4 dumb ideas that made people rich

0:00 Sam, I have a list of What I'm calling dumb ideas. That made a million dollars. These are obscure lists that really only people like you and me would ever even keep. But I have a list of dumb ideas that actually worked. I feel like I could rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I say dumb not because I think they're dumb, I actually think they're genius. I think being clever.

0:25 And doing simple things is actually a form of genius. But I think other people would call these dumb ideas. So I want to run through them with you and I want you to give me a reaction to each one. All right. Let's see it. Alright. First one came up, I was watching uh The NFL playoffs, which were on this weekend.

0:39 I don't know if you've paid any attention, but like the Chicago Bears, who have sucked for a long time. are in the playoffs and Chicago has this rival, the Green Bay Packers. And the Packers have been great for a long time and the Bears have sucked for a very long time. And so it's like kind of a rivalry just by like location, but they're not really They're not really like close rivals.

1:01 And so I'm watching the game and I look and In the crowd, I just see a ton of people. Wearing Like I don't know how much you know about football, but do you know what the Packers fans wear on their head? Yeah, cheese heads.

1:12 Cheeseheads. So what do the Bears fans wear? I don't know. Helmets? She's graders. And so I see. All these fans wearing this like silver cheese grater

1:24 Ha. And I'm like, Oh, that's clever. Like we're about to shred the the the green bit package, we're gonna shred the the cheese heads. Um, and I'm like, this is really smart. So I've started looking at w what's the story behind this? And The story behind this is kind of Crazy. So if you go to foam party hats dot com

1:40 This business started in twenty seventeen. So Grace Rojas and her son Manuel Rojas. They they create this thing. And they had actually for like, you know, 15 years, they had just for fun been making like fun party hats. Like I think for their own daughters, like party They made fun party hats for all the guests. People loved it. And they kinda gave it up and then they moved and then they like started again. And they're like, We're gonna make these foam hats for special events, parties, occasions. And sports.

2:06 And so they've been kind of like trucking along. They got on Shark Tank and they got a they gave up twenty five percent of their company for a hundred grand, right? So like you know, yeah. And you know Birthdays, wedding. Corporate events. Uh, they had all these like novelty hats. And then came the boom. So

2:24 This uh greater head thing has just taken off and become this like viral frenzy. So like Basically the Bears, they have this coach. I don't know if you've seen this guy, Ben Johnson. It's kinda got like If Sam Par was into football energy a little bit. He's just basically this young coach who's supposed to be really, really smart. He's super like ripped.

2:42 So every time in the post game he'll like in the in the locker room, he just like rips off his shirt, which like most of the old like seventy year old girl just would never do. And he gets his team like really fired up, but He gives the game ball to this guy. Who comes out? And I don't know if you can see this, but he's he's got this wide receiver DJ Moore, he's wearing the hat.

3:00 Um and so he's He's wearing this. This guy DJ Moore, and he starts dan the whole the team starts chanting, Go DJ, go DJ. There's a little Wayne song. He starts dancing. This clip goes viral, right? This has two point two million views. And suddenly

3:14 These hats are flying off the shelves. And they did they do like ten thousand orders in a week, which is like half a million dollars in a week. They have this huge wait list now. You just backlog'cause they make these by hand, apparently. And this idea of Like team specific. Novelty merch.

3:32 'Cause if like sports fans, like I when I went to that Warriors game I walked out, I bought my son a jersey, a little ball, but it's like also like vanilla. It's all cookie cutters like the same things over and over again. But With social media Teams now have little like trends, little meme moments.

3:50 And if you could fast follow those meme moments. And create stuff that's gonna like kind of make somebody laugh or be worth sharing on social media. you can actually get a lot of spread. And so that's what this company's been doing with these hats. And going viral. So they've built uh basically a You know, million dollar plus business now off of these like novelty foam hats.

4:10 Isn't that wild? They do a really good job of making me into the story. Uh Like it looks like it's a like a Hispanic like family and looks like the son is kinda the CEO and the mom is like one who is the brains and kinda came up with the idea and originally made it. Yeah. It looks pretty awesome.

4:27 Yeah, but I think if somebody takes this idea, there was a another company, like a T shirt company, I can't remember the name but They were doing this for sports teams where they They realize like the drop shipping Infrastructure. has become so good.

4:40 That If anything happens in the game like last night. Within an hour after the game they can have the store up. for that product, for that slogan, for that thing. Lin Sanity happens in New York. And then they go, they have like the Lin Sanity like line ready to go. And so I forgot what the name of this company is, but they're basically like

4:59 Rapidly, like w much faster, like orders of magnitude faster than the the typical like merch industry. creating team specific, moment specific Uh merch. It's not the it's not the best business. It's not a business I would want to be in, but it is like A simple man's business. Like anybody can understand what they're doing and be able to like try to replicate that. And then if you niche down, even all the way, forget T shirts like

5:22 to f giant oversized foam hats. Like a million dollar business sitting in in oversized foam hats, which is pretty wild. Ready for the next one? Yeah, that the that was a quotable last line. There's a million dollar business sitting in an oversized phone hat. All right. So a lot of people watch it, listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really a lot of people who are listening, they have a full time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, All right, I want to start something on the side.

5:54 Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And Again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends. And luck.

6:03 So my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea. database. It's a list of a hundred Pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through'em. They're awesome. And it gives you How to start them, how to grow'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think.

6:29 All right, here's the next one. So As you know, a long time ago I was Running a business called birthdayalarm.com. This was a business started by Michael and Zoe Birch. Had been a

6:39 Going for twenty plus years. Printing you know. millions of dollars a year. It was one of the earliest viral businesses ever, so I think Birthday Alarm has had like fifty million plus members with zero marketing spend.

6:52 Because Michael was one of the pioneers of viral marketing and so he understood how to How to get this business to grow virally? How much revenue has this done over the course it's twenty years it's twenty years old? Uh, yeah, I think he's is more than that. Probably five years old now. And so has this done like

7:08 A hundred million over twenty five years. Probably not a hundred, probably like Over fifty, so maybe seventy five million is my guess. Wow. So uh oh hyper profitably, by the way. Like that's like that's not just re revenue is profit for a business like this. So three million Every year for twenty five years. Ish.

7:27 Not exactly, but yeah, average. Let's say average two to three. Okay, wow, amazing. 'Cause the business model is very simple. So It's reminders for your friends and family's birthdays. Fantastic.

7:37 And then I was like, but that the reminders are free. So you make the money when people pay to send a card. And I remember when we were trying to like grow the business or revitalize the business. I was brainstorming ideas with him and I was like My you know, I try not to be too smart. So I always just like what's already working or has worked in the past or is working for other people. And so that was my first question. Before I tell you any of my bad ideas

8:00 Tell me about some things that are already proven to work. And he goes, You know At the beginning. These guys approached us with this goofy idea that I thought was a total scam. He's like, but I think they've actually made even more money than than we did without the fifty million members. And I go, What is it?

8:16 He goes. It's this thing called the International Star Registry. Oh my gosh, I have heard of this. So he goes. They let you for like a special occasion for a friend of or you know, friend's birthday or whatever.

8:29 You can gift them their name on a star. You can name a star. In the universe. After your friend. It'll tell it'll show you the star, it'll tell you the location of it. And For the low price of twenty five dollars, that star is yours.

