#121 - So You Made $100m...Now What?

Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day song On the roadless travel never looking back Okay.

We're live. Before we get into this, do me do me a favor, everyone. Google My First Million iTunes, leave a review, and then me and Sean will read the reviews tomorrow and tell us what you want us to talk about. So you guys can give us some ideas. I've been reading the reviews a lot. Yeah. Uh w you just tweeted out a great review. You wanna talk about that? Yeah, so someone tried to insult Sean and I and they said I don't have it up to I got it right here. Two star review

From gliding over. It says, These two hosts are an amazing example. That's the bold part, because it bolds like the headline. And I was like, Oh, this is great. What's what what can go wrong? So it says these two hosts are an amaz amazing example of how someone can be totally mediocre, below average in everything, and still achieve unreasonable success. If they are free of self-doubt and shameless enough. Yeah, so this review person clearly trying to insult us as being confident when we shouldn't be confident. That's a tweet. A little uh you know, a little no look insult, a little no look pass. I thought it was great, and I tweeted it out as like a smug way to be like You know, F U, we don't care. And it's it's been retweeted and clicked on like five or I don't know how many five hundred times maybe.

And people thought I was like serious and it was like an inspirational like just do it which That's not what I'm doing. Yeah, because you tweet it out and you go, Yeah, 100%. This guy's review of my podcast just summarized a lot of what I believe. You can suck at so many things and still crush it if you're confident. I don't get why this is a two-star review. That's okay, though. Thank you, listener. And uh I think people were like, you know, like kind of like defending slash like uh Yeah, like sort of like taking it as a as an inspirational moment. Although you were just trying to be a smart ass, which is great. Yes. It was a smart ass comment. That's okay. Um I I read our reviews constantly and uh That's like been the easiest way to understand what we should make.

Each week. By the way, do you wanna recap anything that we did in the last Ten days. I feel like we've had a pretty strong Or interesting ten days. Yeah, fucking guest game strong, man. We had uh the the president of Shopify, we had CEO of a Lambda school, we had Josh Elman, who's like kinda like a growth god in Silicon Valley. Uh did we have anyone else? Trump tax lady. We had the Trump Ta we had tax girl. Come on. Who else do we have? We had one more, I think. Uh I'm forgetting somebody, but

Yeah, we went hard on guests. Which is always like, you know, fun but but bad at the same time. Like I love having different people on. Then at the same time, I feel like it doesn't have that same tempo that we usually get with the ideas just kinda riffing. 'Cause we're we're self sufficient. Um which is important.

When we we have these guests, we're definitely reliant on their goal. But a few head highlights were Um what's the Landwill School guy's name? Austin. Yeah. Great dude. Really like him. He's a smart ass online, but he's a great guy uh in person. Yeah. Uh what was like one of the like things you remember from that? I I know one where you where you were like, What are the odds that this fails?

And like, you know, th they've raised their series C, they've raised like hundreds of million fifty million bucks or more. And He was like Probably like fifty percent. Which I think was a honest and s probably surprising answer for a lot of people of like, look, there's still a fifty percent chance this just flops. This f this is this fizzles or or cr more more likely not fizzle, like crash and burn. Um

But you know, some probability of success. In this podcast I said. You know, w with this business, like if it doesn't do well, it's just gonna make like pretty good revenue and pretty good profit forever. Right. If it does well, it's gonna maybe gonna be huge. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, what about you? Um What

What a what's like the low end, high end, mid end outcome. And he goes well it's Probably like it's maybe gonna be massive or it's gonna just completely bankrupt. And I was like, Oh, okay, awesome. At least you know the game you're in. Yeah, I like that. Um I also liked how he told me about the A C T and S A T business. I actually did research on this. Um there's a bus there's a company Launched by this young woman who used to work at GLG, that consulting thing. And uh I forget the name of it, but they've raised a lot of money and they're trying to build a new standardized test. So I think that's bold and I love that.

So that's my highlight. Uh, let me look it up. But uh the other thing I liked from his was the um The Mormon mission. Like I don't know if we spent way too much time talking about that, but that was the most interesting part to me. Where You know, I A, I'm just like that's not my world. Uh you know, he's you know I I've never I've never considered doing a mission like that. I didn't know what what actually it entails. I knew people go on it, but I didn't know, like, so how does this shit work? And he was like he made it sound like it's fucking like Harry Potter, where it's like

You know, an owl comes in with a piece of paper and now you get you read the piece of paper and it's like you're going to the Ukraine and then you go to Ukraine and you need to first learn to speak Russian and then convince, you know, some number of people, you know, that Jesus is is is is it. And I was like, Whoa, that's That's an insane thing that like is just normal in your culture, in your life. And uh And also what an insane amount of like discipline and resilience and like W what a um formative thing to do where you're like, okay I have to sell one of the hardest things. I have to live alone. I have to learn a new language. I have to do this twelve hours a day. Um, like that's not easy. And I thought that was like really interesting as I like boot camp for

You know, future business. Yeah, I liked how he was talking about that. I just found him to be a very almost like a common man, like an everyday man, but at the same time very stoic. Pretty brave. He was definitely an inspirational character. Um, and that company's called Embellis. And without doing too much research, it almost is like they're using video games to like come up with like a test to see how smart you are, something like that. I've I've I oversimplified it, but

Raise a lot of money. Probably don't make your standardized test service sound like the word embellish, but okay. Yeah. Um And then we had um Josh. Th the application fees thing. Yeah, how s you know, some colleges bringing in ten million bucks a year just on application fees. Yeah, and he was like there is no solution or something like that. Um

I also liked Josh Elman. Josh Elman has done a bunch of interesting things, but he's worked with a lot of Titans and I found that to be incredibly fascinating of him working with those types of people. And I felt like a douchebag because I was like All right, Josh, enough about you. Tell me about all the people you're doing. Hey, thanks for coming on. We'd love to talk you about the great men you've been surrounded by and and hear what what they're like. Yeah. Everybody loves that, right? It was so interesting. Yeah, and he's a good sport about it. He he didn't mind that w the attention wasn't on him. Which I think is like kinda what you need to be to be like All right, I'm gonna have a big impact, but not be the CEO and founder. It's like you kinda have to be low ego. In order

To do that role and have that career. And then, you know, he didn't take it personally when we were like, Hey, tell us about the hero founder. Like we want to know what they're like too. I thought that was great. He was insightful. Um we have a few Topics. One that you just put on but I want to talk about. Yeah. Um Tell me.

It's a Go ahead. You're talking about hopping. Hopping. Okay, so I put on this sheet This is what you m guys missed before we started recording. I wrote

Hopping, two billion. And Sam's like hopping the events thing? No, what? And so why was that your reaction first? Uh it it's we're saying it well, it's hop hopping, uh H O P I N. Yeah. What am I saying? I said something else. So What wh why'd you write two billion? What's going on?

