know, they're trying to figure out
the you know the five heirs or s the five kids are sort of jockey for p position'cause he's he's now close to eighty, I think.
Of who's gonna s succeed you know, th it's like basically s succession, but for real life.
And so he
So they they dropped this whole series.
And he goes and he goes, Here's a th three page open letter.
That he he basically posts. And I just want to read you a little bit of this. So he goes.
Thank you.
That's how he starts it. Instead of being defensive, he just starts with thank you. He goes
It seems I am the head.
Of quote the last royal family of France.
I'm reading this between two cups of tea and my children who are alerted to this over WhatsApp.
Um
asked me if they should now curtsy in my presence and I told them hello, sir would be would be sufficient.
They burst out laughing.
Um
This has just been a wonderful week.
And it basic it says.
Seems like Lamond has uh d decided to roll out the heavy artillery. Six months of investigation, two full time journalists, blah blah blah. He basically like
Paints them as
Absolute overkill for what they were trying to do.
And it this deserves a word, and that word shall be
Thank you.
You know, I I haven't been granted this treatment since I took over the company in nineteen eighty four.
And at that time they called me the Terminator, but I far preferred the last Royal Family. It's far more elegant and really good for sales at Dior.
Then he continues on and he basically says um
Uh he goes he goes on and he goes, Apparently I'm the whisperer into the ear of every president.
Well, I plead guilty.
And he starts naming the different presidents and he says, Oh, and by the way, it's not just
The French uh, you know, presidents. It's also five American presidents. I've whispered to three British prime ministers, blah blah blah.
And i am I to understand that whispering into uh that the only French whispers are scandalous
That a group that earns seventy five percent of its uh revenue outside of Europe
um should shouldn't should be sort of isolated and not be talking to leaders of these countries.
And then he it basically just addresses point by point.
the accusations in the article, but does it in such a smooth
Non defensive
French way where he basically turned a dis like a a a diss track into a into a giant compliment for himself.
And you know, he he addresses each term one by one. I'll give you one more. He's known as a lover of arts and tax breaks.
And he's like, Yeah, I contributed two hundred million Euros to the reconstruction of Notre Dame.
I fund to the tune of fifty million mathematics research at the school.
You know, I pay this much in taxes every single year. We employ two hundred twenty thousand employees, forty thousand of them who work in France itself.
Um yeah, like I'm sure you forgot to mention that in the research, but uh you know happy to help. Uh you know, happy to help you here. And um
And so he's just he calls out like the wording, you know, that that they use for for the different things, just making them seem a little bit ridiculous. And he ends
Um w withsured, I will keep doing
The Mond crossword, which I which that I must say.
Is excellent. And basically inadvertently dissing the article and I just thought
Damn.
This guy the this was like such a perfect take down.
Where you normally see
CEOs get really flustered. They either
Ignore
They deny
They go start to complain and say they're biased and they're it's a hit piece and you know, play the victim and instead
Just so smooth. I thought there's a lot that that uh American CEOs could learn from this.
Do you know what the biggest thing is to use hum humor?
Bring to bring it back to Robert Taudini, he says the rule uh likability.
How to be more likable. One of the easiest ways I don't know if he actually said it this way, but an easy way to be more likable is to be humorous. Like
Yeah, is to make people laugh and smile and like make people laugh about the silly stuff. And like if I uh heard about someone doing an article, if I was in this guy's shoes and he was doing an article about my family, I would be livid, right? I wouldn't want to laugh about those. I'd be so angry.
Um, and the fact that he could do that is awesome and it makes him one hundred percent more likable. I didn't know anything other than like
He's a business like
Tycoon.
But now I'm like, Oh, I'm kind of a fan of you.
Yeah, exactly. You know, I wasn't gonna read their annual letter this year, but this he like basically he used the intrigue of gossip, that attention, that spotlight to say something very different, which I would say
Obviously if you just hate the guy, you're gonna still hate the guy. If you love the guy, you're still gonna love the guy. But the sort of
The mass in the middle, which is folks like you and I who
don't really care, aren't really paying attention. It's just one little nugget where you're like, hmm.
I like that guy. Couldn't tell you exactly what he said, but I I liked his approach. And and if you've ever studied like
Yeah, he's got that genetic quack, you know what I mean? And it's people have studied this with like presidential debates and whatnot. It's like after the fact, you know, whether it's two hours later or two weeks later.
You rarely can remember anything that was said.
Um, but you do remember how that person came across.