8:42 Technically. Not technically yours at all. Not even officially named, just named in our book that we're gonna keep in our office. And so these guys have been printing millions of dollars for also. Twenty plus years. Just naming stars after people. And this got popular. It was like it's been referenced in movies. It was like in a walk to remember. They like Someone is dying, they name a star after her, like

9:04 It's this emotional sentimental thing. And I love it because the It's a pure play marketing. Product. There is no product. Like You don't get to have the star. They don't you know, there's nothing nothing changes hands.

9:17 It's literally not even officially naming the star after them. It's literally just we are gonna write it down in our book. Permanently. It's like something I would trick my kids with. What's really funny is if you Google Star Registry, you could see they're buying ads against each other. There's like Dozens of these companies. Which begs the question like

9:36 You know, like whose book is like the more permanent book. Uh but is this the one That was founded in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, nineteen seventy nine, when like kinda space was hot and the moon and all that. So You get a you get a certificate, you get a map of where the thing is, and you get to you get to have that forever in their book. And so the the funny thing is like They are like kind of the the the

9:58 The details of this, which I think are like pretty funny. You know, think about it from a marketing point of view. How do you legitimize Yeah. Frankly, illegitimate thing.

10:08 And what they did was they basically like They made their book so official, they're like, it's placed in the library of congress, and we store the official book in a Swiss vault in a Swiss bank in a vault. And you're right, like just leveraging like prestige and Like are any of those things impressive? Like how do you get a book into the library of like You probably donate a copy. Like uh one of my favorite copyright's Joe Sugarman wrote this famous ad for um Cassio watches and He asked the guys who made the watch, he was like, Explain to me how this watch is made and they say, Well, we use a quartz movement and then we use this type of aluminum and he goes, Hold on.

10:44 Did you say quartz movement? And they go. Yeah, it's like a movement that every ten dollar watch he uses. He's like But tell me more about quartz. And he finds out what quartz means. And then he's like, Tell me about the steel. He's like, Yeah, well or this metal. He's like, Oh, it's just aluminum. It's just like

10:58 You know, we use it, this this pen company uses it. Hell, even like NASA uses it. Did you just say space grade aluminum? And so If you read this old ad for the Casio watch, he was like made. With the same aluminum that's space grade s or or is like it's space grade aluminum. It is called that because NASA uses it on their rocket ships to make it so strong with the with the m with the quartz movement, which is the most precise movement.

11:25 It's the same thing that Rolex uses. Or like something like that. And so he like took like a truth. And made it. Sound a lot cooler than it is. Sort of like In a Swiss.

11:36 Took a fact and he made it value. Yeah. By the way, I think this is the uh What's that thing called? The Rorschach test or whatever the the the ink blot and you're like, Is this a Buddy Rabbit or a serial killer, right? Like to me that's What you just described is the thing for this podcast.

11:51 It's like if there was like a speakeasy and you had to come in and like We had to decide who gets in and who gets out. I'd tell this Joseph this Sugarman story. And I'd be like, do you find that amazing or repulsive? They're like, Well, that's bullshit. And they're like, Cool, you should you should just head to the next bar. And if they're like, That's amazing. How do I do that? Like, come on in. Welcome to MFM. That's pretty good. How long uh who do you did you ever look up who owned this company? Did they have like some crazy story like Michael Birch? Yeah. So it was owned by uh this Canadian advertising executive, but only for like a year. I think he like passed away.

12:25 uh two years later, and then this mom of twelve Who gifted a star to her husband, loved it. Finds out that Like the business is like, you know For sale.

12:35 She buys it and then they've grown it as a family business. Now her son is the operator of it or something like that. Uh so this mom of twelve did it. Which by the way, if you're a mom of twelve You're hired. You're capable of doing anything if you can be a mother of twelve. Like I don't know what Navy SEAL training is like, but it does not compare to being a mother of twelve. Dude, on their uh on their on s it's called starregistry.com on their about us page. They explain how they're

13:02 Democratizing the cosmos and all this stuff. And then they have a line that says Do not be fooled. By the impostors. And it's this Those other guys. It's this big uh paragraph that says uh in the vast experience of celestial naming.

13:17 And uh there are also impostors seeking to capitalize on the alure of allure allure of the stars. Numerous companies have attempted to copy us. And they go on to say why they're the more official one. Right. Pretty funny. Snake oil salesman says other guys' oil is terrible for you. Yeah. Did I tell you how he came up with this idea? No.

13:40 Michael had a they were they were both I think working at a insurance company. And he's like, we were making really good money because he's like computers were new and like not many people knew how to do programming for computers. The internet was new. insurance companies needed somebody who could do like database programming or whatever. So he's doing that.

13:58 I think you told me they were making like A really good salary, like maybe like two hundred grand a year, maybe combined, maybe the two of them. I don't know. They're doing well. So the internet boom starts. It's kinda like nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine. And he's like, What am I doing sitting here at an insurance company? I gotta be a part of this.

14:15 Which I'm sure today many people feel that way about AI. And uh you know, the way the robotics and the way the world is going. So He said his friend sends him a site uh a link to to uh you know some some Friendster or something like that. He's like, wow, this is incredible. I gotta get I gotta get in there. I gotta start doing things. And so he decides

14:32 I'm gonna create a self updating address book. So like, you know. Today, this is still an unsolved problem, by the way. Uh Sam, you move. I don't have your new address. I have to keep asking you for your address. I don't know when you move.

14:46 So he had this idea. Lo well, the way it should work is when Sam moves, he changes his address once and it changes automatically, and anybody who he's already accepted. Like To have his address that get changes for everybody. A great idea. Still a great idea. This is an idea that he had many like Sean Parker. You know, who's famous from the social network and f you know, Facebook. He tried to start a company doing this too. Like a bunch of smart people have been like, We're gonna solve this problem.

15:09 It just turns out people don't really care enough to do it. Uh, but he's building this thing. It's called Lemon Link. He's like, you know, the best thing that ever happened was he's like, we had no money. So he's like, I'm the programmer, I'm the designer. I'm the product manager. I'm customer service. I'm the janitor. I'm everything, right? Cause there's nobody else.

15:26 And um He told his wife when he quit his job, he's like, Give me three months to try this computer thing and like this internet thing. And like if it doesn't work in three months, I promise like We'll we'll go back to having a job because I think they were like pregnant with their second or third kid. And so it was like, you know, not not super like stable time. Uh to just quit your job.

15:45 Well, two years goes by and he's like, I'm so close. I've just Just keep I need another three months. I just let me keep going. So he's still trying. He's doing customer service and Lemon Link is not growing. He's like The only thing I'm getting in customer service is basically like shut down my account. I don't need this. Or Hey, thanks for that birthday reminder.

16:06 Uh you save my butt, you know. 'Cause he's like, I added this one feature in addition to the address thing, like Oh, by the way, like save their birthday too, and I'll tell you when it's their birthday. That's a good feature. And he's like, I kept seeing that and this was pre Facebook, so people didn't have an easy online way to know when their friend's birthday was. And so he realized, oh, this is a thing. And that's that was the because he was doing customer service.

16:28 And because he finally faced reality, which is like nobody wants my idea, but they do seem to want this. Then you know, overnight he creates birthday alarm dot com. And like within a couple of weeks, he gets like ten thousand members and he's like, Oh my God. He's like, This was Because he figured out a viral loop and he's like There's he's like to this day, you know, that was still the best feeling that but even before we made any money, getting to 10,000 members, like that was that was crazy.