They're rumored or reported to be raising at a two billion dollar valuation, and this is within eighteen months of launch. What okay, so David Dave, the guy who helped start it I I think he's a co f he's a co founder. I don't know if he's like the guy or second he's the let's say his co founder. He wrote for me for trends when we first launched. Wow. Okay. So the it says the CEO is this guy, Johnny Burrafarat. I don't know how how you say that. Uh so who's Dave? Tell me about Dave.

Uh what was his last name? Um Let me I I forget his last name. He w he was just a uh He wrote he was a freelancer. He's in the trends group. And uh I met him online because he had this medium.

Dave Schools. Dave Schools. Is he the founder? He's uh head of marketing. Um and I I thought it it said co founder. Um On his LinkedIn, let me see.

out of marketing, um Let's see. All right, folks. Oh, it says head of marketing. Before it said co founder. I love you and you're great and you're definitely part of like the early team, but like let's come up with a word that like like don't don't do I've done that before where I oversold what I did before in the past and I'm like Trust me, it's a slippery slope. You don't wanna do it'cause

Yeah. Okay. So what's interesting about Hoppen is uh obviously COVID shut down the kind of conference industry. uh globally. So there had to be something, right? Zoom and Zoom or or something better than Zoom, that's for conferences. And um I saw this because there's this guy, do you know Semil Shaw? Yes, I do. Well, I I don't know him, but I I know who he is.

I don't know him personally either, but uh, you know, fellow brown guy in tech. And uh he he does this thing every year where he tries to call one breakout company. So I'll just take you through so like You know, to be clear, these are companies that are always d already doing well, right? So he's not like calling them before they're doing well, but he's basically saying like of all the companies This is the like the golden goose company, uh that's that's really breaking out. So twenty twelve he picked Stripe, twenty thirteen he picked Snapchat, twenty fourteen he picked Slack. Um Didn't do twenty fifteen, didn't do twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen he did Coinbase.

Um Twenty eighteen air table. Twenty nineteen was superhuman. And for twenty twenty, he picked Hoppin. Yeah, a good hit rate. I mean a hundred percent.

He's right every single time. And e even if you had invested in all of those at that time, at whatever high valuation they were, you still would have been you still would have done great because they've gr they just continue to grow like monsters. Maybe not superhuman, but So it's interesting because the uh conference industry basically got slammed with COVID. Something had to come about come out as a solution, a whole bunch of people tried. It looks like This is where the momentum is going is to is to hop in. I I didn't know about this. I didn't realize this was getting that big. Um, like a two billion dollar valuation in such a short short amount of time is pretty incredible. And I haven't used it yet. Have you? Yes, uh I tried signing up. I tried making an event for us.

W when you and I were on that tick We looked at run the world and we looked at h hop in. And um Frankly, I couldn't figure it out. Run the world. Sorry, folks, it was not good. Um, but they were early, so it might be a lot better now. Hop Hop in looked a lot cooler.

But It w when did we do this? It was like uh right at the beginning of Covid. Yeah. And Hoppin really wasn't that good either yet.

Right. And so uh so they they seem to have ten they said they had tens of millions a year in annual recurring revenue uh already. And uh I think they had like hired a hundred and fifty people this year or something something insane, going from like ten people to a hundred and eighty people. Um so Where's this data coming from from their deck? This uh no, this was in like the news when people were talking about um How much revenue do they have? It said tens of millions in AR. That's what I saw. I d I don't know. Um What that means. So this is what's interesting to me is that

Um this is like a lesson that I hate It was hard for me to learn and I bet Oh no, it for sure it was hard for you to learn. It was expensive for you to learn, which was that The market is Are more important than your product.

And It doesn't matter how cute or how cool you want your shit to be. Yes. Another way of putting that is As a founder, you like to think that you are the the controller, you're making shit happen. You're a you're a surfer.

And you're catching waves? And uh you're trying to surf that wave. And like, yes, you don't want to get eaten up. You gotta be good at surfing, you gotta know how to time the waves and and whatnot, but um The the size of the wave matters a hell of a lot more than uh you know, how good you are as a surfer. And it doesn't mean that you can't make s other stuff work. Like for example, like the market for like

Sushi. It's not like crushing it or growing like crazy, but it's like big enough that you could you could brute force your way and make something badass. Um, same with Bebo, you could you could have figured out some way to brute force your way and make something mildly successful. But

Um What the market wants, the market wants. And I remember using Coinbase or no Binance. Do you know Binance? It's the I don't know what it is. What do you call it? Uh It's a it's a crypto um that's uh based in Asia.

It's one of the biggest one. I think it is the biggest one. And at the time when I used it in two thousand fourteen when Crypto was all the rage, it was really bad. We were all using it though. And I and uh Same thing with this happen thing. By the way, I got this from you. I said eighteen months. It says in less than eleven months end to end. They uh raised their seed round, a very expensive A round, and now another round valued at two billion dollars pre-bunny. And uh they went from zero dollars in revenue to tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Um Already this year. That's that's just so crazy. And so this is just proof that like even if your product is sh is kind of shitty, if people truly need it and there's no other option, they're gonna they're gonna come to you. Yeah. So here's the here's like the idea. Okay, how do you use this? Um There's a whole bunch of other kind of like COVID affected um businesses that are out there. And the one that we've talked a little bit about, that I've actually been trying to pitch this one team that I advise to like go after is trade shows.

And so trade shows are similar to conferences, but they're different in some key ways. What's happening, everyone? Today's sponsor is kind of strange, and I'm gonna tell you why, but first let me tell you what it is. Uh today's sponsor is Azurus A Z O R A S. That's one word. Uh it's a YouTube channel, so YouTube.com slash Azoris. Again, A-Z-O-R-S. A S. Uh It's a YouTube channel that teaches you how to master your personal finances and take action. So if you just check it out, what you'll see is stories from inspirational people on how they got there and the lessons they've learned along the way. Hamilton, the founder, he's gonna give a lot of practical advice on building big businesses, uh, creating wealth for yourself. And as a bonus, you're gonna see how Hamilton is doing it himself. He has a large mortgage company and it's pretty interesting. So go ahead, check it out. Azoris A Z. Oh.

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There's a lot of people I know who've never been to a trade show and they don't know what the hell it is. They just think it's kind of the same thing as an event or a conference, and it's not. Uh right. It's this place where business happens. So you get vendors and then you get like sort of you get wholesalers and retailers, right? You get vendors and you get buyers. And people are looking for, okay, you make this product cool. I want to sell a product like that in my stores, my distribution. And um And so, you know, I I've been to a whole bunch of different trade shows and uh And just as a simple example, there was a

About I think I've told this on the podcast about a year ago I wanted to run a quick e commerce experiment, uh, a drop shipping experiment. 'Cause I've never done drop shipping. And I wanted to actually try it, uh, because like part of the the dropshipping sucks because of like many reasons. One of the good things about it is it's really easy to start. And so I spun up a dropshipping experiment around uh I think I told you this crystals, did I tell you about this?