Um and the level of like sort of inadvertent uh trust and likability that you felt uh in the moment. So your your impression lasts.
Although your memory for the specifics does not
Dude, what's crazy is
I'm um I'm not aligned with Mam Dani's beliefs. Uh Mamdani, the the mayor of New York. I'm not aligned with a lot of his beliefs. I'm not aligned with a lot of his ideas for policies.
Uh I see him talk on the internet and I'm like
Oh my God, you've got this dialed in.
You know how to be likable. It is just insane. Have you ever watched any of his videos? Oh yeah.
Yeah, same same exact reaction.
Oh my god.
Like he just has it dialed in perfectly. I went to um
Yeah, out here in um New York City, there was the um national track and field meet for like the profess professionals, and he popped in to say hi.
And uh like it w it got more
Cheers than the actual race did.
And uh
Like I I I really disagree with um virtually everything he's about, but
He just oozed the charism the charisma. It was crazy. It was just absolutely crazy. I've I've he's just been on all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. He's he kinda ran like a
social media master class, right? Like just figuring out little memorable
um likable things to do along the way, whether it was the speech at the mix or talking about like oh the like
The halal food trucks is fourteen dollars now for a plate of chicken. What's going on? You know, just rather than like boring people with
With uh, you know

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What's the second thing?
Let me tell you about uh
No, you talk about this company, so
I want to tell you about a company that is
I had written off I
I just thought it's sort of like, I don't know, some archaic company. And then I saw some news recently that kinda blew my mind, some numbers, and it led me
Down a rabbit hole. And it's the business of magic the gathering. The nerdy.
Business of Magic the Gathering.
And
I wasn't interested in this at the beginning. Let me just start with that. If you said, Hey, would you like to know about the business of Magic the Gathering, I would have just
you know, moved on to the next stall. Uh I w I was not paying too much attention to it. But I should think If you think someone would be talking to you, would you guys were like urinal the urinal?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you like magic? Do you want to hear Do you want to hear about the economics?
I just feel like
I wouldn't have paid attention to this. And I'm telling you, it's very, very interesting. Okay. So the way I noticed this was uh Diego was
Tell me he's like, Oh, Hasbro stock popped. And he's been going to these card collectors conventions.
Every weekend. So he's been telling me about the Pokemon scene. He's just he's just been getting into that like subculture. He doesn't really buy any stuff himself, I I don't think.
But he um
She's just interested in the obsession and the fanaticism and the like the subculture that that exists because she's like invisible to you unless you're in one of these conventions.
So he's like, Yeah, Hasbro stock just popped and it was because
Magic just hit like an all time high. Uh Magic the Gathering. I'm like, Magic the Gathering, isn't this like twenty years old and it's true.
Magic the Gathering has been compounding.
Seventeen percent a year on average for seventeen straight years.
And so the it's just been this like incredible compounding machine. This franchise, which sounds like
You know, it might be like a a quick fad, like beanie baby. Explain what it is. So like I had the cards when I was a kid, but I don't even know if it was a game or not.
Yeah, so it's a it's a tr it's a game you can play. Two people can sit down and you can kinda like have a duel. So it's like a card game.
But
And this is kind of the genius of it.
A lot a lot of the fun isn't even playing the game against each other. Like Pokemon, it's about collecting.
And so how did they do this? And so the the backstory is pretty fascinating. So for so first of all, Hasbro is this company that owns Monopoly, they own Nerf guns, they own uh like you know they own a bunch of stuff.
But like
Every you know, of every dollar that comes in, one out of every three is driven by magic. It's like it is their cash cow.
Magic will do, you know, two billion this year in revenue.
It's been just cranking along. This was like a you know an all time best quarter. So you'd think like
Is this old IP not like fizzling out? No. It's like it having its best quarter ever.
If you read the true backstory, you realize one thing, which is
What
True sort of tinkering, the power of tinkering. So this guy starts with this, he's making this game called Five Magics.
And five magics is a game he makes, doesn't go anywhere, but he puts a lot of heart and soul and sweat into it. And he he puts it on the shelf because who cares?
And then he goes along and he's working a job, but then he creates this he has this other idea for this like
more advanced game like Robo something where you like kind of like build robots in the it's like a board game where you're actually like building a robot.
And then he pitches it to this guy who's doing this wizards game. And that guy's like, dude, this is too hard to build. Can you build something that's like
More like
kind of you know, this sort of sci fi lore type of game, you know, this wizarding lore fantasy stuff.
And make it like something simple, not the like rope you have to build a robot, but like just like a card game or something.