16:51 It's pretty crazy he had the audacity to stop working on that and work on Bebo. Like Most everyone else would say. Make anniversary alarm. How do we do this? How do we do that? It's it's working and it starts making a little bit of money. Not much, but a little bit of money.

17:05 And His friend Morgan sends him a link to Friendster at the time and he's like Oh, of course. People are gonna wanna like This internet thing, it's not just looking up information. They're gonna wanna like

17:18 talk to their friends and put post photos, you know, like stuff like that. Like that makes total sense. So he created a before Bebo, he created Uh Friends are like Product. It goes viral again.

17:31 'Cause he really understands virality. But he's losing money because The more members that sign up, the more his bandwidth costs. And at the time, social networks didn't have any way of making money. Like today, Facebook is known for like Facebook ads. There was no ads at the time. And so there was no ad network. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody knew how to make money off of those things. So he went to a meetup and he sold the business to James Courier for like two million bucks.

17:54 And he was like and he went and worked for them for a year. And then kinda like as social networking was was maturing, he's seeing what MySpace is doing, he's like oh okay, I think I know what I should be doing. I learned even more about virality here. Now I'm gonna go start Beba. Then he started Ba and that was the one that took off. And that was like in two or three years, he grew it from nothing to like a eight hundred million dollar exit, right? I'm not sure how many years, yeah, three, four years probably. Like very short.

18:19 Yeah. What a baller. Damn. And now he's just the um Sole proprietor of uh Little Birthday Alarm dot com.

18:27 Just a mom and pop shop. Yeah, just try to make it make it N V. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four fifths of the pages. Point is you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit hubspot.com.

18:59 I have one more very dumb idea that I admire for its simplicity. So You probably are a subscriber to this YouTube channel. Can you just type in Ten hour fireplace. Of course.

19:12 I mean everyone is, aren't they? So there what you will see. Describe what you see when you type in ten hour fireplace and then click their YouTube channel. They have done a very good job of naming it.

19:23 Uh, so I see oh my god, I didn't realize it was that big. Okay. Holy moly. Okay, so obviously it's what you guys expect. It's a ten hour video of a fireplace. With a hundred and fifty seven million views. Exactly. There's how many videos on this channel, Sam?

19:40 Uh so they posted this ten years ago. And shockingly, they have a hundred and twenty thousand subscribers, and there is one video. And it is It's so funny. There's like points in the video that you know how when you scroll over YouTube, there's points where it spikes? Like where the viewers are like why the viewers are just loving it. Yeah, like why is it

19:59 So I don't get the most replayed section. Oh they don't even add logs. They don't even add logs to the fire. So it must be like a thirty second loop just done over and over and over again. Like there's parts where it spikes. You see the sp the part at five hours and fifty five minutes? Uh Everybody knows about that part. Oh the top comment. Bro's a millionaire. Bro is a millionaire because this guy is a is this channel was started by one person in Romania.

20:26 It's a channel with one video. So this guy just hit it and quit it. This is the one hit wonder of the business world. He posted one video of a thirty second loop of of a fireplace or I don't know if it's a thirty second loop, but a ten hour vide video of a fireplace crackling. And this guy made a million dollars in Romania. And did he try to follow it up?

20:45 With another video and then turn it into an empire and then create a No. He just put the video up. Let it run, baby. I admire the I admire the restraint maybe more than I admire The ingenuity.

20:59 Dude, have you noticed on YouTube what's been going on with these types of things, so I don't know. I I guess we can call it an ambient channel. Th Let's categorize them as ambient channels. I like love I love ambient ambient channels. I listen to like the Weird music. Yeah, it starts it started as white noise. There's this company called Brain FM. Do you know Brain FM?

21:19 Yeah. I love Brain F M. So they make some of my favorite noise. Uh just a great noise. I was a paying subscriber to Brain FM years ago. So I love Brain FM. But then I started going down the rat hole of like other music. So there's like

21:36 They call it like um Is it like Lo Fi Mac Miller? It's basically just Mac Miller. For some reason, I don't know how I got into I I like Mac Miller, but not enough that I would think he'd start popping up on my channel. So it's tons of like lo fi Mac Miller, which I love. But what I'm noticed is that there's basically like a quadrant. Or like a a huge graph where it's like let's do old money.

21:55 Let's do nineteen eighties. Let's do this. And then it's like Now select country. So for example, I keep getting targeted with Old Money Brazil. Or nineteen eighties finance. Or like it's like

22:08 And they create the best AI thumbnail. So type in Old Money Brazil music. Oh. Money Brazil music. Trust me, it's so strange. All right. I see this gentleman in a s nice suit with a cigar. And Old Money Brazil, elegant Bossa Nova, Timeless Luxury Instrumental Playlist, seventy four thousand views.

22:30 I get targeted with so many of these. There was another one where it was like um You get targeted or you t do you select? You you You beg for them. You make the algorithm. So yeah, like if I see that image, I it but it might get to shape our algorithm, then our algorithm shapes. The old Winston Churchill. But then there was like there's even crazier ones where it's like greedy American Revolution. Like I don't know, like like locked in American Revolution or something like that. Like it's like it's crazy how like specific they get, but they basically just take like You are joking. This is

23:06 Ninety minutes of American War rev revolutionary music. Uh Liberty Song playlist. And they like it's d d like do you see like a good t uh a good one? Oh define good, bro. I'm never never gonna click any of these. Like the thumbnails are so funny. Like um. I'll have to find a different one, but the the thumbnail I I tweeted out the other day, I was like the thumbnail gods have been smiling on me and it's like an American revolution.

23:29 Um Uh. like music, but the best thumbnail ever. And I keep getting targeted over and over and over again. These guys are g are are must be doing well. Yeah, you you uh You've never seen these? Well, I've seen just a normal lo fi so like lo fi girl, for example.

23:44 Littlefi Girl, I think, is probably the biggest channel in this category. Um fifteen million subscribers, two and a half billion views. Uh on on the channel. Making about a hundred grand a month. Uh on this channel right now. And that's just

24:01 That's like my channel. Right now if she's live. There's thirty thousand people. Just listening to this right now while we're recording this. It's the best. So look at the look at the Why would I do this? It sounds awesome. Why are we talking? Look at the thumbnail that I sent to you. Oh, this is incredible. Uh what is this? Explain what you see.

24:23 I mean I don't even have a word for this. It looks like You know, like that what's the painting at the top of the Sistine Chapel where like the naked man's reaching out to like God and their fingers are about to touch? It looks like that guy, but he's got his dukes up, like he's about to fight and he's like a n a hairless naked man. With like half a mullet and it just says classical music that goes hard. Yeah, or I'll see them where it looks like paintings like that and they're giving like the shocker sign.

24:48 And so I just get like so many of these in um I think it just such there's like this weird underground world. There's that underground world and there's the underground world of the comments. So if you look at MFM's comments People can't see this, but on the back end we've tried to ban them where it's like I can't believe no one has been bl why hasn't anyone blessed me before? Like they've just blessed me after I read this book called Like

25:12 You know, millionaires are us. Like or they'll be it'll be like I totally agree with this video. And it's so funny that the uh this video that you guys start making these points'cause I had read I read about this exact thing in the millionaires R Us book by this person who's a total saint. Dude, this is uh uh those guys are like the bane of my existence, by the way. I just sit there and like manually try to Get rid of them.