No, or yeah, yeah, yeah, you did. It sounds horrible. So basically there's a whole bunch of people, especially Hollywood celebrities uh and females like Adele and Gweneth Paltrow and stuff that like really promote the shit out of crystals. I just watched the UFC like Uh you know, first episode for the Bike and Jared Cantonier, the guy fighting Robert Whitaker. Fight with crystals. What if he fights with him? He keeps them on him? Like when he trains, he like sets him down at the mat and like Yes.

I I don't know, like do you use energy? I don't know what you do, but he like worships them or whatever. Frankly, I totally didn't believe in it. Uh but I was like, Okay, you know, let me try this experiment. Anyway, so long story short, uh I'm like, Okay, where do I get crystals from? I need a supplier of these. Who am I gonna buy from to to drop ship? And uh And and I found that The only way to do this, the best way to do this, like you can go through like kinda Alibaba or stuff like that, but the best way to find a good supplier is to go to the Gem Gemstone Trade Show in Tucson, Arizona, that happens twice a year and has like 65,000 attendees. who each pay, you know, for their ticket, they pay for their travel, they pay for their hotels, then they go then they get there and they're basically looking to buy. And so there's just huge amount of like transaction and commerce that happens at trade shows. And I think somebody could build hop in for trade shows. And I think I've told you once about The

The experience I saw in the Alibaba app, did I tell you about this? I had this magical experience. So the biggest trade show is called the Canton Fair. It happens in China. Yes. It's like millions of people. Millions of people go. It go it lasts like two months or some sh crazy shit. It's like hundreds of football fields long. So you like start on one end and you're walking, it's like Oh, we make socks. And there's like Two thousand sock manufacturers. And then like you get you get to out of the sock part and it's like, now we do pants. And then you like find a hundred pant suppliers and then it keeps going. And you know, by the end you're at electronics and like dildos and crazy shit. And so The Canton Fair got shut down this year, obviously, because of, you know, the quote unquote China virus. And so they were like, okay, well, how are we gonna do s like how are we gonna do uh

How are we how are Chinese manufacturers gonna still do business? And so Alibaba in their app, and you know, I'm probably one of the only people that has Alibaba on their like homepage of their their phone, uh, I opened it up one day and it was like trade show happening now, and I click the button. And it took me on this virtual escalator. And it's like, what floor do you want to get off at? Electronics, fashion, babies, like yeah, food? And so I hop off at electronics. And it loads basically like a TikTok screen. So it's like a live video. full screen of this woman and she's at her booth at the actual fair. Um, but there's no guess. So they lined up all the vendors in booths. The booths are like ten feet apart, so they're all socially distant. Each person had a webcam in front of them, like a setup webcam by the by the

the trade show. And they were doing a live stream with their products and then I could be their catalog was at the bottom. And I could touch an item on the catalog and like inquire. And then she would p she'd be like she'd see it on her screen and she'd pick it up and be like, Oh yeah, you want this foot massager? Yeah, look, it's pretty good. It was a real lady. I'm touching her catalog and she's showing me what items that they have and like just pointing out the specs, I could ask a question, be like, oh like, you know, what's the qual? What's the price per unit on this? And she's like, well, I'd love to talk to you. Like hit the exchange business card button and then we'll be able to DM each other. Um but for now, you know, roughly it's we have three models, the premium and this and that. And I'm like What the fuck is going on? I didn't need to fly to China. I didn't need to go to the Canton Fair. I didn't need to like, you know, get an upset stomach from eating food, you know, in China for the next three weeks. This is amazing. And so I was like. This is what like okay, Alibaba did that for their own suppliers, but like who's gonna give that to the Tucson gemstone trade show? So I think that's a great idea. Um that I've given away for it.

You want a history lesson here, um I ask I'm gonna look this up. This is what I do. You know what Condac is? Never heard of it. Okay. So you know who Sheldon Adelson is? Yeah, he's like a Vegas uh casino guy, right? Yeah, so Sheldon Adelson. Pretty controversial because he's uh very, very, very pro Israel to the point of like I

I think he's one of the biggest funders and he like Buy newspapers in order to promote Israel. stuff. So a little controversial for that reason, but beyond that He In what did he start? Was it the uh does it say on here? Was it the Bellagio? Wha whatever the biggest hotel group

In Vegas, he started it. Um, he's probably worth thirty or fifty billion dollars. He started the Las Vegas Sand Corporation. Which I think it owns like, you know, a bunch of owns Venetian, uh It is. So Sands, which is like one of the largest hotel groups in the world. It's basically casinos and hotels. They have uh the L uh the Sands China, they have like everything. Whatever, he's just a big boss.

The way that he started that was He started this thing called Comdex, which was a trade show. It stood for Uh it was like personal computers. They started in the eighties. Eventually. He sold it for a billion dollars to Softbank.

And Yeah. was renamed CES. Ah okay. And I learn about him because I was very curious about him. And he so he started this trade show business. And it got to be so big that in the nineties or in the eighties before Vegas was I mean it was right when Vegas was kind of taken off. He was like, man, we got to build our own um hotel to house all these people. And so he built like I think it was the Las Vegas convention center, and then he built like a hotel.

And That is how he got into hotels. It all started with trade shows and what he said, he goes People never understood this jump from trade show business to hotel business, but he goes to the same thing in the trade show business, I'm in the real estate business. And I'm selling real estate. to vendors.

Uh Uh X. dollars per square foot. Look at this picture. Doesn't this guy just look like a thirty three billionaire? Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I mean he's he and he's known for being like Super cutthroat. I mean, he's just like a poor hardworking immigrant who like takes no shit. So right, good with the bad. Um Anyway.

He also made the largest single donation uh to Trump, five million dollars. Yeah, he also bought a Las Vegas newspaper. Like and they say that he did it just to Promote Israel. Israel stuff.

Which No judgment there. I'm just kinda saying what what he d what what he's being accused of. But Pretty interesting guy. Um, and it all started with trade shows. So I'm very bullish on trade shows. I love trade shows. I've written about it on trends actually a lot.

Um, there's so many companies that are way bigger than you think. There's this one guy Um who started this business called uh Money twenty twenty. Have you heard of that? Yeah, that's the uh Isn't it kinda like the fancy fan I thought it was like a conference, maybe I got that wrong. It's a trade show. Okay.

And it's for people like Stripe and anyone in finance tech. And he sold it for two hundred and fifty million dollars. Two years after starting it. And then he did it again with shop talk. You know shop talk? I've heard of it.