So he goes back and he's thinking and he's on a hike one day and he has a sort of Eureka moment. He's like, Oh, I could take five magics.
But I could change it. And he has this really good insight, which is
Most games like chess or checkers, um
W at the time we're all like
Fixed games, meaning you open the box and the pieces are all what they are. Monopoly. Like the the pieces are exactly what you think they are.
And I'm gonna play with you and then when we're done we put the box d you know, put close the lid on the box and the the game stays in the box.
And when Richard was growing up, he had a very unique upbringing. And that's this is very f this was like a fascinating part of this, how these like
This like butterfly effect. So his dad
moved them when he was very young to like Bangladesh and Nepal. These countries that you know
Totally fish out of water, didn't speak the language.
And so to make friends really the only thing he could do
was play games because uh he didn't he didn't know how to talk. So they had to pla use the shared language of a game that he knew that they knew. And that game for him was marbles.
And so he would go and he would play marbles, and marbles is a very unique game where you don't go and open a box and play marbles.
Each kid brings their own marble set.
to the game and you play and you can win other people's marbles, you could trade marbles.
And you have your own ever growing collection of marbles. And sometimes you run into a kid, he's got a marble you've never seen before. And it made you just
w want to go find your own version of that marble. You didn't even know it existed. And so that was part of the allure of the whole thing. And so he has this idea of like, hey, what if I take that mechanic from marbles
Where
It's this like infinite set of possibilities. You have your own collection. You bring the pieces to the game. It's not a game where the pieces are already inside the box.
And that was the core insight from Magic of the Gathering and why
Twenty years later.
It's printing, you know, five hundred million dollars this quarter off of that single insight about like what if the players had their own collection that they would bring to the game, rat they would walk around with.
Rather than like a fixed set of pieces.
It it's a right now it's doing two billion a year in revenue.
It's on pace for that this year, yeah. Like one point seven last year, two billion this year.
And so he's and by the way, he's the great great grandson of James Garfield. It's kinda cool.
Yeah, the president, exactly. Yeah. So he was like doing this. Did he sell it or what did he do?
Yeah, so he sells it about
I don't know.
I don't know, six, nine years in, something like that. He sells it to Hasbro for three hundred something million is the reported price thing gotta earn out.
That took it up to almost five hundred million. So he was only five years or seven years into this when he sold it? Something like that. He was very smart. So he was building this game.
And I'll tell you kinda like how we got it off the ground.
I'll tell you how he the the very smart thing he did right before he sold it.
And then why this is so great as a business model. So so
First how he got it off the ground.
He has the idea, he starts tinkering with it, and he's he and he's a total like game design nerd. He's been
Focused on game mechanics and game design for a long time. In fact
When I told you he like grew up in like Bangladesh and Nepal and he was playing these games, he actually got into Dungeons and Dragons.
But he didn't know the rules, th like the it didn't come with the rule set.
So he had the pieces, but he didn't know how to play.
So he was inventing his own rule rule set, which again is like
If you look through you know great inventions, it always comes with this weird constraint.
Or this irritation that sounds like a total problem, but if
If it they turned it into actually like the irritation drove the innovation. So him not knowing the rules
Led him.
to experiment with all different types of rule uh game design and rule design and he would play it
And later in life he actually found the official rule set. It was almost like bummed out, like oh, that's how you play?
I I'd been inventing all these other like versions of this that were really interesting. So he had been studying game mechanics for a long time. And so even with magic.
He was play testing like crazy and he would do things that others weren't doing. So he would find he would say, Okay.
Who would be the best play testers for this? I can take guys who play these card games or these like board games.
But he also went into baseball. He's like
You know who really loves studying the the statistical
um aspects of games was Stratomatic, which was this like base baseball
Simulation game.
That like Uber statistical nerds who love baseball would would get really into Stratomatics. We'd find the best stratomatic players, get them to test us. Cause he knew.
If you get the game design wrong, the game fizzles out. He's like you could have the rich kid problem, which is just
It's all about going and buying the best cards. And once you have the best cards, you can't be beaten. He's like, so it can't have that problem. And it can't have this problem. And it can't have this problem. He's finding all the bugs before he ever got to launch. And by the time he gets to launch,
He doesn't just try to launch this widely or you know, just like launch it to his friends. He goes and he drives
Basically like down the coast. And he's going from like
uh comic con to like trading card conventions to
Um uh board game conventions and he's finding like the white hot center
of who should love this game. And it should be basically like board game nerds.