25:34 Have you seen this guy uh Yang Mun On Instagram. It's it's like an AI monk. Ha ha

25:42 And he's got this like healing guide. He's got a really into it. He's got like one to two million followers and it's a monk who's just giving doing like talking head. Um advice videos. And then he sells a healing guide. And again, it's like you know it's a guy who's like is you know it's a kid who's seventeen with like the broccoli haircut.

26:00 Who had just moved to Miami And he's in a house with seven other guys and they're all creating these accounts that are like there's one of just elderly whoop. You know what's that thing called? Whoop or whoop where you buy like financial newsletters. If you go to his if you go to Y Yang Mun's uh link tree, you click on a monk would do, right? He would be on w on WAP. The ebook Time to Heal.

26:23 Young man. And it's like things you might love. That it's like newsletters that it's like Ten X your wealth with this stock tip.

26:33 Yeah, but they're people are doing this, they're doing this with fake grandparents. So they have like an account that's like wisdom from like grandparents, but they're all AI. And it's like what I wish I knew when I was younger, like the one thing You know, the the love that got away and they just post content like that. They're just Printing views right now. Dude, this stuff gets me every time. It sucks. I love this stuff.

26:52 I fall victim to this worse than like a grandparent falls victim to like buying the top listing on an Amazon like like every birthday for every like for like every gift giving experience at my house right now from grandparents, it's like You guys all just typed in bike kids bike and bought the exact same thing. All right. I gotta show you one more. This is the best one. So I I'm on YouTube the other day.

27:15 And you know when the algorithm just like has a commission on five star. You know, experience for you. So this is one. The most intense shoe salesman you'll ever meet. It's a CBS News archive. From nineteen eighty three.

27:28 You know, a shoe store. Oh no. Yeah. That's the playing field.

27:39 Of a champion. Yeah. Here he comes now, out of the bullpen, the hottest picture of a retail shoe game today. Big number one, Larry Jolton. All right. So this video is of this guy, Larry Jolton, who was the number one shoe salesman in America.

28:02 And he sold this back in nineteen eighty three, he sold four hundred four hundred thousand dollars worth of shoes at this physical shoe store himself. By hand. It's in uh Pennsylvania. It's something like Rayers or something like that. It's a famous shoe store. And so

28:17 He was the number one hustler and this video is amazing because they've been a little bit of a play clip on him, I wanna see. I'm I'm I the hook is great. I'm in I'm I'm bought in. Here you I wouldn't go any bigger than that. That's a nice dress here, it's twenty percent off. Like a light button. I do too. Especially for the summertime. Yeah, what are the two shoes, whatever colour you want. It comes in, it don't fit, if you don't like it, you're not getting the fake.

28:40 Big day, clean it up. Larry Cholton is the Psy Young of his time. The best of the big league shoe pitchers. Yeah. There are only thirty eight thousand feet in Sharon, Pennsylvania. Last year Larry Jolsen sold four hundred twenty three thousand dollars worth of shoes.

28:59 We're busy today, fellas. I can feel it. I can feel it. It's gonna be busy. His stats make him the MVP, the officially recognized champion shoe salesman. Alright, so watch this. So th they show him doing his thing and there's a couple of amazing parts. There's There's w all right, so one is he's like I'll he's like She's like the worst thing in the world is someone leaves without a shoe. He's like, that's not gonna happen on my watch. So he's serving like four or five customers at once.

29:26 And he's like He's basically like selling'em on like it's about not about the size, it's about the fit. He's got all these like go to slogans. And he's like, That's a good looking shoe right there on you. And then he'll um he'll like deliver them to their house He's like, I'll deliver to your house, I'll deliver to your office, I'll find you on the street, I'll give you the shoes, don't worry. And he's like, If you ever have a problem, you just give right back to me. I'm Larry. And then he if they show like he never takes a lunch break. He's eating a burger. You have to keep up your strength because sometimes the game goes into extra innings.

29:56 He's just eating a burger in the back. Uh like Jordan has a burger in the in the shoe rack where he finds the sizes, he just takes bites as he's running back and forth to get customers the shoe size. This guy's awesome. He's like and then he's like, you know He's g he is like his sales philosophy, so he's like, You don't wanna be the nice guy. He's like, you know, you gotta you got some people just wanna be told. They wanna be told what to what they need. And he's like, you know, they come in, they think their si shoes a size eight and a half.

30:21 They they're walking around with cramped feet all the time. He's like, You gotta give'em a size ten. He's like, he tells the story about this guy like didn't know what he wanted. He's like the customer doesn't always know what they want. You gotta help him. And he's like, Yeah, that's that's the art of shoe sales. But just his overall energy. And when he's like walking around the bullpen, like he's like, Gotta be a big day today, boys. Got a lot of shoes we gotta move today. And like all the other shoe salesman, like clearly don't care. And like this is a very inspiring video about just like being the best. Just be championship mentality. In anything you do.

30:52 Dude, so he he died this year, which is uh He he died this year in his obituary. It goes in depth about how he was on that show and a bunch of other shows. He said he was the National Shoe Retailers Association named him Salesman of the Year in nineteen eighty three, eighty four, eighty five. They say he was a larger than life figure. This guy's awesome. He's incredible, right? I love this guy. I love this man. Larry's a salt of the earth type of guy. I if you're gonna do anything today, you bring that Larry Jolton. Energy, that championship mindset to whatever you do. You s you'd sell whatever you sell the way Larry sold shoes today, all right?

31:25 That's that's the final word here. Have you ever studied sales? Like I I imagine if I had a guess. You did something you you and I have behaved similarly, which is like we're pretty charismatic that we think that's all it takes. But then I've hired sales.

31:39 men before and sales women before and I've like seen the difference between a really like a winning one and a pretty good one. And it's just like A total like the greats have both. the talent and and this thing that I'm gonna describe. But the second thing that they all have to have is process, where like they know that saying this gets that.

31:58 It's like such a um A mouse in a finding a cheese type of energy. Where it's like the really good ones just kinda blindly Oh, that worked. No ego. I'm just gonna do that. Oh, I just threw that thing out there. That caught that got a laugh doing that one. Like they follow like

32:12 Uh this process Guys like you and me actually suck at sales. And the reason we suck at sales is because We want to use Charm, charisma, talent, whatever. And they you know, peop the best people use process.

32:26 And even the reason we actually suck isn't even'cause we can't adapt that,'cause over time we're like a problem solver, like it's a puzzle. Oh I gotta do this and then that gets me the solution I want. We would get bored. Doing that. The most impressive thing of this guy isn't that he sold

32:40 four hundred thousand dollar shoes, is that he just kept doing it year after year after year. He never got bored of it. I I have this phrase I say now'cause I every day when I do my my workout. We start with this ten minute Routine. Where I basically like loosen up my IT band.

32:54 It's like it's like a do like a like a fascia release on my IT band, which is Painful. It's boring. It doesn't look cool. You don't feel like you're getting any stronger or more athletic. It's like the opposite of what you want when you go into a workout. But I need it. I need it because like I've had knee injuries and I gotta keep doing this. And you can't do it once, twice, you can't do it for two weeks.

33:13 You basically have to just constantly do this if you want to stay healthy. If you're like if you're got the sort of my my my leg uh condition. And now every day when I go in a All right, boys. We're not getting bored of greatness today. Let's not get bored of greatness today. Right. The the Larry mentality of like you can't get bored.

33:31 with doing the thing that leads to great results. Even if it's the same thing you've done. You can't get bored, you can't become sort of nonchalant about it. You can't become autopilot with it. You can't like cut the corner or cut it short because you already have done it before. Like You have to do this. And that's when I'm coaching my team, it's the same thing, like We played a game the other day in the warm the in the warm ups I knew we're gonna kick this team's butt because

33:53 Their warm up was so sloppy. I was like, if they warm up like this, they're not gonna be able to play at some high level because this tells me everything I need to know. I don't need to do a scouting report. It's over. And sure enough, we beat them by almost like fifty points. And it it was yeah, they didn't have a lot of talent, but they were shortcutting the process. And so And i like I just feel like that like getting bored of what gets great results

34:16 is a real problem. It's been a real problem for me in my life and I know that like for other people if you're sort of like smart and talented, you get off on solving new problems and new puzzles. It could become an Achilles heel. Dude, I'm always I'm the biggest victim of these stories where It's like a company does uh the small things right and it like levers up or levels up to the big things. So for example, have you heard of Rackoton?

34:38 Yeah, I uh I know them well. So Racketon's a Japanese company. I think they're like the Amazon of Japan, right? Ish? Yeah, it's ki it's kinda it's retail, but then there's also like a big like discounting kinda component to it that I think uh like deals component to it that I think that Amazon doesn't really have. Yes, but it's just like a multi billion dollar huge massive thing, whatever. Yeah. And um for some reason I

34:59 came along the founder and I started reading about him. And they have a book because they're famous for having a culty, um Culture. Uh so the culture's like they're like super into it. And he released a handbook on what their culture and what their values is. It's one of these things that were supposed to be internal and it was a hit, so now everyone reads it or a lot of people read it. And like he has like

35:18 Thirty rules or something of racketin. And like rule number one is every Tuesday from three to four Everyone Uh every office throughout the world. You stop what you're doing and we clean. And we refuse to have cleaners, hired cleaners.

35:31 And his reasoning was that if we keep our desk clean It's the same thing. You you can you already know it's gonna I'm gonna say you you keep your desk clean and you have a clean desk, you're gonna have a clean mind, it's gonna keep you disciplined. Same thing like you know, general I forget what the general is who had the famous speech Um yeah, was it make your bed. And then there's all these other famous stories of like a coach of Indiana basketball or something like that who turns around the team and he's like, I started by teaching the front desk how to answer the phone basically. Yeah. It's like these stories over and over and over again. I love all of them. I'm always I'm always I I'm always into these. I I don't know how often they are true, but

36:08 I buy into it. Do you have you ever tried one of these things with your I mean, it sounds like you're doing it with your basketball team, warming up, right? Yeah, we try. I mean the hard part is have the courage to actually live by it. Right. You could read the story back. Ah, that's great. And that makes total sense. Then you get into an environment where you got all these people who they're not as bought into it. They don't you know, they they don't really care. And are you gonna really force it? Are you really gonna enforce it? And how how How much of a standard really is it?

36:33 And how many exceptions are you gonna create? And are you gonna let your best player not do it? Or are you gonna let a meeting get in the way of it, right? Like It's all the compromises is where things get interesting and it I have never gone to the extent where I'm like Trulcore about it.

36:48 Because I think it takes like just a different level of leadership and courage that I personally don't possess. Let me reframe it for you. So in high school, I I tweeted this out the other day, but in high school, my freshman year uh of high school First practice. I went to an all boys school first practice for cross country. The coach gets up and he goes. And it was like I remember the Titans moment. He was like, I'm gonna teach you guys something

37:09 We're not gonna I I'm not here to teach you how to be the best runner. What I'm here to do this year is I'm gonna teach all of you boys how to become men. And we're gonna do it. By learning how to run better. And he goes on to say, like, you know, we're gonna like show up earlier than we anticipate we're going to like

37:25 uh run when we don't feel like it. We're gonna like go through the pain no matter what. We're gonna stick around until the last person's finished because that's what we do with our teammates, you know, the the whole thing. And At the time I kinda like laughed a little bit about it, but then I started buying into it and it brought us all together, our team did. And the cross country team at my my high school uh slough, you know, it's a nerdy sport, but we won all the time. We always want.

37:45 And he used to have this idea of like being great and how you're gonna be a great man just via running and we're gonna teach you how to do all these little small things and it totally worked on our team. And it was awesome. And because of that This coach has a very cult personality. Uh we used to have this um phrase it was tradition doesn't graduate. That was like I still remember like tradition never doesn't graduate. You know, like he was like he's like, I've been doing this since the eighties, tradition doesn't graduate. You guys are gonna graduate, but we've been doing this the same way and it works.

38:11 And I just remember all of these like culty lines and We're talking high school cross country. Not like significant, but it like meaningfully impacted me. And it was awesome. And so this type of like inspire you to be a better human being by teaching you how to work better or clean your death better. I love that story. My buddy Jason told me an amazing story like this. So Jason Hitchcock, I think you know Jason. He used to work at Bebo, and I was pretty hard on Jason, or like I would give him feedback all the time. Like, hey, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this. And like maybe it's because he was one of the non engineers, so I felt like

38:40 Yeah, there's only a few non engineers. I'm gonna tell you what I think. Uh the engineers I don't really have as much To say because that's not my domain. And I noticed he took it really well. Always like incredible attitude.

38:52 So I was g doing it one on one with him and I I give him credit for that. I was like, Man, I think that you have just like a Ten out of ten attitude at life. And at work. And I just really respect that and I know that like I give you a bunch of feedback, but you take it so incredibly well, like, you know, whatever. And he was like, I receive it. I go, what?

39:07 And he goes, I don't take it, I receive it. And he goes, Can I tell you a story, like where that comes from? Said yeah, sure. He goes. My freshman year. Um, I go to high s I'm a I'm a high schooler and I wanted to play water polo. My brother was the like captain of the water polo team, my older brother. And I was I th I thought I was like as good as him or gonna be better than him. So I feel I'm feeling myself a little bit. I'm like a hot shot. And he's like, We get in the pool and I guess like for water polo, like you're basically treading water while you're playing the sport, right? So it's kind of a hard

39:35 So during the warm up you're probably not going as hard. So he's being a little sloppy in the warm up where he's treading but he's like When he's throwing the ball, his like arm is like skimming the the w it's like in the water still. It's not out of the water like you would want it to be if you were really playing a game. And so the coach, the varsity coach walks by and he goes Uh, Jason, keep get your arm out of the water. Keep your arm out of the water.

39:54 And Jason's like, Yeah, yeah, thanks, coach. Keeps going. Couple minutes later, he's like, you know, s being a little lazy again, does it again. Jason, keep your arm out of the water. And uh he's like, Yeah, sorry, I I will, I'm just getting warmed up.

40:07 He has something to say back to the coach. Coach blows the whistle. Everybody comes over. He goes, Hey everybody I'm coach. Uh I just want to introduce you to Jason. Jason. As a freshman.

40:18 Jason. Is too good for feedback. Jason. Takes the gift of feedback. And he does not care.

40:25 He doesn't want it he doesn't want your feedback, all right? And he basically pulled him aside, he like embarrassed him in front of everybody, like Jason is too good for feedback and he's like Look, Jason. Feedback is a gift. If I'm gonna give you that gift.

40:36 You gotta receive the gift. Right. throw the gift away when I give you that gift. He is think about it what it takes to give somebody feedback. You have to be kind of vulnerable. You're risking conflict. You have to care about making that person better. These are what it takes to give that gift. And so he was like

40:51 Feeback is a gift. And so like at the whole company, that became like, you know, a mantra for us, which is like feedback is a gift, which is really important because Otherwise you can create a kind of defensive mentality or people shy away from saying something to somebody else. They'll only do it as a last resort.

41:08 And that's not good. And so the feedback is a gift thing, like changed us. And it was a lesson from his high school water polo coach, but the story with the lesson. is what we needed for like people to get it. I love stories like this. They always like get me going. I uh Yeah, I well, I distinctly remember we did a podcast a year ago where we were talking about

41:27 I think I was actually like Motivating you. I think like you had said something like I haven't done anything like world changing, but I've been doing this thing and I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you saying that? Like who cares like if it's world changing, like you know, just just creating a small game that m makes someone just a little bit happier is worth it. Like they're the you know like that's not it's not necessarily less meaningful than anything else. And I sort of have grown to believe that to like work.

41:51 Where High school sports are very insignificant. And yet it's like such a world changing experience for many kids. And I think that we need to take that same energy to work, which is like You know, we're making a podcast. That's fine. But like let's even go something way less glamorous. We're making like B2B software. Like it's not that special. But like you can um you can

42:11 You can learn how to be excellent here. You can learn how to follow through here. Like you can learn how to like say you're gonna d uh do what you say and whatever. You can learn how to have this unearned pride where you make these tough decisions when no one is looking. And so I think that like that has carried over to like employees and how I've been working with my team. That's cool. I like it. Sam's in his leadership arc.

42:30 That's the uh that's definitely the season you're in. You start you gotta like start going by like Samuel or something. I feel like we need to upgrade the name. I think I think you need to re reinvent yourself here, actually. Father. Just father.

42:46 So work everyone calls me father.com Where you could sign up and get ordained as a min minister and I've had to do that in order to like I've had to do that to like gonna'cause I've I've officiated a couple of weddings before. And it's all obviously a crack of bullshit. But uh I am a minister, so we could if we could go by minister. I I am a legal witness.

43:13 So All right, let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send. And it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I gotta visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury.

43:42 And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team. All from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, call them NA, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.

44:05 All right, Sean, I want to show you someone who's in the aviation business, in the grocery store business, and actually had a pretty important character in a movie Marty Supreme, which recently just came out. Okay, I haven't seen the movie yet. Okay. Well you know what it is, right? It's like the biggest movie going on right now.

44:24 Timothy Chalamet and Ping pong? I I don't really that's literally the only two words I've got. Timothy Chalamar. Like he like that, but he does that so good. Okay. So Google John Cat.

44:38 Mia Dondis. All right. John the big cat. Here we go. Who am I looking at? American Okay, here's just a quick description. American billionaire, businessman and radio talk show host. He's the owner, president, chairman and CEO of grocery chains.

44:51 Grist deeds? I've never heard of that. D Augustino supermarkets in Manhattan. Okay, go ahead. Five billion dollar net worth. Yeah. Have you never heard of this guy, have you? No. He looks but he's a Is this guy the famous actor? Like why do I why this guy look so so familiar?

45:04 He's a familiar face. He's one of these guys. He's sort of like the character in the Dark Knight who plays a police chief. Where like You're like I've seen this actor everywhere, but what's his name? He sort of has that type of energy. So here's his story. So uh I think he's eighty now. Uh so he was born I I guess that would mean sometime in the forties.

45:25 And he immigrated as a baby from Greece. He came to New York, I believe he moved to Harlem. Uh and then he was an okay student, went to Brooklyn Tech, which in I think New York is a pretty good school. But eventually actually got into West Point. So he's clearly smart, but didn't go, didn't decide not to go to school and instead He bought a small grocery store. So at the age of like twenty, he convinced a failing grocery store to sell it to him at like an owner financing type of setup. Where he didn't have to come up with a lot of money.

45:52 But Do you know anything about grocery stores? They're like the Hardest business to run. Yeah, it's a commodity. There's like it's in there are no margins. So if you look at like the biggest grocery stores or at least some of the mid sized grocery stores, like the the regional uh giants, they do like three percent margins. It's incredibly challenging. You have food that's gonna spoil and particularly back in the seventies when he was doing it, you don't have the most like the best systems to like make sure your food's not gonna spoil very hard.

46:17 But He's a he's a dog. He's got that immigrant hustle and he's able to grow this business. I think it's something like seven years, so by the time he's only Thirty two, he has this uh cool quote that I found in newspapers.com in this old article where he grew the business to the point where he was making something like forty million million a year in revenue, had like twelve or fifteen locations, and he goes, I'm now paying myself at the age of and this actually he said this at the age of like twenty eight. He was like, I'm paying myself a million dollars a year. So through like just hustle and grind, like he kinda makes it work. And he does like a lot of like stuff that we take for granted now. Like his grocery stores, they were called uh Red Apple. They did.

46:52 Free cash checking. They did free delivery. Um, it was a discount store, like a lot of stuff that isn't particularly groundbreaking now, but he just like provided like a pretty simple service, but he did it really well. Now Red Apple, which is um I think they have like a hundred locations in the city. They own Grist Gristetis. Have you heard of Christetis? No, is that like a New York thing? I may maybe. But here's where it gets weird.

47:16 So he does two interesting moves. So at the age of thirty two, I think it is, he was like, Well, I was gonna get into West Point, my dream was to be a pilot. I've never been able to do that. Gets his pilot license as an activity just for being for for fun. And he does this move that I've actually heard Richard Branson do as well. He buys a jet and it's like kind of interesting and kind of fun, but then he's like I gotta turn this into a business. I gotta do something. And so he buys one plane, like a relatively small plane. I he has a biography and it it was just a sesna, like nothing fancy. And he starts allowing customers to charter his plane From New York City to Atlantic City.

47:49 And this is like in the seventies and the eighties, so like the airlines are still a little bit nascent, but it's still like pretty complicated, but he pulls it off. And he's able to so now officially he's in the uh aviation business and like one thing leads to another and it grows for like eight years and eventually becomes like a fleet of like forty Planes and jets, which eventually he sells to Warren Buffett or uh yeah, Warren Buffett. And that is like one of the beginnings of net jets.

48:12 Which is One of Berkshire Hathaway's like crown jewels, I believe. And so he was doing it as private charters, not like an airline like Branson. No private charters, but he tried to get into the actual airline business and I don't think it worked out. Now While all of this is going on, he's still only like thirty three, thirty four, thirty five years old.

48:31 He does another crazy thing. He hears about an oil refinery. Going out of business in Pennsylvania. And the grocery store business It's a commodity. Lots of unions.

48:40 Very low margins. Twenty four hour. uh like you have to be working twenty four hours to make it work. And some somehow, which I never would have thought this would have been a thing, he made the leap that they are comparable and he gets into the oil business and he finds an oil refining company, which do do you know what that means? N I mean, not really. They are a middleman in the oil process between Uh drilling for the oil and selling it to the end customer is my guess. Not exactly. It's it's it's so it these are all very vague terms. So I had to like figure out what exactly is oil refining. Basically, if I had to dumb it down, they do two things. One

49:15 They have a massive Pool or tank. In the ground. that can store tons and tons and tons of oil. So you drill the oil, it goes to this thing. And it's not particularly useful. You can't use it. And so there's this process where you have to refine it and you could take parts of that

49:32 crude oil and turn it into oil that you could use in cars, oil that you can uh burn as kerosene. You know, oil can turn into multiple products along the way. And that's what he did was he bought a business that did that, which is actually Kind of ridiculous. Like you never would have thought that that would have been a thing. But it works. And by the way, when you're reading about this or watching whatever you watch for this

49:55 Is it? Is he just like a gunslinger? Like why is he going into all these different spaces? He can't help himself. Does he have some aspiration? Is he just You know, he's just wired that way. Like what did you get that as a sense of like the why is this guy doing all why is he bouncing from from Totally different hard thing to totally different hard thing.

50:13 This is why I wanted to bring him up. And so I think you and I will get a kick out of like people like him. But let me just add that the last thing he he does two things now in his six I think he's close to eighty now. In his sixties, he does two other wild things. One He starts an AM radio station political

50:31 Like weekly. radio show, which he still is the host of. You can't find it on YouTube. And you can't find it on Spotify. You literally only get this on A M radio and he records every single Sunday.

50:43 Uh and I've like listened to it and like his co host is this like Long Island guy who's like hey Uh John, what do you think about this uh uh Montani guy? Like it's hilarious. Like he's a very um Unrefined billionaire, I would say. And I mean that in in a in a cool way. And the second thing the reason or the second thing that he did was he ran for mayor, uh in two thousand and twelve, I think, and he almost won.

51:08 And he was like I'm gonna be a mayor for for the people in Harlem and the people in Wall Street. So he's this very like sort of salt of the earth immigrant energy type of billionaire guy. But the reason why he's interesting is A, what did that what's that word that you have been obsessed with, generative. Yeah. He's very generative, but he does this in a way, you know like the charm that When Donald Trump is being like a nice guy, you know like the charm that he has where he's like uh screw it, let's just do it. You know, what's money's friends? This like old timey, like uh like what's a little like you know, I'll take a little, you take a little, we all win, like that's type of energy. My word is my bond. My word is my word is stronger than oak.

51:47 This guy is actually that. He he has that energy with him, but it's not He he d I like he doesn't he's not hateful at all. So he's a Republican, but he talks very fondly of Obama and Hillary. Like he he's he's not uh he's not a hater at all. And he's got this very folksy types of vibe. And when you hear him talk, he's got this thick New York accent. But it's very much a like spit on my hand, shake your hand type of energy. And I have found him very fascinating because Uh that and also

52:13 Now his company. It's called Red Apple. holding company, I think. They have like eight or nine thousand employees. His family runs it. And I believe him and his kids, they all they own a building, uh in New York City. They all live in the same building. They run this company together and he's still like incredibly active, even at the age of eighty, and he's just constantly doing stuff. He's very interesting to me.

52:35 And also He looks Very funny. Like he looked he was just an actor, he just had a cameo? Was he playing himself or he was into this, so Marty Supreme, which is the hottest thing going. I went and saw it the other day. By the way, how is it? Like must watch, okay. Where where are we at? Did you see Uncut Gems?

52:51 Love Don Jabs. Love. Then you'll like this. So if Uncut Gems is a nine out of ten on the stress scale, Marty Supreme is an eight out of ten. And for people like me, every If you're in my boat, you'll hate it. I hated Uncut Gems and I hate Marty Supreme. Yeah, all the characters and there's no like redeeming qualities of any of them. But

53:11 He this guy, John, has like a pretty like interesting, like not minor character in Marty Supreme. And so I was like, this guy is everywhere. He's a man about town. He's just always doing stuff. And he just seems like um sort of in that Jesse Itzler category of people who have fun while winning and doing well. And He's just a really fascinating guy to me. Dude, I'm reading this guy's Wikipedia and I'm like, wow, that's really amazing.

53:36 Oh, that's really amazing. And then it's like He gave a speech at the Stern School of Business uh expressing his unease about his daughter's graduating class. He said Four hundred eighty of the five hundred eighty kids are Asian, including Indian. And that's scary when you think about it. We're gonna deport most of these kids.

53:51 So then I was like, Oh, well, that may not be so amazing for you know this podcast. Did he really say that? I didn't see that one, but I did see other things where uh I'm like I couldn't tell if you're trying to be funny and it reads stupid or whatever. But yeah, he i it does he does seem like he's an eighty year old New Yorker who has a little bit of a big mouth, but i he my vibe, my read on him wasn't that n he was an alright guy. But maybe maybe wrong. this list of what you call capital men. And I feel like he would be one of the capital men.

54:27 Uh where he's just Takes money. goes into these you know m sort of mavericks into new spaces. creates new investments, new entities and whole new and whole new industries and And you know.

54:40 wins more often than not. Doesn't win every time. Th you actually can't be a capital man if you have a perfect record. It kinda means you did not uh You you know, you weren't playing as as as rough as you should have, but uh but wins more often than than not. I feel like this guy's in that bucket. Yeah, I was reading his book and it's there seems like a common theme. A lot of these guys, there's one point in their life where they're just Wha what was the phrase we used? They're they're leveraged up to the tits? Like they're just like the crazy amount of death. Derek from More Plates, More Gates More Plates, More Dates, he always says this guy's juice to the gills. Yeah, when I was when I was reading about uh

55:19 Uh all old John Johnny Katz. I was like this guy's This guy's leverage to the tits, he's leverage to the gills. Uh and so yeah, there's the you have to pay the price to do a lot of the stuff. But I love these young guys who are like have this gunslinging energy. So he is your your billy of the week? Yeah. So the whole anti Indian thing, I didn't know about that when I got into this. So this is a little this is hard to throw you. Yeah. So I should have done a little capital J journalism. Uh otherwise I was gonna say we should have invited him onto the pod, but I think uh I think that probably won't be happening. Hey, we can still invite him. Let's see let's see what happens. You should you should ask him about that quote.

55:56 We'll just make sure we do it remote. I don't disclose my location. I didn't realize he said that. So Did he say what other dumb step did he say? He said a he said he said a few things about like There's something about Hitler. Yeah, I don't know. Classic blender. He compared raising taxes on the wealthy to how Hitler punished the Jews. Which is Yeah, that's probably not the best place to go to. A trap we've all fallen into. I did read that line and I was like uh Dare. Like we have seen time and time again that type of comparison. People have tried to make it.

56:32 Literally not once has it ever worked. Dude, I might end up being the richest man in California. Have you heard about this billionaire tax? Yeah, so is the gist of it that uh net worths will be taxed at five percent? Yes. Uh one time tax of five percent.

56:48 For billionaires. So all the billionaires. Are leaving? Which will mean they'll just be like, Okay, we'll move to the next class of people. Soon enough, I'll be the last man standing in California. Yeah, I think that's a pretty stupid law, but at the same time I'm like, Isn't it crazy how little

57:03 power a billionaire has if they have to leave their home. Yeah. Like do you really have that much power? It's like uh another dark night reference. Have you seen when Bane is talking to the guy doing construction and the little guy's like, I'm in control, and Bane puts his hand on his shoulder, he goes Do you feel in control?'Cause like Bane is about to like snap his neck. That's sort of like that's the eight hundred fifty thousand votes it takes to put this on the this on the bill. That that's sort of the energy that I'm feeling right now, which is like these billionaires being like, you know, we're the big shots, it's like You don't look like the building is big shot if you have to leave your if you have to flee your home. That said, it do it is kind of a stupid rule because it's not a good thing.

57:44 So like the analogy that I always use is let's say that you buy a Picasso painting for five dollars at a garage sale. And turns out you didn't realize it, but you bought like, you know a one of one rare piece of art. Now your net worth is hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever the painting is worth. How are you supposed to pay taxes on that assessed value?

58:05 Yeah, it's it's complicated. I mean, you don't even have to go as far as the Finding a Picasso at a garage sale example, which is you know That's more of an edge case, but like You're a founder of a startup in San Francisco. You're On paper net worth is two hundred million dollars.

58:21 But That's just'cause you just got a you have an AI company that was hot and you raised around. That doesn't mean you have that money. That doesn't mean that that money is Anywhere close to guaranteed for you, but you would be on the hook for the taxes. the following year. Which is Um

58:34 Which is pretty wild. I mean all it'll do is just Obviously gonna drive the wealthiest people out obviously drive the startup founders who want to get wealthy out,'cause why would you start here? And

58:45 literally like uh you know strangled the golden goose of California. Like, Oh yeah, w you know, w w what did you achieve? What did you accomplish with that? I read that um like it said like twenty or thirty families have left, like prominent families. You shouldn't make a like a Public announcement. Yeah.

59:07 That's hilarious. That's like that one time that I tweeted that I was buying Bitcoin. And then it somehow got picked up by all the bitcoin like magazines and newspapers and there were like Executive Sean Purry says he's moving twenty percent of his net worth into Bitcoin, and I'm like I don't think y'all know how

59:25 small that net worth is you know like that that's not magazine worthy. I saw some guy on the line announce that he was m leaving and everyone was making fun of him and they're like You know, you're not you're not important enough to like for us to care. Yeah. You own two duplexes. Um You didn't qualify for the bill. Um it is, by the way, a billion?

59:52 Well, there was a proposal for fifty million. That didn't make it. Then they went to the billionaire attacks because it's like Who's gonna not vote for that? And so that's the one that's currently proposed. But p you people have done the math. Like even if you tax the billionaires, even if you took all the billionaires' money, it doesn't like plug the whole of the California spending. It's like Basically it's setting precedent for it's kinda like income tax, right? Income tax, I think was

1:00:16 Stu supposed to be this one time what was the first one, like three percent. Like There's a one time only three percent tax on income, like Don't don't worry, guys. It's okay. And now like everybody pays. Income tax, you know, twenty, thirty, forty percent, fifty percent of your income.

1:00:31 every year now. And so the idea would be once they set the precedent that they could just tax you on your property that you have not realized any gains on. Then that's a problem. And If they could set the

1:00:43 Barring them. A billion, then they could easily change it to the change it or add Well, also if you're over a hundred million then you pay this. And also if you're over Forty million, you're gonna pay this and You know, they could sort of just continue on from there.

1:00:55 I've always found it interesting how they People come up with round numbers to make as the thresholds. Like, um so if I if I remember correctly, like I think uh like in the nineteen ten or nineteen twenties, this idea of a millionaire kinda came to be where like people were using the phrase millionaire, like You're a millionaire. You've made it. And it's kinda funny that a hundred years later we still use that as like a threshold.

1:01:16 Uh because the A millionaire nineteen twenty would be something like twenty million today. I think it was eighteen or twenty X or something like that. And then billionaire like people are like billionaires shouldn't exist and I'm like okay, but why one billion? Why not

1:01:30 Eight hundred. Million. It just I've always found that to be interesting how we like have Settled on this perfectly round number. Did so yesterday. I took my whole basketball team, like the team I'm coaching, to the Warriors game.

1:01:42 And I like wanted to make like a special thing, so like Uh after they won their last game on the locker room. Yeah, normally we're just sort of like saying, like, you know, you did this well, you Did this poorly. And then I was like

1:01:53 Wanna do something for you guys. It's your birthday coming up. You guys wanna go to a Warriors game and then we went to as a group and they got to go courtside and see Steph Curry, like it was cool. And you just ruined all of their eligibility for going to N C double A providing I accidentally violated like HIPAA. How did you get quartzide Uh. New guy, new guy.

1:02:13 Uh I don't I don't know if he wants me to say, so I won't say his name, but yeah, no guy who's who's with the team uh ex player and so he he was like He just literally like waved his hand. He's like, I'll I'll let them come down and the security guard's like, I guess if he's waving his hand. You can go. And I was like, Yeah, me and these other eighteen guys. And so we all went, but The the anyways, it's part of a story I've taken I I had one extra ticket, so I took my son, who's four and a half years old. And um yeah, taking a kid to a game like this, like his first basketball game.

1:02:40 You know. We have to leave at after the you know second quarter'cause it's like bedtime and I gotta drive him back home back home. But on the drive back. So I'm hoping I'm gonna have this amazing father son time bonding. And like I'm like wanting him to love him like watch that's the greatest shooter ever. Steph Curry, like that's the closest we've ever been to God, right here. This five feet away.

1:02:59 And he's like trying to care, but he doesn't really care. He's like, Can we get his candy now? And I'm like, Okay I I had got him some Ms and I'm like every time the Warriors make a shot, you get an M. Now he's like locked into the game. And so then finally we leave uh and of course the drive home was this like amazing moment. I basically I put Tesla in like self driving. I just talked to my son for like an hour and it's like a one on one because my I have three kids. Normally it's not one on one, but I got to talk to him. So he was

1:03:22 He told me he goes, You know what I wanna be when I grow up? I wanna be a builder. And I was like Amazing. Builder of Like what? And he's like Do I have to pick? And I was like, No, I guess not. And so I'm telling them about builders like that somebody built this bridge, somebody built this building, somebody built this car.

1:03:36 And I'm explaining and somehow I start explaining to him who Elon Musk is. I basically took a podcast episode for him. And I'm like, you know, rockets? This guy builds rockets that land themselves. And he's like What did they do before they landed themselves? And I was like, honestly, I don't know. Maybe that's actually hype, because like people went to the moon and came back. So I I don't know. They like, you know, they come back. They do come back. Anyways, don't ask too many questions. So tell him about Tesla and he's like, Did he start it? And I'm like, No, not technically, but let's not get carry let's not get into those details.

1:04:04 So I'm telling about Elon Musk and I tell him he's the richest man in the world. He's got you know money? He's got the most money. And the whole world. And he's like, How much money does he have? And I was like, He's got like Three hundred billion dollars, four hundred billion dollars, something like that. He goes.

1:04:19 Is like quiet for like Thirty seconds. And then I'm like Did you hear how much money he had? Like are you still? Did you fall asleep? What happened? He goes.

1:04:27 Can it even fit in his wallet? And I was like, So we used to use a grocery cart? Explain the concept of banks. I have this long conversation with him about

1:04:39 Uh about money and about like You know, these uh like the sort of the builders and the prolific people that that sort of make all this happen. And it just reminded me like I don't know. By the way, did your son have a take on the simulation? We didn't get there. That'll be the next time. He does have a lot of questions similar to that, like you know, like where did the earth come from? And then I'm like, Yo, honestly, like we're very much past the edge of my understanding of like I I don't know, to be honest. And like who's older, the earth, the sun, I there's a lot of questions that are that are pretty tough. But the good thing is in the car they have like AI built in, so you just

1:05:12 Like if I don't know, we just turn on AI and ask AI, then A. I tells us. Anyways, so That's that. Alright, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

1:05:24 I put my law in it like a day song. On the roadless travel, never looking back. Alright, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit. And it's hosted by Luis and Fonzi Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Louise and Fonzi are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're gonna hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out content is profit wherever you get your podcasts.

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