Why "Desperation Induced Focus" Is the Key to Success, Plus Listener Questions

If you could only get done one thing this year, what would it be? Don't waste your time with anything else. Just take your best person, which is either you, the CEO, whoever. And make them responsible for that problem and give them everything they need to do it. I feel like I can root Well I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off. On the roadless travel, never looking back.

Or no? I have no idea where you are. Oh, I'm in Portugal, dude. I'm recording this On a Microphone like a blue yeti mic.

And just my iPhone. Oh okay. That's pretty good. It's thick, right? What are you doing in Portugal? So um Jack Smith, our friend Jack.

He um is looking at retreats out here in the rural area of Portugal, like the outside the city. And he wants to buy a medit uh a retreat and turn it into a meditation retreat. And he asked me to go with them and check it out with them. So I He's like buying a retreat center. Yeah.

But like A plot of land that has like Five to twenty cabins on it. He's looking at multiple. Places. And why is he doing that?

Because silent retreats made a difference in his life and he's like into meditation and stuff and he wants to do it. And he likes Portugal. I don't know why. It's really cheap here, dude. We went out to dinner with like Six of us, and I felt like we went to a fancy dinner and ordered a ton of stuff and it was a hundred and twenty bucks. That's amazing.

Um so he's also buying a farm. Isn't that funny? Your your short term rental thing is just like your it's not even short term rent. I wouldn't even say that. Buying Big ass piece of land. Please to put your flag down. Is it?

Is this like the yellow taxi cab thing where like We're talking about yellow taxis, therefore we see them everywhere. Or have you noticed that this is like this is popular. I can't decide. Um, I don't know if it's popular or not. But

Ever since you posted your photos of yours or you sent me yours. It went from like an idea that just sounded like a pain in the ass, to something I'm like kinda itching and wishing I had myself. So And I and I don't even like like we discussed, I don't even like leaving the house. So, you know, I don't even know why I want this piece of land. I'm never gonna go. I'm I'm literally never gonna go.

I don't think I'm gonna go that much either. I'm renting it out most of the time. Yeah, and I don't wanna Deal with all that. I don't know. Um

Ben, have you do you want a piece of land now? Ever since you saw what Sam was doing? Did he influence you? One hundred percent. It Portugal sounds like it's I I actually like I was already into it, but Portugal is just like increasing my interest like exponentially. That sounds incredible. I think buying a place out here is not wise. Um, whenever I go abroad I just I love going abroad and I love meeting new people and cultures, but it makes me realise how

America, like we have our act together for for most things. Um I would be a little nervous to buy a place out here. Without speaking the language of being a foreigner and stuff. What is Jack I even buying? What do you need for a silent retreat? Like you need like a place to sit on the ground. What do you what is it? You have like staff like feed breakfast, like give you breakfast every morning. Um

And there's like they have like a pool and a restaurant. I mean it's like a proper Like hotel. But The sound. A silent hotel? Okay, I kinda like this idea now. Now I don't know why. I went from w why does he need anything to I need this. It's cool, right, man. This stuff is actually cool. Um So I it's people are talking about it, uh it seems like in my world at time, but I can't just tell it's just'cause I notice it now.

I wish he was not making it like a retreat,'cause that's still gonna be like only for those who really wanna like have this intense life experience. I wish it really was more like a silent hotel. It's like a place you can go for a night or two while you're in town. And you're just gonna have a different power. Like the the it was a the place It he I don't think he's tur he's not turning it into a silent retreat. I meant to say he has gone to many silent retreats and he loves them.

And he wants to Create like a nature like Would you on a silent retreat? No. I think it'd be really hard, but I would go on the nature ish retreat.

Uh but Um it would be really hard. But l can I let me show you something kind of intriguing. So did you see that Instagram link? Uh

It says Sam one. Have you seen this shit? No I haven't. All right, open it up.

It's Instagram.com slash raw meat experiment. So read this read this guy's description. Just read it out loud and let me see your reaction. Eating raw meat at Whole Foods every day until I die from bacteria. What the fuck? Seeing if I live for five days or five hundred years. Follow me for more recipes. So click a video. I mean So all this guy does Is he

Has a video and look who sponsored. Nick Gray. My friend Nick Gray sponsor it. Okay, who is this person? What is their name? I have no idea who he is. He's sick. He's just eating a fish carcass. And look do you know who my friend is the second video, he's holding a giant Fish like a salmon piece of salmon that's raw. And he's just eating it.