And he would go and he would demo it to like very small groups of people, but he would influence the influencers. He would get the guys who own the shops. He would get the guys who write the magazine articles. He would get the guys who are the the pro players of other games. He would win them over. And once he won them over, they would then be his sales engine explaining it to the next people. And so he would just like, you know, kind of like
Traveling in his tr with the game in his trunk.
go and win over like hand to hand combat. Each of the it's he says he launched this in ninety three, so he was doing that in the eighties.
Well, that was kind of his launch strategy and then he's right away it sold out. He sold like
like hundreds of thousands of cards like in the first four days.
And then he reprinted and he sa he had sold ten million within the first like year or something like that. Like it was a great thing. This could be a great movie. Like the the like early nineties, late eighties in San Diego, LA. Like that is like a really cool setting. And then like a guy like going through all this like
It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Oh, it might work a little bit. It's not gonna work. Okay, it really works. Like that type of thing.
Boons, right. So he he runs they it sells so fast, he has no cards.
Yeah, print.
Any more cards. It takes time to do a print run.
But the scarcity of there being no more cards and people going into shops being like, Hey, do you have any magic?
And the owners being like, What's magic?
And then they would have to go figure out why are people walking to our door like hunting for this thing. I've never seen this level of passion. So the scarcity drove the like economy of the of the game.
And so he and and again the business model the genius of the business model, so normal board game.
We'll sell for like
Whatever, twenty bucks, let's call it.
Well, the average magic player is spending a hundred bucks a year for like eight or nine years of their hobby. So the average player is spending like a thousand dollars. And obviously there's
Extreme collectors who are spending hundreds of thousands, there's casuals who fade out right away. But
If you just do the math, like the L T V per customer.
is in the thousands of dollars per player.
You could never get somebody to buy a board game for a thousand dollars, but by doing this kind of drip drip drip mechanism where
You get into the game, but then you want your collection
To become better.
So that you show up with like the ace up your sleeve and you have social status because you have cool cards.
And then
You can trade or sell those cards, so it's an investment. It's not spending.
And that's what you know, Pokemon did that afterwards.
Uh Heartstone did that afterwards and now like, you know, a lot of the like sports card stuff have have have really taken that model and and run with it.
But you know, Magic was really one of the OGs who did it.
So I thought that was pretty amazing.
The other cool thing he did was
He bought he wanted to IPO the company and he realized like if I'm just one piece of IP,
I'm gonna be seen as inherently risky.
And so Dungeons and Dragon had been out before him and it had like forty million in revenue, but it had like thirty million in debt. And it was doing really poor. They could they stopped printing cards.
'Cause they just had too much debt. They owed a bunch of money. They were they had scattered their business too much.
So he bought the company. Nobody knows exactly how much, but like looks like it was like thirty, forty million maybe.
And he just took care of their debts.
And in doing so.
He had a a more diversified, you know.
uh RAM portfolio of like
Another franchise that had millions of players and had been around for a while.
And so he's you know, you buy it for thirty, but then your egg your eventual exit
Is for you know
Three hundred to five hundred million to Hasbro.
Because you were more defensible. So I thought that was actually pretty brilliant as well. If you go on eBay and type in Magic the Gathering and sort by most expensive
There's cards on here that are hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah.
That is wild. That is. Pokemon card the I think the most expensive Pokemon card sold for like ten million or something. Twelve million. You know the gooch?
You remember the gooch?
Or sorry, not the gooch. Mooch. Sure don't. He's not the gooch. He's the mooch. Uh Anthony Scare uh scare moochy. The mooch.
His kid bought it from uh Logan Paul for like ten or seventeen million dollars, something like that. Right.
What's the gooch known for? You don't want to know. But uh Did he raise funding?
No.
This is like a
Bootstrap thing.
And what year did he sell it?
I think he sold it late nineties is my my guess. Um
But it was like you know, it was like eight years in the making before he even launched the game because he's just been
I mean he really he'd been thinking about this stuff since he was a child.
I think there's a belief
In entrepreneurship.
That
These ideas just sort of exist, you just have to sort of find one and make one.
And um or you sort of get to be the one who gets the winning lottery ticket. And
Then you read about stories like this.
You read about the story of how the UFC uh almost went bankrupt and really like Dana White and the Fertitas.
Yeah.
Built that thing brick by brick against
Pretty much every headwind you could have being outlawed by
By states.
Losing money, nobody would put them on TV, like just every headwind you could have.
they faced and still built a multi billion dollar company still doing it today, even after cashing out.
And I think there are actually many businesses that
We're only gonna be built by by one person.
It was either gonna be built by that person or it wasn't gonna exist.
And I don't think that's a popular
belief. But when you hear these stories, you just can't imagine. Would there really have been another person who had the
this combination of the background, the the hustle, the insight, the personality, the force of will, like the combination of factors that it takes to make it happen.
Um the other time I felt this was when we were
uh talking to Joe Gabby from from Airbnb.
And he was telling the the true founding story of Airbnb and all of the headaches that they faced along the way. And
You know, just being shut down and being sued and being this and being that. And it was like
being copied by these like much bigger, more well funded competitors.
And just the the number of times they escape death in the first two years.
It's like a dozen deaths that they escape. You know, they're they're out of funding and then they create a cereal box.
For John McCain and Barack Obama and they sell that at the conventions and they get just enough money to continue their business. It's like
The hell is going on. And so
Yeah.
Those are businesses that it's like, oh, Airbnb was not meant to survive.
It broke the rules. It was supposed to die twelve times and it it finally the universe gave in. It was like fine, go ahead and exist. It was not like
Just anybody was gonna make that happen. It was it was not gonna happen that way. So good.
There's a scene that um
In in the movie Rudy. Have you seen the the football show or the football movie Rudy? Yeah.
Yeah. The like Rudy's like talking to a priest.
Uh and the priest is like Rudy.
I've been a priest now for this long, and there's only two things that I n I realize I believe in.
There is a God.
And I ain't him.
And uh and whenever I hear stories of like Dana White.
What do we say? Or uh we were we were uh paraphrasing someone else, but it was it it was like make sure your passion burns so bright that everyone will come in town to like watch you burn something like that. When I hear stories like this, that's what I'm envious of. I'm like uh I wish I cared about anything as much as this guy cared about a stupid card game. Yeah, that's exactly right.
When you hear the stories of like um
These kind of like
Singular.
Force of will, creativity. Yeah, like the the guy who who was it? The guy who created Minecraft. One guy. Yeah.
Not, yeah.
The whole thing himself, you know what I mean? Um I I have a friend who's a very, very smart venture capitalist. You know, this guy's like
back to some of the biggest winners.
And he said something to me once about I remember when Esports was like
on trend and people were investing a lot in e sports and
uh Overwatch franchises were selling for twenty million a pop'cause they were trying to
Make it the next NBA.
And he wasn't buying any of it. And I'm like, but this is kinda your thing. You like these like
Weird missed l things that could be huge.
But they're kind of written off and now they're starting to pick up steam. Like I'm surprised you're out He goes
Esports needs it's Dana White.
And he was like, uh, I don't know who that person is, but he goes, Anybody could have told you that, like fighting, martial arts, like it was a thing.
For sure.
But the guy who was gonna make it the worldwide thing
It took a very special
Like
batch of entrepreneurial energy to do that.
And somebody who was gonna just break through walls for twenty years.
And so he's like, You just need to f in he's like, So I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting till e sports has that.
He's like I don't think esports is not gonna be a thing, but I also don't think it's a thing it's going to be a thing right now because I don't see who that person is yet.
And you see this with other things, like right now, uh
Longevity is obviously a huge trend.
Wellness, longevity.
It's kind of replaced health and fitness as like
The way people
Wanna optimize.
And Brian Johnson.
I think was the Dana White of that industry.
I mean Brian Johnson was willing to do things no one else would do.
In a way, in a combination of like skills and personal sacrifice.
that uh very few people were ever gonna um
Ever gonna do.
And he had that special combination. I think he's gonna do it for a long enough time that it's gonna be I mean, it's already broken mainstream, but I think it's gonna just keep going.
And he may you know, i in in his case, he's not creating like the one company necessarily that will be the winner.
And the way that like the say the UFC was?
But
I think he made it happen in a way that no
Doctor, no scientist.
No fitness athlete was ever gonna do.
Yeah, man. But I remember when we first came across them, we were like
There's this guy, he's got a blog and he's like just writing about his blood levels, but look how he does it. Look how nerdy he is.
Well what were the factors, right? He had to have
First
personal wealth to start spending millions of dollars because no investor would have funded that.
Right. Hey, uh hey, I'm gonna go raise money to inject myself with
crazy shit, measure every organ in my body individually for its aging speed.
'Cause I wanna know that my left earlobe is aging differently than my my kidney.
And I'm gonna do that for years and like, you know, somehow that's gonna work, right? Like he he needed personal wealth.
Then how many wealthy guys would want to like
Donate their body to science while they're still alive.
Almost all that well, he you need someone who's basically like a little bit autistic and a lot uh ranks high on disagreeableness.
And he I mean he admitted himself he was depressed and you know, suicidal. And so he had nothing to lose. He's like Well being rich isn't making me happy. So let's spend the money and doing something else that will give me some sense of purpose and and and uh something that will will take me out of this funk.
Then you needed somebody who had
The unique quirky personality to be loved by some, hated by many.
And uh watched by all.
And so, you know, y his look, his personality, his combination of
Scientific intelligence, business acumen, and then like
willingness to look like a fool on social media, right? Like I actually believe that Brian Johnson is the greatest social media
uh marketer in the world.
And so like if you see him now, you know, he's like
I'm gonna live stream myself taking
Taking DMT or whatever, like what's the thing like the a f a toad pissed in my mouth and I'm gonna hallucinate, you know, whatever it is. Like he's doing that type of stuff.
On a live stream. You're like Oh my God, who would think to do this like
Is he he's got like Jake Paul's
Social media instincts.
packaged in Elon Musk's wealth and, you know, Huberman's scientific, right? Like he's got like elements of each one of those, not at the at each one's level, but like that combination is just a very rare skill stack.
Have you seen his YouTube videos? They're grey.
They're so good. They're they're not at all like
Anyone else's stuff. They're so good.
And I'm not saying I agree with everything he's saying, I'm not saying I endorse whatever. I'm not not saying any of that stuff, but all I'm saying is
He undeniably.
broke through the noise and broke through the barriers and brought so much attention to this entire like way of living.
That it just seems like
Who else was gonna do that?
He told me his motivation. He was like
I can't tell you
Who the seventieth or fiftieth
Or a hundredth richest person was
And
Nineteen seventy five.
But I can tell you who Galileo is. I can tell you what the Wright brothers did.
five to ten people who I could tell you what they invented and how they impact society.
And

Does it relate around money?
And so that's when I realized that going after just business and making more money was not the answer to my question of how do I be somebody that
other people remember in five hundred years.
'Cause that's my motivation.
Dude, when you hear stuff like that, it's like
Such an amazing one line kill shot because
You know, five seconds earlier, it's like
You're crazy. You're you'd be crazy to do that. And then he says one thing and you're like, I guess you'd be crazy not to do that. You know what I mean? Like that's how effective that is. It's like, Yeah, you're right. Like, what is the money for?
Nobody cares that you, you know, you sold prain Braintree slash Venmo
For seven hundred million dollars and then you know, what are you gonna do? Live the left rest of your life sipping pina coladas like
Uh you know, on islands you own, like, yeah, you could do that.
Or you could be a man of history and like
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could do this. Oh oh okay, you can help people.
You know, live forever. That
I guess that isn't crazy. I guess that's uh that actually sounds way better than the alternative.
Do you ever watch the Grammys where they do like the uh the Oscars, I forget, where they do the segment where they remember the people who died that year? It's like a constant of like
Oh.
He died?
Or like uh or like
Oh, I remember that guy.
And like you maybe are thinking back to a time when you did remember because
That movie that that person named was like your favorite movie when you're a kid.
Um and you're like
But he was the man.
I love that guy.
Okay.
No like it's just like next.
And whenever whenever I that segment exists, I'm like
the vast majority of a large percentage of the people who they're talking about are probably significantly more successful and impactful than I am. And yet all they're gonna get from me and millions of other people is a
Huw.
Right.
Yeah. And like and it and some hand I'm always like
That's a bummer. And then on the other side, I'm like
That's kinda freeing, right? Like you just do whatever you want then.
Um, and so those segments always remind me of what Brian Johnson said.
living life or caring about what other people might think of us while we're alive. If you stacked onto that and you knew everybody would care about you and think about you when you were dead, it would I think be net negative. Right. Like it's a good thing we don't all have these insane legacies that everybody knows about. Because it's freeing to let you actually
Just live your life on your own terms.
For what you you know, because
Nobody's thinking about you anyways.
I don't even know how we got onto this.
Magic the Gathering? Oh, Magic the Gathering. What's the guy doing now?
That's the true magic of Magic the Gathering. How it brings us together.
All right, is that it?
That's it.
That's the part.
I feel like I could rule the world, I know I could be
But I want to
I put my law in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back
All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Battel and Eric Sue. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.