And it's a former tech guy. This guy and his partner worked at Google. And they were um techies and they go, Well, fuck this, let's try this trade show thing. And they just like create this template. Okay, so so walk me through it. So what's the I know you've written about this, so there's a blog post you wrote, I think for trans or maybe somewhere that uh I'm gonna plug it. Go to trends, sign up, get the dollar dollar thing and then type in trade shows. So so give us the uh how do they make their money? Is it the attendee like kind of ticket? Is it the vendor's booth? So you you do it one of two ways. What you do is you get either the tickets or The

vendors to pay profit or to pay your costs and then you make the profit off the other half. Right. And so uh what you'll do is it's all about unit economics. So you say, you know, how many what would the average sponsorship be? Now how do I get all of them here? And then How do I get vendor or uh uh attendees to make it worth their while? And so for example, some events

This is not like a conference. You don't always want to do a conference where it's like you charge five thousand dollars like a TED talk. You know, TED doesn't make profit. You know, that the That doesn't do that well. I mean it makes good revenue, but it doesn't like make that much money. The real money's in the trade shows. And the goal is that you have to make it in the so the the speakers at your trade show All those uh do all those do is

pull in like minded people and then all the money is gonna be made over the transaction. So you need people to gather in order to transact. If you don't have that, it doesn't make a lot of money. HustleCon was a good conference, but it's not massive because there's no transaction. So you have to have that transaction Because you have to justify to the vendor that if you come, you're going to get more business. Therefore, it's very easy for me to say it costs five grand a day for you to do attend. Right.

Right. And so the economics typically are That the Um That the um vendors that you pre sell.

Pay for the hard goods. of the event and then all your profit comes on the back end with the tickets. Right. And now let's say you're uh you're my friend uh James and James is a uh James hears this idea. He's like, oh shit, I heard Sean and Sam uh talking about trade shows and the hop hopping two billion dollars. Oh let's smash those together. I'm gonna build the trade show uh you know app that Alibaba thing that sounded cool. How would you go about actually um Uh uh like where would you go from there? You get the idea, give me your next three moves. I would have to remember one word.

Liquidity. Liquidity is the word I would obsess with. Is how do I get liquidity? And what liquidity is defined as is transactions. So lots of vendors Lots of buyers. What do I do to get liquidity? Without that, it ain't shit. It's worthless. Well, that's that's to run a trade show. I'm saying let's say you want to be the hop in two trade show providers to say, Hey, use this for your trade shows. How would you go about that? Well, you have to help me get liquidity. And what liquidity means is eyeballs or attention of the right people on your computer screen.

And you have to make it really easy for them to transact. So what would I do? Um First of all, I wouldn't do this as like a Zoom thing where you um Or just sitting there watching people talk. That is not what I would do. I wouldn't just mm, you know, make an make a conference online, you'd have to reimagine the experience sort of like Alibaba did.

Um What would I do? It's really hard, I will say that. I do think it's a multi billion dollar problem. I don't know. What would you do? Let me think. I think the first thing I would do is I would be like, Okay, uh who are those guys that did Shop Talk in Monday twenty twenty? Sounds like they came from tech and they do trade shows. So maybe maybe I should talk to them and what I would talk to them about, I'd say, Hey What are you doing for your trade shows in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one? Are you are you guys still doing it? Or like what do you What is your current alternative due to like kind of the COVID situation? And has your business been affected by the fact that people are afraid to travel or not willing to travel or your your venues might get canceled if there's an outbreak or whatever. Um so I would first try to understand that. So I'd try to talk to maybe five

trade show organizers and I would ask them about how their business is doing and what's at risk due to the changes. That's and by the way, to piggyback off that, I would not talk to the most popular. What I would talk to is the apartment Southern California Southern California apartment rent landlords. Trade show. I would talk to the crystals trade show.

I would talk to um Right. Not not CES, not money twenty twenty, not not whoever, right? Like And in order to find those, you look up the company in forma. Um And you look up the company.

Um I forget. There's a couple of them. One if you Google Blackstone Trade Show acquired, there's a company that Blackstone For trade shows just bought. I would look at all the boring ones. And so you find these boring, maybe sm start with the small ones. I would start first talking about the problem, see if this is even a real problem. See if they're interested in something like this. Um see if the see if their business is being affected. If it is, then I would try to figure out how do I attend a trade show. So I would be like, What's the next trade show I could attend um to actually just go observe this.

And then the third thing I would do is I would scrape a list of as many trade shows as I can find and I would cold email them and I would say, Hey Um I you know. Uh I I I'm I heard about You know, your trade show looks awesome. Uh

But you know, with COVID, I know that things are quite uncertain. Uh have you thought about taking your trade show online or doing a digital trade show? you can actually get more people to attend, make more money, and you know have way less cost and and and risk. Um Let me know if you'd be interested in uh in doing that. We're do you know, that's what we do as a company. I I'd love to talk to you about it or show you how we do it. And uh I would try to, you know, see what the response is to some cold email to a list of, you know, a hundred trade show organizers. And then I think after I did all that, I would know a lot more. I'd know that this is either a terrible idea for these reasons or Or

It's a good idea, but it has this big risk or this big obstacle. And that's what I need to focus my energy on overcoming. One thing that all these event people are turning to, and I think it's a great idea. Is they're turning their events into online communities. And I think that's the way to go. And I will say that there is a There is an interesting opportunity there, but the downside is that you're competing with Facebook and they're doing a very good job.

Yeah. Um So it's an interesting problem. Yeah. I like it. Uh okay, what up to God? Yeah. Um you wanna talk about uh okay, so here's I w first uh y you have this thing called Astro and I and I kinda

I got a a story about that. The founder of Astro was introduced to me via cold email, like in cold intro, and the guy who introduced me I don't know him and I was kinda rude to him. I was like Do I know you? Did I say this intro was okay?

Uh, I was in a bad mood, so I hate when people do that, but So that's how I I heard of Astro. What's Astro? Uh yeah, I actually I wrote that a while back, so I I don't really know too much about it, but it's basically it's a debit card to support creators. Um And so, you know, I I don't know what their Um Th there's a few people that are

trying to do this. You're basically trying to provide financial services to creators, whether it's like funding or it's like a Patreon type service, or it's this, which is a debit card for creators, or like how does a YouTuber get a buy a house while the traditional banks don't know how to value their their YouTube channel. They can't get a mortgage. So like maybe we could do mortgages for creators. Like I think that's a very interesting space, but it's one of those Where my spidey sense starts tingling and it says I think this sounds like a good idea.

Maybe a bad idea. And so uh that's that's where I'm at. It's not the very informed opinion. I hear you on that, and I I would agree that that could be the case in some of these examples. But let's play the other side, which is why it is examp uh it is interesting. And I'm gonna be a little ignorant here, but I think the way the business model works is that MasterCard gets what, two percent per Right. There's some some exchange fee or whatever they call it.