He's not even eating it like nibbling on it like a burrito, like from the top down. He's just eating it sort of face on. It's very strange. Look at some of the other ones. He'll eat Like a prime rib. Is this the grossest thing you've ever seen? Wow, almost a hundred days of eating uncooked animals and everything is fine.

Learning a lot each day. Today I got a juicy New York strip. I forgot a glass for the egg, so I had to suck a slonker out the old fashioned way. I'm gonna write up my thing, blah blah blah. Okay, so he's not dead. So that's Good, I guess. Kind of feel like you

Kinda kinda was rooting for him to die a little bit, just for for this idea. But um W is he healthy? Is he like doing well? I don't know man. All I know is I see videos of him just eating meat and I it's so gross I better turn it off. But the two things struck me. One This is just Crazy

And weird. That he's not eating anything else? Yeah, I think so. And two, his copywriting in his bio is beautiful. Like I saw that and I was like this is the best. And he's getting featured by everything. He's like, just talk to Lad Bible. The interview is going, of course, because everybody wants to talk about this. I'm going to talk about this. You are currently talking about this.

This is crazy. He's literally eating A brick of ground beef? with a cup of four egg yolks just as his drink. It's disgusting, isn't it? Is this the craziest thing you've seen in a long time? It's absolutely filthy. Uh yeah, this is crazy. Wow.

Mm. Yeah. I guess like it's better he does this than becomes a serial killer'cause you know, he had two paths to choose from and he chose raw meat experiments. So I guess good on good on him for that. It's crazy. Um One thing I wanted to ask you, I think you're more in tune with this. I was talking to um a friend who runs like a

Forty person startup. That has engineers. It's a app. And They were telling me The the salaries that they're having to compete with

Like they said their people are getting poached to work at like a Netflix or something like that. And Those big companies are paying engineers like Five hundred thousand dollars a year cash. Like that's the salary. Right. I think she's she's said. It's not even like the uh thirty year old guy. It's not like you're a specialist

Who's g bring some something so unique to the table. It's like no, you're like a Mid level. solid engineer, maybe see maybe senior engineer, but uh Yeah, it's crazy. She told me that someone

From Brex was got recruited to Brex. And like the offer was like three or four hundred cash and then like another like equity grant that was pushed it to like six, seven hundred thousand. Is that How on earth

In a small startup. Keep up with us. Is this crazy? Yeah, but this has been going on for like, I don't know, almost a decade now where You have this crazy outsized compensation that's guaranteed. It's like, hey, this is this job is easier.

And pays you more. And then you're the startup being like, Hey, you wanna work twice as hard for half as much? And it's like shit. But people do take the trade for two reasons. One is There's a lottery ticket element to startups. Which is

Wh if a startup hits you can like kind of like leapfrog up and you can you can make a lot more. Probability wise, it's not a good trade, right? Right, your expected value's not that high, but But there is a chance. The other

component that helps is just People don't have a lot of fun working in big companies like that. But I don't remember it being like five or six hundred thousand dollars. I think What's that? By the way, I d I do think that's a little bit high. Like uh when we were at I think I could just say this. I don't think there's anything stopping me from saying this, but uh when I was at Twitch

Uh we like I got my team all offers and then I also hired people there. And I would say that for Like an average engineer. You might be like let's call it a thirty year old engineer.

who's been working for, you know, seven, eight years. Uh, not a not a manager or like kind of a senior manager who's managing multiple teams or anything like that. They would be netting, I think, something like Three hundred to four hundred thousand. And then once you get into you manage engineers, you're an engineer who manages other engineers.

Now you're talking more like five hundred thousand. And then if you got to like a what L eight or whatever, like these like um principal engineers and that's what they call them, or like you're an AI if you're if you're in the AI team, machine learning teams. Then we're talking about you could be making seven hundred K a year all in, which is a combination of cash and stock, but the stock is just like cash. It's like you know, liquid liquid public market stock stock. Which these are crazy numbers. It's crazy numbers and you were a

P. Were you a PM? Uh yeah, technically I was a PM, yeah. What was your cash salary? So Mine

When I when I joined Why they have a Uh I'm trying how how should I split this out? Okay, so basically what they do and Amazon does is they they always say The highest possible salary you can get is a hundred eighty five thousand dollars a year. Even Jeff Bezos only can make that.

So no matter who you are, that's your s cash salary. But then they do a signing, they do a cash bonus. So it's like kind of the same thing. I don't know why they split it out. So those two combined, I think took it up to like four hundred, five hundred thousand, something like that. And then on top of that was your Your your stock.

Yeah, so I think four it was four hundred thousand was the cash component and then stock would then be bigger and then we got acquired so we had not only your job Normal stock package, but then the acquisition. Package on top of that. Yeah, and that's what I have now. I think what is my salary? I think with the bonus it's like three hundred.

But the stock is I Uh much, much larger. Yeah. Um

Insane numbers. But uh you know, I would say like, you know. This is uh this wasn't the case for non engineers, so Yeah, if I look at um Kind of like you know people in the marketing team or community team. You know, theirs would be you know like a program manager for something like that. You know, they're that's

More in the like. What people are used to is like a good job. It's like, you know. You make like a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and You work at this company to get benefits and all that good stuff. Or they could get to one eighty or two hundred or something like that, Max. It was really only the engineers, engineering managers. That were crazy high and then

Mine, I wasn't just like a random PM. It's like I ran a whole division of the company. There's only I think seven people at my level in the company. So it's like So you know, how many how many peers do you have? So If you could manage a team of

fifty to a hundred people, then you could have that kind of comp. How many people do you think Who Worked at Amazon. I don't think Twitch would apply here.

How many people do you think that would work at one of these big companies? That probably had a liquid net worth north of fifty million from There are Cup. Uh

I don't know if you said Twitch, but yeah, not not at Twitch. Not tw I meant Amazon. I don't know, man. I I've I kind of put this out there once. I think I asked, I was like, How many people At um at this company would make more than X and I kinda got like a fuzzy answer. Uh so I don't know. I don't I don't have a great answer for that, unfortunately. Yeah, I was thinking about that with HubSpot. I'm like how many

How many people do you think have made more than twenty million dollars from their stock? And Well, like for example, even when Twitch got acquired by Amazon. The stock had gone up, I think, four or five t four or five X since then. So, you know, even if you came in and you got a million dollars in the acquisition, actually you had four or five million dollars if you just held on to your Amazon stock.

And so there was you know, like The appreciation of stocks is crazy. Like if you just go look at a ten year chart at Google. You know, you might have had a three hundred K salary, but that was Effectively you know, a three million dollar salary when you look at it over the over the ten year period. So It's pretty crazy. Uh

Tech companies have just accumulated so much wealth. And the funny thing is these numbers sound crazy, like wow. People are sort of like almost overpaid in a way. But it's like actually um Like the company's getting the best deal on average. Yeah, because the company's creating way more value per person.

Then they're giving out in company. It that's a really tough exercise to understand. I I sh I've I still struggle with it. I'm like, how do you have three thousand people at this company who you have to pay this much money for? And it's like well, because it makes billions of dollars. Well yeah, just think about it. Like Between Google, Facebook, Amazon Apple.

These are four of the greatest wealth generating machines cash machines ever created Right? Like these are trillion dollar companies. And multiple uh to Apple's like a two trillion dollar company or even more. So it's like, you know, there's a

These are the greatest businesses in the created in the history of Earth. So yeah, you know, like the the compensation is kind of outsized and it's pretty crazy and it's hard to get in. And even when you get in, it's hard to move up. But once you're there, it's like a you know, it is really kind of a golden ticket, which is why it's funny. Like I quit, you know, like and a bunch of people quit and go do other stuff because at the end of the day, it's just like it's not gonna move the needle that far for you. Right. Like if you can have an opportunity to feel like you're making a bigger impact.

Or just have more fun on a day to day basis. Um it's very tempting to to To go take that path and I I see you know, you see a lot of people do it. There's by the way, there's a great blog post I've read. Have you read this blog post?

It's called desperation induced focus. No. But I that's a really, really good headline. Amazing headline, right? So it's this guy uh Ravi Gupta. So he um He was m he was the COO of Instacart?

And um Now he's like at Sequoia, he's like a partner there. But he he wrote he wrote this blog post. And I literally I was like, damn, this is one of the best blogs I've read I've read and Maybe a year or two. Called desperation induced focus. And he goes He goes, people ask me about process all the time. Planning processes, performance review processes, OKRs.

And they think it's because I'm the COO. I you know, I was a COO and my friends were COOs and Everybody wants to like improve their process. And he goes, He you know, people sort of imagine me as like being in a room with Gant charts all around me. And then he goes, um, I have nothing against process, but I think most startups are doing this way too early way too often.

And when I asked them, I go, Why do you think you need this process? The answer is usually some version of Well, this smart person at this bigger company told told me that they use this process. Um And so we figured we should use it too. You know, we're we're just doing everything janky and like

Those big companies probably have it all figured out. He goes, the lesson is, as always, big companies suck. He goes, uh he goes, Don't get me wrong. This is why I liked it. He goes, Don't get me wrong. They didn't always suck. At some point they were just like you. A startup that was fighting for product market fit. They was, you know, trying to try to expand or try to grow. They were focused and everything. They were trying to hire like trajectory changing people. And they were tr they were giving them more of the responsibility than they even know what to do with it. And they were working their ass off to create something out of nothing. They had

Desperation induced focus. But now things are different for that company. Most most big companies are no longer creating things out of nothing. Um somebody else somewhere made the money making machine. And everybody else just sort of assumes it's it'll just keep working.

And um Now that the money making machine part is taken care of. They get the luxury of caring about You know, a s a small number of other things like planning processes, performance reviews. Creating an ever increasing number of checks and boxes.

Um or something even that that matters even less than those. This lack of focus is a luxury and a disease. I love that. And then he goes. Um Because my advice to people who are thinking about putting in a process was said instead of the process,

Go to this whiteboard. If you could only get done one thing this year, what would it be? If the answer is put in a new process, all right, fine, go for it. But more likely the answer is something like increase market share, launch a product that doubles our our revenue, or what blah blah blah. Then don't waste your time with anything else. Just take your best person, which is either you, the CEO, whoever.

And make them responsible for that problem. And give them everything they need to do it. Uh, in reality, process is not your problem. Lack of focus is is your problem. Peace time thinking, complacency. And then he talks about um About his time at Instacart and he gives kind of an example of uh

He goes. And he and he t he he gave one other thing that was uh he's like Instacart, we had one a whiteboard with two words. Unit economics. And he goes, at that point, uh once that became the singular Desperate focus for us.

Then we started combing through you know, the P L in different countries and finding ways to save cents per order. It was awesome. And finally we turned the unit economics around. I love this blog post. What do you think of this? This is beautiful and I think that it's true. Beyond just process. I've always said I think I said on this podcast, I think What I like to do is I like to burn bridges.

So You know, a lot of people say like If you're gonna start a company maybe like um work on it on the side. And I'm always like, No, fuck that. Like I know it's not for everyone, but like Go all in and like it must work or you're going out of or you're going homeless.

Like that type of like I I love that desperation. I love back against the wall type of moves. I think this is beautiful and his writing 'Cause I've I've been working on my copyrighting. His writing is really, really good. Even his footnotes are are pretty funny. Look at the first footnote.

Like it this it's beautiful writing. This guy's uh really good. Yeah, exactly. And then he owes he has another one. He goes, uh he ended the thing, he goes The next time someone tries to tell you to do something because a big company says big company does it. Be suspicious. Don't let them infect your company with a thing that's slowly killing theirs.

This would be the thing. I'm gonna meet up at this I emailed him so I emailed this guy right afterwards and I go I just sent him an email like two I read this at two or three in the morning. And I'm gonna read like what I sent him. Um I just go I go, Wow. The desperation induced focus blog post, one of the best fucking posts I've read this year.

Uh I could give you a dozen examples. Um, you know, my startup got bought by Twitch a couple of years ago. that that prove this, but you don't need to hear them because you know. Only somebody who knows could write this blog post. I'd love to meet you sometime. I'm Sean, I live in the Bay Area, blah, blah, blah here's what I do.

Okay, I I'm gonna go read some other blog posts on your site right now. The bar's high, don't disappoint me. What did he say? He was like, Wow, thank you, I appreciate that. We'd love to meet I'm over here, you know, let's let's hang out. You go hanging out? Yeah. I'm gonna get along with you. I'm gonna get along with you. We're gonna be thick as thieves. It's just a matter of how much time we hang out. What do you do at Sequoia?

Uh he's a partner or something like that. Here's another one. He's a big deal. Yeah, he's he's a big deal there. Um he has another one about like where he goes into more detail about what they actually did it. I think it was Instacart. Um, to improve their stuff. But I thought this was awesome. And I also think that the you know, the writing is awesome, the lesson is awesome, which is Most of the time you think your process was was broken. It's

that you don't have desperation induced focus on the main thing. You haven't you've you forgot that the main thing needs to be the main thing. And uh you're better out you're better off just writing down what is the main thing on the whiteboard. And saying cool. Who's the most capable person in our company? You don't do anything else besides this.

And then letting them solve that problem and giving them everything that they need to do it. And every day just talking to them about that one thing and don't talk to them about other shit. Don't d don't drag their focus in ten different directions. Which is exactly what happens at big companies is your those gets split in ten different directions. You're you're doing three sixty peer reviews one week and then you're doing your team off site. And then you're doing diversity and inclusion the th the next week, and then you're doing hiring.

And then you work a little bit on your plan on your project, but then you have to write your plan and your budget for next year. And then you come back to your project for a couple hours. And then you get pinged by this other person to do this other thing. And like sure enough, you know. Six weeks have gone by and you've like haven't moved the ball forward on your main thing. And the p and the company doesn't penalize it'cause they don't care. They don't know they don't care. This guy, I'm clicking around. is a very good writer. So his blog is RKG dot blog.

His writing is very, very, very good. This guy's a clear thinker. I can read his writing and I understand his I understand how he thinks just from reading his writing. Ben, you got the Georgetown Law shirt on. What do you think of this? I think it sounds genius. Uh by the way, my wife went here, not me, so you know, I don't uh I don't know how much credibility this gives me. I'm just a wife guy here wearing the sweatshirt. Actually I had this happen to me yesterday. I was walking in the neighborhood walking my dog.

And a lady in a Tesla swerves over, pulls over, she goes, Did you go to Harvard too? And I g I go I go, um she goes, Harvard, did you go there? Yeah, for two or one. Yeah, I go I go, Yeah, I was there in two thousand six. Uh love the campus. And she goes, I I know I love I go I went there in two thousand six. I go I go I was there in two thousand six. God, I missed the campus. She goes, Oh, me too. And then she starts talking about. She goes, I'm class of ninety-four. And I go,

Oh no no, I just bought the shirt. And then she started cracking up and then she told me a story of the same thing. She goes, She goes, that's I go, sorry to fake you out. And she goes, That's so funny you did that. She goes, My husband Has this shirt that says like It says like some it's like some army insignia. It's like some shield and like whatever. It's like some some army shirt. Because his brother or dad or something like that was in the army or something like that has the shirt.

I think like his brother had given him the shirt. And um They were in the park and someone came right up to him and like stood and did like a salute and was like, you know, Colonel the blah blah blah. And he's like, Oh shit. He didn't know what to say because like the guy was really like paying him like serious respect and so he just kind of rolled with it for a second and then like the guy walked away and he felt super guilty afterwards. He's like fuck I should have said something. I don't know what I don't know what I was doing. Why did I just like play into that?

Dude, were you by yourself when you did this? Yeah, I was by myself. I wouldn't I typically am not in the mood learning by myself to pull a joke like that. That's a good one. That's a winner. Dude it's the best'cause my shirt also has like a hole in it, so it looks like worn like this is like a it's it doesn't look like a memorabilia. It looks like you know, my old college sweatshirt. Um

Can I show you a business really quick? So check out all right, look at what I wrote under special deeds license plate. My friend Dennis uh was showing me this. So there's this website called My Plate is it My Plates? Myplates.com Can yes, all right. Thank you. Alright. So um

Basically you can do one of two things on this website. The first thing is You can buy Someone Has

Purchase The website like Zero zero one or like Some funny phrase or something, and you could do an auction. To purchase the vanity plate.

But what this website does is they made a deal with the Texas government. And they guaranteed the Texas government a certain amount of revenue. So in order to get a vanity plate You've gotta spend fifty to a hundred dollars. And myplate.com makes it really easy to register and get that done. And they go to the government, said, Hey, we promise you over the next

Three years, we're gonna pay you twenty five million dollars in fees. Five years. Five years, twenty five million, it says. