Best of July

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On a roadless travel never looking back What's up, folks? This is Jonathan Bar Shop, our behind the scenes here on MFM, and today we are delivering yet another best of episode. It's the episode that frankly no one asked for, but we're delivering it to you anyways because that's what we do here. No small boy stuff.

All right, without further ado, let's jump into this first clip. It's with Darma Shaw. the co founder and CTO of HubSpot and honestly This has been one of my favorite clips of the year. Darmesh and Sean break down their VIN diagram for success, and it's absolute gold. Let's give it a listen. Okay, so imagine let's take a step back. I'm on a whiteboard.

And the whiteboard we s it's the universe of all possible people. Everyone on the planet and you draw a circle with one of your skills. So in Shams case, let's say we put copywriting as one of the skills that he's in the top one percent or top five percent, whatever number you want to associate with it. And so that's the circle. It's like okay, X number of people. Or at Sean's level, um, or better, and at copywriting. Awesome. Let's say we draw another circle that's um

We'll call it crypto. Knowledge is just how crypto works. And that's a group of people. Awesome. Um rarer skill because it's newer. There's fewer people that know how to do that versus copywriting. We can accept that will be a smaller circle.

Uh what happens though is if you intersect those two circles and turn into a Venn diagram. The number of people that know copywriting really well and also know crypto really well is A hundred times smaller than either of those circles combined, right? And this is we see the same effect in like in standardized tests. If you took the S A T or the G R E or the G Mat.

There are people that are really good at English. Portion of the test? There are people that are really good at the math portion of the test. But the ones that score really, really well are the ones that are Good at both. They don't have to be the best at both, because that's the thing that's actually rare is a combination of the English and the quad. Same thing here. So now imagine.

So this is what I call it the trillion dollar Venn diagram of success, right? Uh I just made that up. But so you draw those circles of your skills. Say okay well I'm now not like one in a million, I'm one in a billion. Right, we're one in Five billion, whatever that is.

And if you can convert that into some kind of monetizable business thing or whatever, that's when magic sort of happens. So so that's kind of thing number one is that What's your thing? What are your skills? Um And what drags one value how much value will that intersection create is two things. One is

How rare. is that intersection, whether it's two circles or three circles or whatever, how rare is it? And then the other one is how um How much does it kind of reinforce the other skills that you already have. So for instance, I I'm a software developer. That's one of my that's my core skill. I've been programming for

Like thirty years now, that's my thing deep down inside my core. If I combine that with I'm gonna go off and which I could never do, uh become a Olympic level swimmer, let's say. Like Also very rare. The intersection of that is like okay, well the opportunity that it reveals because the two things are so unrelated, like I don't know how I would take my ability to build a web app.

and intersecting with my like, yeah, there's some things I could do, but I don't know if that would be that huge. But uh software development is applicable to lots of if I was gonna be an academic researcher, if I was gonna go into music, if I was like other things. Um, there's a lot more overlap to the degree that it's like those two inter they they reinforce each other. So software helps me do this, and that helps me do this. And this is one of the reasons uh so my Advice here was as you're picking skills to acquire Acquire skills that are both rare

But also reinforce things that you're already exceptional at. Um that that will kinda drive that kind of that rarity and and that's what drives uh drives the overall value. Uh which Kinda brings me to like And so when I think of things that I want to learn, it's like okay, well This is why I got into copyright. It's like if I can and copyright is another form of

This is communicating at scale is what copywriting is, right? Like it's uh Usually textual form. It's like okay, well I don't know that many software engineers. That can copyright really well.

Like literally other than that that have not started companies, right? Like I they they don't exist. But um very rarely do you get like really, really good um engineers that went off and read six books on copywriting and took Sean's class. That that's not a common example. You were a good writing uh writer before you got into this? No. No. No. I mean your writing's great. And by the way, Sean, let's uh what's we gotta pimp it out. Maven dot com slash power writing. Or just go to Maven.com and you see it. Yeah, yeah. Just go to Maven dot com, M A V E N dot com. I'm on the home page.

Starts in two weeks. What you said is great. I would add one more circle to that. The reason you m might pull it off is because you have a very weird and unique and related level of skill. So yes, there are people that are better Maybe better creatives, better animators, better entertainment, whatever. But they don't know crypto, and maybe that's the thing that unlocks the next trillion dollar company is entertainment intersected with crypto. It's the Netflix for the blockchain, whatever it is, right? Something like that.

Where two things combined that never had been put together in that way before. Um The the the other circle that I would add That I think people underestimated. So I tweeted this out. So people I didn't explain what the tweet is. The tweet well as I said The next company I build is gonna be like a new new age Pixar.

Uh like the like the next Pixar. And um I think I w uh it I think I would work on that project for thirty plus like thirty c thirty plus years. I'd I'd just keep going with that company. I wouldn't be trying to Sell it or flip it or get out of it or whatever. Um

So that was the tweet and then a bunch of basically had two reactions. One reaction was Awesome. Like w where can I sign up? How do I work for this company? That's that sounds awesome. I love Pixar. You can do it. And those are like fans of M FM type of thing, or people who themselves had been thinking God, that would be awesome to create another like Pixar type of company, you know,'cause I love Pixar. Then there's the other half of people that were like

What makes you think you could do this? Um, you know, like You know how hard it is to make a movie? You know how expensive it is? You know how the how unique, you know, Steve Jobs and you know, whatever, uh Lasseter and Catmole, like how how rare those talents were when they came together. That's a once in a generation company. And then other people were like, um the one guy had this amazing burn, he was like Uh.

Check. Um Aquahired. Green check mark. Aquahired. Power writing co uh course. Podcast. Next Pixar.

And I was like, Oh, nice. That's that's pretty solid actually. Um and so, you know, the a bunch of people were sort of all in the same bucket of like This is so hard. This won't work. What w you you can't do it, that's some version of that. And so the third circle. One is like I'm really great at X, I'm really great at Y. The third is just I have the courage to go do a thing.

And like um Tim Ferris once told this story. He goes, I went to a a business school class, a Harvard business school class, I gave this talk. At the end of the talk I go, Oh, by the way, guys, I'm doing this challenge. Um uh only for you guys, you know, uh whatever. I I wanna get in touch with either Bill Clinton. Jennifer Lopez or I you know some sports person.

You know, Michael Jordan or whatever. Um, if anybody here can connect me over email with them. Like, you know, just r reach out to them and if you get a hold of them, connect me over email. I will buy you two round the world plane tickets. Um, you know, for you could fly business class for a year uh around the world anywhere on my dime. All right, guys, thank you very much. And he told that to one class. And um he's like you know Uh uh you have thirty days to complete this challenge.

And then um I think it I forgot what it was. It was like he did it to two classes, but he gave a slightly different message in each. The first one he just just said that. Thirty days go by. Nobody did it.

Uh sorry, nobody's to c completely the challenge. He's like, Oh, what happened to you? Turns out nobody even tried the challenge. The perceived difficulty was so high That nobody did it. So in the next one He told that story. And I think he added a twist which was whoever gets the closest to it.

uh wins. And and all of a sudden, like everybody tries, and in fact, I think somebody did get in touch and actually suc successfully completed the challenge. And he was like uh he had this Principle which was sort of you know. Everybody wants to fish where everybody else is fishing because they think it's so easy to catch fish there. He's like in actuality. Often it's easy to just go.

go catch a fish where the fish actually are and you you don't have to base it on how how many people how many other people you think have tried something or how you what the perceived difficulty is. And in fact Sometimes the bigger you go The easier something can be because nobody else is even trying to do it. And so I would say like, you know, this Pixar thing I Who knows if I'm gonna go do this or something else. I tweet things just almost to my prototype. It's like let me say this out loud. Let me see how that feels. If I sleep and to wake up tomorrow, do I wanna tweet five more ideas about that? Or am I over it? It was just a passing fleeting moment.

Um but but the the core ingredient I think most people lack is courage. To actually go and do the thing. And I think that's the the the peop people put way more emphasis on what skill am I top one percent in they kind of they they undercredit themselves. One cr one skill you could just have for free, you just gotta go it's like at the sand at the the deli at the grow at the grocery store, go pull the number is Yeah, I I have the courage to actually go do it.

Like, you know, I'm g I will go do pull the trigger on this thing and not wait for other people to kind of like Reinforce that it's a good idea to me. Yeah. Could not agree more. Alright, this next clip is from our episode of Peter Levels. Peter is basically like a Greek god in the indie hacker community. He runs multiple businesses all by himself that do over three million dollars.

In revenue per year. And in this clip, him and Sean brainstorm a business idea. that he thinks he could scale to a million in revenue by capitalizing on a trend that he's noticing in the travel community called slow matting. What the f does that mean? Let's check out. So you tweeted something out there the day that's related to this. You go

Not sure if people realize it, but if your app does twenty thousand a month on revenue, you're probably already a millionaire. Twenty thousand dollars per month times twelve months. Assume you could sell for let's call it four or five X multiple. Yeah. That's a million dollar selling price, right? You you're sitting on a million dollar asset. And it when you put it that way, I think that sounds And it is way more achievable.

Then this idea of like oh I gotta build a million dollar business. Like I don't I don't know I don't do I have the big idea, whatever. But getting something to twenty to thirty thousand a month in revenue. Seems approachable, right? It's approachable and That's kind of awesome. I think that's an amazing Like just a Like you didn't all you did is you said something that was true out loud.

And I think if more people heard that, that's why I'm kinda bringing it up here. I think if more people heard that, like That is a pathway. To A millionaire status that does not require like winning the startup lottery of like inventing the next big thing. Yeah.

Working and saving and you know Paying your crazy W two taxes for like, you know fifteen, twenty years to get to the same same outcome. Yeah. I don't know.

Exactly, yeah, I agree. Yeah. And I I think it's it's reachable, especially if you Think about high automation. Very high margins. So software business. You you're not gonna hire a big team of ten people immediately. Um

You work with part time contracts like I do And you keep your margins very, very high. Because then you can sell for five X, right? Then your revenue is almost your profit, so it's the same. Um Yeah, that it I think twenty K is a brainstorm a business together that could get to twenty K. So what's an idea

That you you you're not currently building, but you thought of because I'm sure you're an idea guy and y you think uh you can make a website that does X or You could make Nomad list for this other niche. Or you could make R you know, um the the the Immigration one for this other thing. So what's a business, let's brainstorm a business together. What's a business that you think could get somebody to this millionaire status?

Dude, I think what's man, it's like again, this is so personal. So I've been living like I used to live in hostels, right? In like dorms in two thousand fifteen, we didn't have money. M shared with six people, like crazy. Then I started like private rooms in hotels, then the rooms got a little bit more luxurious because I had more money. And then I started discovering like apartment hotels. And It sounds like bullshit, but

It works so well with remote work. So I'm in an apartment hotel right now in Europe on the beach and there's a kitchen. What's an apartment hotel? What does that mean? Sorry, apartment hotel is essentially a hotel, so full serviced Furnished, uh, nice interior. Hotel room, but you also have a kitchen. You have a bedroom. You have a living room. You have it you know, it's very big. It's pretty much like an Airbnb, but you pay per month or per night or what? You pay per month. Well you can pay per night, you can pay per month. It's just like

It's like the side or whatever. Yeah, it's like Sonder and it's like all uh I forget the other one. The guy was supposed to come on the pod that canceled us in a lot of it. You did one of these in Nashville, right? Or something where you're like this is awesome. Yeah, it's like a it's it's basically just an apartment that you can rent for five days. And they're pretty cool. I do'em I do them all the time. The problem that I've experienced is with in the New York, it's like ten grand a month and it's like six hundred square feet. So that's why I tend to go Airbnb, but when I'm in smaller, less expensive cities. You can get like a thousand square foot plays for like six thousand a month. And it's just it's basically uh

An apart apartment building that has one floor or all floors dedicated to Airbnbs. Yeah. The the problem with Airbnb is that I've noticed is the quality is very very I there's a big range of quality. And there's problems, there's no daily cleaning. It's it feels too much like um

Like you don't know what's gonna happen. Stuff might break. If things break here, it you just get a new apartment. Right. And I've done this in Europe and I've done this in Asia too in Thailand. And I spent about You see two to three K, three and a half K, so it's a lot of money.

It's more than normal rent. But the cool thing is that it It solves a lot of problems you have in your daily life. Um Because it's surfaced and stuff? And

It's a it's a huge thing in Asia. It's a huge thing in in in South East Asia, even in Korea, Taiwan and stuff. So I think that's gonna be Bigger because of remote work. Because you have remote workers, even with families with kids. And you don't wanna live in a hotel room. Hotel room is very depressing. Like I go insane in hotel rooms. It's just like a bath

And you can barely walk around the bed, there's no space. I need to cook food. I need to buy steak from the local butcher. I need to cook it with broccoli and spinach and With my friends and stuff. And you can do it in an apartment hotel. And I think The

If you target It's a high end. Market I think of remote workers that make a lot of money, like Two hundred K or a hundred K something. Um if you target them you can make a lot of money because it's

Um Serviced, furnished. So what would you build? Do you actually build an apartment hotel or you'd build a digital product? That's a big question because I I'm I'm a software guy. I don't wanna I don't wanna own stuff. I don't wanna have all this I don't even wanna buy land, I don't even wanna buy a house, I wanna be able to be a consumer, a customer of these kind of things, right? But I want it long term. I want to be able to rent for like six months, you know, or twelve months even. Um I wanna be guaranteed a state.

So we uh My wife and I are are like we're at the point where we're gonna start having kids soon. And I live not like you entirely. But a little bit where we spend we spend half the year one place, half the year the other place. And what we're gonna do next year

is just rent do a twelve month month lease in New York. And just not be there all the time. But I'm looking to rent. All of my furniture. And I've been looking at a place where I was like all right, I just want to like book

This one place. And I wanna pay someone like three grand a month, but they have to show up before I arrive. They've gotta completely set it up. Yes, and it's gotta be one hundred percent furnished for me. And I've been looking at these and there's a few startups in the space that are doing furniture rental and furniture rental is not popular right now. And I tell people all the time, I'm like, I just want to rent all my furniture. I don't want to own any of it. And they they they think it's nonsense and they think it's crazy. But if you run the math, it it's significantly like it it's about the same in terms of price.

But In terms of headache, I think it's a thousand times better. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah. So it it's all it's it's all about the headache. So if you can afford it, you can reduce the headache of

Ownership. And ownership uh It sounds so privileged though, but whatever. It ownership is a is a big hassle. Shit breaks all the time. And if you are like if I spend my time On my laptop building on these apps, it's

Probably better use of my time than Managing all this this this stuff. And Uh if a company can specialise in you know managing this stuff and renting it to you, it's it's much better. I think that's a real you're on point. That's a real business and Um imagine you can go to a website and you can say like okay, you can choose different sets of furniture at different interior and stuff.

uh paintings on the wall or whatever and you can just click and you arrive and it's already done for you, like you said. I think that would be really interesting. Uh yeah. What is it? Think things that you're interested in, either kind of niche categories or

Things in your lifestyle that you're like, huh, I do this lifestyle thing differently than people This could be it you could build a business around this. I think the the the biggest problem with the digital nomad thing is that there's a Maybe it's a good big podcast is s s to say that uh there's a perception that people travel really fast. And I have the data that they don't travel fast, they travel like every few months or even I think the average is seven months now.

So the The word digital nomad is a it's a horrible word. Of course we has so many connotations. But It's mostly remote working people.

Who want a little bit of a different life, who want to see different places a little bit. Um they have boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, they have kids even. There's family's doing this as well. W moving around every week doesn't really work. Um being very slow is big. And If people are more aware of that

They can find A lot of products built for this long term slow mat market, which most of us are. We're mostly slow mat. And Um slow mads, yeah. Think about education. Think about like home schooling is taken off also because of remote work. Uh, if I have kids, I I don't know if I wanna put'em in a regular school. Maybe you know, Elon Musk built his own school, that's kinda cool. But you can do things in a different way.

Like now it's still very we're still niche. Like this remote work thing is still niche. It's gonna get only bigger. There's only gonna be more and more people doing this. Once physical jobs get automated. So Um If you make products I don't know specific product, but if you know if you build products for those people That's a high end market of like

Tech workers that are remote. For our third and final clip, we have just a quick little bit on why Sam and Sean think you should play business in easy mode. Alright, so this is my uh Why it's okay to be douchey, disclaimer. When we're when me and Sam are like

Oh, we're doing this thing. It's actually been easier. Like we did this and it just worked. And I did five things that worked. And Sam's like, Yeah, maybe you can do something easier. I'm like, I'll make it look easy. I say that. For three reasons. Number one It's honest. If something is easy, I'll tell you it's easy. If something's hard, I'll tell you it's hard. I'm not gonna like

Say what it's not just'cause it sounds better or worse. And also the first thing. Like it's not actually easy, but it's like straightforward intellectually. I know how to do it. I just have to put the effort in. It's also like um For my personal trainer, if he sits down on a bench and there's like I don't know, whatever, two hundred pounds and he could he could bench it.

It's easy for him'cause he's put in Fifteen years. Of hard work. So that that is now easy for him. And similarly I got my ass kicked for like nine straight years from the age of like twenty to twenty nine with a startup failing over and over and over again. Nothing could have felt harder during that period of time.

And so that now things are rel like I don't know, relatively feel much easier because I'm better now than I was Three, four, five years ago. Uh when I kind of sucked. Um

So that's the that's the first part. The second reason Uh, that we say it's easy is because this is a podcast and we're trying to be entertaining. The third reason that we say it Or at least that I say it is. I am tired of everybody telling everybody that like

Shit is so hard and like If you go anywhere on the internet, right, like we joke about the the the multi trillionaire mindset, like All of the like entrepreneurship content Is like How hard it is, you know. Uh

Elon Musk says Starting a company is like chewing glass and looking into the abyss. Some companies maybe. Yeah, maybe for you, bro, but like, you know, I I do a power writing course. It's fine. Uh it's like chewing bubblegum and looking at the pool. Like you know, it's not the same thing. So So it's not if if you always hear how hard it is, you kinda have to question the source. Why do they say that?

A it makes them look more heroic. B it keeps other people from doing it. C It kinda justifies why I got like why I get to be successful and rich because I'm paying this huge cost. And like I actually subscribe to a different version of entrepreneurship, which is the way that me and a lot of our friends do things, which is like

We do it because it's fun. It's jet like it's genuinely fun to do, so it's not like this painful slog. Um That doesn't mean it's like no effort. No, it's pretty high effort, just like playing a game or playing like pick up basketball, you're gonna end up really sweaty and tired by the end. But uh nobody confuses pick up basketball with like

digging in a sand mine to like, you know, provide for your kids. So it's like You know, there's a difference between like uh enjoyable effort and painful effort. And I would say that for us, what we do is enjoyable effort. And so I think it's important for people to hear.

That Not everything has to be hard and slow and painful. Like there is a version of doing business that is fun and faster. And um you know, enjoyable. And I just want to present both like that both exist.

So that you don't like Pretend you don't create this fictional story in your mind that like Everything has to be hard. Okay, that's my disclaimer. Did we uh

Cross the douche line hard. For sure. Whatever. I'm a habitual uh line stepper, so I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

I'm putting my all in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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