So then is the way this business works is that Astro or another credit card partners with MasterCard and goes, Hey MasterCard, you guys take two percent. Give us one percent. Yes. And I'll get you more customers. We're gonna layer. You think that's how it works? Uh okay. So I think in general that is a model that a lot of these guys use. I just went to the website. So I had it a little bit wrong. Uh this is actually more interesting than I thought. So what it is is

Uh okay, so we could do this, for example. We could issue an Astro card to any of our fans. And what it says is, hey fans, as you if you want to support me, just get the AstroCard as you go about your daily life. You can assign that some of your value, like of what you're transacting, should get shared with me. And so they're taking some of that margin that they get, the you know, the sort of these fees, and they're sharing it with creators. Um, and so as a fan, no extra cost to you and you get to support your favorite content creators.

That's you know where that idea is stolen from? No. Um so Adam A lot of people do this, but Adam Krulla was famous for doing this was He had this home this website called Adamcrolla dot com slash Amazon.

And what he did was he put his uh referral link on his Yeah. Now remember, listeners, if you're gonna go buy anything from Amazon, go to my website, click through because uh the way Amazon used to work It might have been up to five days, so if anyone clicked on a your referral link and bought anything within five days, you got

It used to be seven percent. And so he always used to Adam Carola for those who are young. Younger. Joe Rogan before Joe he was like it was like Howard Cern, maybe Adam Carolla, then Joe Rogan. I mean he was like the guy. And he would always say

click through to AdamCorolla.com slash Amazon. You help support us. You put a little bit of wind in our sales, which I stole. That line and that's what he used to do. So I think this is a uh a kind of an interesting idea because I used to click through and and buy it, but clicking through and buying on Amazon is a lot easier than applying for a debit card. Right. That's hilarious. Uh So so I'm reading an interview about it right now. It says, um, how did the Amazon relationship come about? Did they approach you? He goes, I wish I knew. I think we approached them. I think our salespeople approached them and uh basically said, you know, like if we send people away, can we get a Rev share? And uh That's Adam Carola. Yeah, it's Adam Carolla talking. I want to see uh I w I wanted to see how much revenue he made. I bet he made a shit ton. Like he has a huge audience. Um He was like the number one podcaster, and that's what he would do all the time. And this was

Adam Carolla is actually really innovative. So he started doing paid podcast three or five years ago, maybe s maybe ten years ago actually. Um And he has his own feed. He had this thing called Mangria. Which is the man version of Sangria.

He would call it Mangria. And uh He's cool, man. I love Adam Cro. He's interesting. I don't find him funny, but I like a lot of the stuff he did. Like I don't like listening to him, but yeah. You know what's g okay, here's a here's a you know on the spot idea. Okay, so what if there was a Chrome extension, right? Like Honey, uh, you know, Honey big popular Chrome extension app saves you money. Um What if there's a Chrome extension that basically was like Um

Once a month. Your favorite creator can uh can recommend a product. And basically like like for example, I just bought like this, uh let's let's say I bought this Joby tripod, or I just bought this, you know, writing thing called, I forgot what this thing's called, uh remarkable. The remarkable tablet. And let's say I loved this thing. Um I'm trying to remember the last product I really, really love, but let's just say I I really love that product. I can basically make that my product of the month.

And I refer it and I basically have a chance to kinda like And uh it's thirty seconds of me showing the product and saying why I love it. And you know, I I do get an affiliate kickback on it, but I'm only able to promote one product per month as an influencer there. And so you know, I'm sort of selecting what I What I think is the best product that's improved, you know, my quality of my life recently. And uh and so anybody who ex installs the extension, basically they follow like let's say I promote it, it installs it, it follows me, but then it would also see you and like 10 other people that are like also on the network that I could follow if I want to get their recommendations as well. And we get a we get a share of

of that. It's in it's interesting. Th the best example of this that I've seen is the website called I forget what it's called, but basically they work with all the YouTubers and I guess a common question amongst the YouTubers is Where what shirt are you wearing or what camera is? What microphone is that? Yeah. Yeah, and so they made this website and all the YouTubers put it in their profile where they like click to see my gear.

And they have like a Pinterest page that says like here's what I use for everything, here's the clothes I was wearing. And people click through and buy and and it's really cool because like Casey Nice dad had a pair of glasses and I was like, Damn, are those special edition Ray bands or did he like how did he do that? And so I like looked at it. And then you know, when we were doing this podcast, I was like, What mic's all these people doing?

But the problem is is that With this affiliate model is Amazon just changed their their structure. And they just on a whim cut it in half. Right. Okay. So here's a different here's a different model of this. Have you ever heard of the company G Fuel? No, G but I like that. So G Fuel is uh is a energy drink that's that's marketed towards gamers. And so it's big on Twitch. And uh I think they were doing I don't remember the exact time where I met the founder. It was like over thirty million a year in revenue. It might have been eighty million or something like that. It was it was pretty substantial. I know for sure it was over thirty million. I think it might have been more. And uh

And he built the whole thing just straight up. So what he did was you go to the top twit he went to the top twitch streamers. Um I don't know if this is the beginning of how he s got it started, but like he created an energy drink, which is not that hard to do. He branded it as G fuel as in gamer fuel, I think it stands for. And then he went to the top streamers and he was like, look, you're gonna have your own flavor and your own shaker, uh, that this thing comes in. And so like Uh, I and you're my influencer and you need to put this in your Twitch bio and whatever. And at that time, Twitch streamers were like underpriced uh arbitrage. They had a lot of fandom, a lot of audience, and uh traditional sponsors didn't know how to work with them, or they were like just putting up their logo and uh not like a real product.

And so they would send these guys tons of stuff. So they'd be drinking it on stream. Then you'd see them drinking it. And uh they basically made Gatorade, but for esports instead of sports. And um So I think you could do the G fuel model for a bunch of other things. And whether it's like any other product that fits that lifestyle. Um, or it's something like what you're talking about where it's your gear. So

I think somebody could make a uh a D C company that basically creates pre-made kits so I could get the Nike uh Casey Nistat like Um It's just a box of all the stuff you need to have his setup. And um we pre mate so so partner with the influencers and say, Hey, you get asked about your gear all the time. Just put this here that says buy my gear. And you can buy my gear. It's a pre-made box and it comes with a video like instruction about like how to set up the Casey Nestat like setup or how to set up the Dr. Disrespect setup or whatever it is.

There was a Okay, so not affiliate links. Like you gotta go D to C, you gotta own the relationship, and you gotta be selling a box that's like hundred or more dollars worth of value because somebody wants to become a creator. Look up quarterly box. I'm familiar with this one. I thought this was a good idea, but I don't think it took off. Way crashed and burned, I think.

It was called quarterly box, and it was like smart people would send you a box. Tim Ferris had a box. And I remember being like Oh, cool, Tim Ferris has a box. It was when the box trend was getting big. And this was like, what if your influences could pick five products and you'd get it every quarter in a box? That was the concept. It's a hard business. It's a hard business. It is a hard business, but I know so many box companies that do amazing, right? Like one of our listeners, uh Leland, who does bump boxes, uh That business crushes. He's great. Bump boxes. There's another one called Causebox. Cause Box fucking crush. Is Bump Box pregnant? Yes.

Like baby bombs. For the m mom or the baby? Both. It's like products that you're gonna need through your pregnancy and beyond. And so like Okay.

So that serves a need though. So does that serves a need and a little bit so does the pet's one. Look up Causebox. Go to go to go to ca cause like like like for a good cause. Uh causebox.com. This business does like over twenty million a year in revenue. The metrics are amazing. And uh it's basically like we put g well made products in this box, and these are all like, I don't know, like either like ethically sourced, cruelty free, uh, and you're supporting the cause somehow. We donate, you know uh uh a fridge to somebody in Africa every time you buy whatever. You know, like there's some story like that. This business crushes and uh there's

There's nothing special about it in that that sense. There's no like, yes, there's failures in boxes, but like there's also successes for sure. What's that company that started as a newsletter and eventually became a monthly box and they make like five hundred million dollars a year? Started as a new Fab Fit Fun, as the one. Yeah. Dude, it started just like my company as a newsletter and now they do like

Where's the box? I think it's two hundred million. I think it's two hundred, which is still insane, but It's insane. I don't know. We need a hustle box. I you know, I I either need to launch a hustle box or a credit card. That's what it sounds like. I'd rather go with a credit card. Yeah, exactly. No no but you've been talking about the credit card. Why don't you do the credit card? We talked about that like three years ago. I don't know, I just haven't gotten around to it. I should do this podcast instead. Fuck it. We sh I should launch a card.

I think we should. I think that credit card is actually kind of interesting. I saw this other credit card. Right. No, I think the vision's simple. I think it's more like the Hutzpa. Yeah, well, that's the hard part. If you'd if you had known that that's w that the market opportunity was really as that big to do the credit card for startups. And that if you went balls of the wall it'd be like a multi-billion dollar company, you would have done it, right? Like of course, hindsight twenty twenty. Nobody knew that shit ahead of time, but There's another good one where in this woman who we interviewed to work here, I was like, All right, impress me, like with your ideas. And she showed me she was like, There's this company that's doing a credit card and they work with MasterCard.

And they what they do is they tell you the carbon footprint of each purchase. Which Ah yeah, that's that's uh important that's not really important to me. But for a lot of companies it's important because I think you can get special status if you have a low carbon footprint. Um Which is kind of for customers. I think some customers really care about it. Um

Yeah. Oh, by the way, you should still do bricks. You should still just do that exact same thing. There's a lot of people that don't use them yet, and there's other competitors, but like whatever. You should still do that business. I think it's cool. Is Brex doing well. I wanna buy the hustle and I wanna do these businesses on top of the hustle. Here's the problem. It's not a problem, but The hustle Like any company.

Well no, I mean'cause we're an audience company. The thing is is that anything that we launch Well at least do mildly okay. There will have there will be two thousand people who buy everything we do, no matter what. Ten thousand people more likely than that. The problem is is that you have to

Priority. Or Or spin out. Do you know what I mean? It's all about focus. Um which is

I mean you have a lot on your plate. Are you focusing on it? Am I focusing on one thing? No. And what's better. Not focusing or focusing. Trick question, focusing. Yeah, for sure. For sure focusing is better. There's to me, there's this uh like I don't know if you ever seen like in design thinking, there's these like two phases. those guys from IDO and and the people who are in the design thinking world, they have this like concept of diverge and converge. And it's this little diagram of like, first you diverge, you go broad

And then you converge and you like you settle on the on the solution. And so in a brainstorm, they say, All right, we're diving right now. And that's the time we're like, any idea is a good idea. Don't filter anything. Don't say, Well, no, that's bad because of XYZ. Like we're just trying to get all the ideas out there. And then when we converge, we're trying to actually like filter down and get laser focused on what we're actually gonna do. And so I think that in life that happens too sometimes, where sometimes you dabble and sometimes you diverge and sometimes you spin up a few experiments and you you let things get a little bit messy and you you you don't focus and then you go through periods of laser focus after that once you realize what you want to do and like For me I went from I went six years of laser focus straight. Two

a a period of experimentation and dabbling where it's like I'll start a podcast and like cool, I'll invest in companies and like I'll try these things and then I'm gonna like trim and cut and focus once I like learn about them. I agree with that. I mean I agree with that. I think that I think that Acknowledging that you're on focus because you're trying to figure out what to focus on is totally a great plan. Are you learning that

Are you what are you gonna focus on? What's gonna be the w the the thing? Okay, so my my rule is like an eighty-20 rule. 80% of my time and energy and focus goes on my main business, and 20% is gonna go on my my side hustle or my hobby. Uh so for me, my side hustle or hobby is content, content production, whether whether it's this podcast or my newsletter or whatever else. And then eighty percent is on the main thing, which today is Twitch, right? That's like my main day job. And so Even over t so I like that balance. Um and so

Over time, you know, that's what I want to get to. I I don't think in the long, long run, twitch is gonna be my eighty percent, uh, but for now it is. And when that switches, it'll be like my business. Whatever my business is will be my eighty percent, and my twenty percent will always be content and and audience stuff. In our last ten minutes, I'm gonna uh ask you a question that's somewhat related. It's gonna not seem related, but it is, but Do you think about what you can make? that will last like a hundred years, like for example When you were working with Blab

Did you think like let's we just gotta get traction and make it work, or was it Did you even at all think about longevity? No. I do not longevity in the sense of like I thought it was a very long time.

Is this gonna be around next year? Do I wanna spend two years on this? Could this be a five year arc? Definitely not the like hundred year thing. And I think when CEOs say that. Like I remember the CEO of Evernote said that. Oh, we're trying to build Evernote as we we pl plant this out as a hundred year company. And uh That shit sounds good and that's cool. I don't think that's actually like that functional, like on a data basis. And definitely not at the early stage. Like It's not that that great of a question. There's many better questions to ask yourself. Um

And I think for the most part it's self serving when people think that way. Let me change I agree with you to say like ever no but but here's why he's working on some other shit now and like you know, sure the company might might still be around. It's been like outstripped but not flanked by Notion and other things. And here's why. Here's why he's working on something else is'cause he raised all this money and that company's no longer his. Um okay, maybe that's why. Like

For example. What I've been thinking about is How do you create something And it doesn't have to be the same thing. I just learned about this HR software. That was built in eighteen

eighty. You know, they did it just by paperwork and sewing machine. Right. It just like changed from one thing to the other thing. And I I just there's something I've been f I've been finding incredibly fascinating about Just like compounding growth and how do you make something that Like

For example, my father in law owns a moving company and he bought it from someone. So this moving company has probably existed for fifty years and we'll see like, you know, with people getting laptops, like they There's lots of commercial stuff for them to move. But Like someone always needs to move. And I think like

What can I make that there will be demand for the next fifty to a hundred years or Well how y you know, it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I think that you know, I I think that's a good one, which is just like is this a fad? Is this or is this like something that will the the demand for this will always be around, right? Like Bezos has this thing where he's like You know, instead of because people always ask Jeff Bezos like You know, where do you see retail going? Where do you see e-commerce going in the next 10 years? He's like, look, we try not to like predict the future as much as we predict what's not gonna change. Like

Customers are not gonna want slower sh you know, they're they're never gonna stop wanting faster shipping. They're never gonna stop wanting the best prices, and they're never gonna stop wanting more ever, you know, ever increasing uh variety of choice for what they can, you know, what they can buy. They what they wanna have they wanna be able to get get all the stuff. And so those are the things that are not gonna change. So we're gonna spend like the next decades. Making shipping faster and faster, getting prices lower and lower through economies of scale, and making sure that we have we sell all the products that people want to buy. And like I think that's a That's a that's a really powerful way of focusing the company is like those three those three levers we can pull to infinity and our customers will thank us and have ever The he's like the best thing about customers is they have high standards and they, you know, um they're never happy. And so, you know, what two day shipping now, but like when we have two hour shipping, two days will feel like an eternity. And uh then they'll want twenty minute shipping and then they'll want two minute shipping is like where where we need to get to. So I think that's like a cool way of thinking.

So our company Our name main thing turned four in May. And I'm like Man, like I wish I would have done it this way from the beginning. And I'm like, Well what can I do now what what can I do now that's the beginning that in four years I'm gonna be like

Yeah, this was the right way to do it. What about ten years? And then I'm also doing this other thing where I'm living in the Airbnbs. And I'm like, man, I've bought so much furniture and thrown it away over the years. What would happen if I either A just bought close to nothing and B only bought stuff that would last for fifty years? Like would I be happier and richer?

And I think the answer is yes. Right. Yeah, I like that. You know the Okay, so your so your question triggered a bunch of thoughts uh in my head. One uh one other way of looking at that question is like Though I'll I'll tell you the ways I ask questions like that. One I ask right now is Is this a finite or an infinite game? I don't know. Have you ever read that book, Finite and Infinite Games? Uh

Truth be told, me neither, but read the first twenty pages and got the concept. Um Basically, you know, like a finite game is one like uh basketball is a finite game. There's a fixed set of rules. There's the you know, ninety four feet court, four quarters, twelve minutes each, uh, five players on each side, and you're trying to the the game ends at a certain amount of time and you're trying to win. That's the point of the game is to win and achieve achieve the outcome. And then you have like infinite games, like a relationship is more like an infinite game where it's like Or like Monopoly. Risk. Um You know, it's a game that you intend to play forever, the rules are ever changing. You play for the sake of playing, not for winning. Um, there's no such thing as winning. And like Uh, I think it's a really powerful concept because you want to play more infinite games. Um, for two reasons. One is

You when you're playing a finite game, you're playing for an outcome. When you're playing an infinite game, you're paying playing for the sake of play. Like that's how I think about you and me in the world of business, right? Like we just it's play to us. We enjoy doing it. We enjoy talking about it. We enjoy investing in it. We enjoy all factors of this. It's an infinite game that we're just gonna keep playing regardless of what outcomes we're getting. Um And then you think and then when you play infinite games, you have to be highly adaptable to rule changes and stuff like that. So a similar way of thinking about that is when I do a project now, I think If money was no object, if I had a hundred million dollars, would I do this?

Um And that's a question I asked this guy uh who he got acquired by Twitch also. Their company got acquired for um, you know, over a hundred million dollars. And he was still at Twitch four years later. And I asked him, I said Why are you still here? You've surely you've vested out by now. Um You know, I know you didn't get that whole sum of money, but like

And he was like oh I love it here. I love the job, blah blah blah. And I was like, I know this guy's job was like very Like stressful and like hard, like a lot of work. and limited in power. Like he wasn't in charge of the company. Like he didn't have full autonomy. He was working on like

you know, back end infrastructure stuff and like kind of compliance and security and d you know, gnarly things, not like what most people think of as fun. And so I go I was like, so why are you here? And he's tell me, Oh, I love it. I'm growing. I love my team. I love the customers. I love the industry. Blah, blah, blah. I asked him a different question. I go, Let's say you had a hundred million dollars in your bank account. Tomorrow would you show up to work here?

And he goes, Well, you know I was like no, would you Like would you continue to do this job if you had a hundred million dollars? He goes, Well no, I would probably go build a video game. I was like

Oh, okay, so like you're here for the money, right? Like all those things you said are true, but I just changed one variable, the money. I didn't change any of those other great things you said. And now you don't want to be here anymore. Right. And so like it's okay to be honest. Like I do a lot of sh sh you know shit for the money, but I as I started to think about it, I s I asked myself What would I do? If I had all the money. And then like I should just do that thing now because the money will come anyway, regardless of which path I go down. And uh stick to that, but I do think that's the right advice for myself.

I ask myself that question all the time and I always get depressed'cause I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what I would do. Like I I like Alright, let's see. Like we have a hundred million like may I think I would buy a a really fancy car in a very small house. Big car, tiny house. Okay, what else? Well, like'cause like yeah, I if the bigger your house, the more work it is. Sure.

Uh I don't know what I don't know. What would you do with your time? I don't know. I don't have any stomach. What would you do? Like what what are some options? Okay, well let's pray you. Oh, but you have a hundred million dollars in the bank?

And you have you have free time? Uh how old are you, Brave? I'm twenty seven. Twenty seven. What do you what do you do? What comes to mind?

I don't know. Like I was thinking about this the other day too. Like I have no idea. I think most people don't know the answer to that. Don't you think we should know this, right? Because uh not that we should have a answer, right? Maybe there's no answer, but like don't you think we should think about it because we're we're working so fucking hard for financial freedom, right? And then We don't know what the hell we would do if we get it, right? It's like that joker line, like you know, I'm the d I'm the dog chasing the car. If I caught it You know, I wouldn't know what to do with it. And isn't that crazy to me? Like that that seems wild. Yes, it is. I think it's incredibly crazy, but I think it's the truth.

I think the fun is in the pursuit. Like there's something in the journey. Like I I told Sam like if you ever you know, whatever, sold the hustle or whatever, he would go and start another company. Like he couldn't like not work at Like that's something. Uh uh. For sure, I'm I'm starting shit till I die, but it it

It would be like what, like for example There's this guy in Alabama and he has this thing called the Barber Race Track and the Barber Museum. And he uh He inherited his father's milk dairy business and then he sold it for like five hundred million dollars. And then he opened up a motorcycle museum and a motorcycle racetrack. And it's a profitable venture. But I'm like

I would do that probably. That's what I would do. That's cool. Uh I like that. You know, the the guy I worked with, Michael Birch, he basically had this, right? He got all the money that you can ever spend in a lifetime. And then I observed what did he do? And he basically did I would say three things. One is he started an idea lab because he's like, dude, I'm not gonna stop building new shit, but like, no, I'll do it on my terms, right? I'll never go pitch for money again. I'll just fund roll f the bankroll this myself and own it. Uh I'll hire great people that I want to hang out with. I'll build a dope office. Like you saw the office in San Francisco. That office is amazing. It's probably had five million dollars of furniture in there. Yeah, exactly. And uh

Uh, you know, I'll have a personal chef who cooks us lunch every day and I'll work with great people and work on ideas, right? So that was w pillar one was idea lab. Pillar two was He's like, Hold on. Yeah, d did that make a profit? Or no. No. Okay. So that was a fun thing that whatever. Yes.

Um it probably it probably's close to No, I don't know. It's close to break even, not not bad, but uh you know, could've if you just put that money in the market, it would have done way better. Yeah. So so that that was true. Um But again, he's not trying to make money. Like the the idea lab would would have rarely been able to move the needle for him financially. Of obviously he wanted it to be a financial success, but Um so pillar two was he started the battery, which is basically he bought an old candy factory, a 60,000 square foot candy factory. And turn it into a members club. Uh basically designed a hotel. Like, you know, he won't he always was fascinated with architecture and spaces and designing spaces.

And like designed a kind of a dream kind of like hangout spot. And then invited a bunch of members and so then he was just hanging out with cool people all the time. Like You know, some of them are like celebrities and whatnot, like, you know, when Beyonce's in town, she stays there, you know, Justin Bieber stays there. Le Leonardo DiCaprio, I bumped into him at the battery, right? Like that's cool. But there's also just like other you know, like I think a third of the memberships went to like artists and like other people who, you know, weren't kind of rich and famous.

That does that make a profit or break even? That uh it will never break even because of the huge capex, but on a like every year it's Uh it either covers its cost or it's profitable. Uh, but he put a lot of money into like buying the building, retrofitting it, seismic retrofitting in you know, in California because of earthquakes, and then uh went way over the top. Like, you know, the elevator was a two million dollar elevator. Like, you know, he he went over the top with everything. And so recovering that money, I think, would take a lifetime, but he didn't care. He he basically said, I don't care if this ever makes my money back. I'm not doing this for profit.

I don't want it to constantly bleed a lot of money where I start to stress. Um So if this just breaks even once we open the doors, I'm cool. And the and it's done more than that. Uh he went through I think six general managers before finally finding, you know, whoever runs it now. And uh That was a hard part, but you know. That's a stressful part of the job. Okay, the third thing. Third thing was philanthropy, uh slash like I I even put his angel investing in in that bucket, but philanthropy. So he he's probably given

over$10 million to ch to charities like Charity Water and whatnot. We give it over ten million dollars just to charity water, probably. Uh and I always ask them like, you know, W what do you like doing nowadays? He's like, Well I still like building stuff. Like he He relearned to code, you know, recently because he just likes to build things. He liked working with us in the idea lab. And he's like, But the best thing I've ever done is the work with charity water. And he didn't mean that in a fluffy way, like there's no interview. Like I was just hanging out with him and asking him a genuine question. And uh He goes with them to Africa like multiple times per year, takes his family there, and uh gets to see the impact of their work. And he's like, By far that's the best thing I've done. And uh he's friends with the founder. Where's that guy live now?

Doesn't he do he move to the Caribbean? I saw his house for sale for like twenty five million dollars. He moved to the British Virgin Islands, yeah. He bought an island and then in the B V I and lives there. What a weirdo. What a cool sounding dude. And so that's cool. And is he happy? What's that?

Is he happy? Uh yeah, he was a happy dude. He was happy before, he was happy after. Like the money was like, you know, you know, just allowed him to have cooler shirts. He has like some pretty sick shirts. And uh but but f you know, for the most part, he he was a happy guy before. And uh You know, uh Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, he he kinda did something recently where w few years ago where he put somebody in charge of Y Combinator and then he like retreated to the woods in uh In the UK and like just wanted to write And like I think he's like either he was writing a new programming language or he's just writing essays and he was like just living in the woods with his family.

And like that was his version of like, you know, I got it all. What do I do to be happy? And so I think for everybody, it's worth asking your question of like, what's your version of? retreating to the woods in the UK and just being happy. Well, uh we can end there. I would love to hear other people's version of like the best example of someone your best life doing whatever to make them happy after the like It's like there's a great um story where it's like An American visits a uh a resort town and this Mexican guy takes him out fishing.

And he brings back three fish and the guy go the American businessman who's on vacation goes Man, this is a great You know, you should Y how many of these do you do a day? And he goes, Oh I just do one every couple days. And uh the guy goes, Why? You should do five a day, then you can make this much money and then hire these people.

And then the the Mexican guy goes, Why? And he goes, Well,'cause then you're gonna grow to this much money and then this much money, and then by year fifteen, you're gonna sell for this much money. And he goes, Well, why would you do that? So you could sit around and And the guy goes to the game. But I do that. Right. I already do that. He's like I just all I do, I mean I just fish and I get you one, I get me one, and that's what we eat on. And uh anyway.

It's a great story. I would love to hear what people's examples of that are. Real life examples of that. Our friend uh Sully, who's, you know, ten times more successful than either of us. And uh he texted me something the other day'cause I showed him I gave him a kind of like a life update. I was like, hey, I'm doing this, this, and this, and here's how it's going. He just goes, Wow, like I'm so happy for you. He goes He goes, and I I kind of was like downplaying it because you know, I was like, Well, you know, it's still a long way to go kind of comparatively to like what you've done and what you're doing. And he was like, No, dude, you're living your best life. He goes, There's two people who are living their best life, you and Sam Parr. And he goes, And so I I don't know even know what he meant by that, but He says that to me about you all the time too. Isn't that like A, it's like a great compliment and B, you kinda wanna live up to it. It's like Fuck man, what is my best life? And like, yeah, what if I instead of comparing myself to all these people, like, what if I just what is me living my best life? What you know, and and that's what everybody's jealous of. I never know if he's being patronizing or if he generally is like

the happiest person I've met. But he says that shit to me all the time, which is funny'cause his brother, like Wants to murder everyone. Yeah, yin and yang. So it's an interesting family. Thank you everyone for listening. Leave us review. Please we'll read'em. All right. See ya. All right, bye bye.

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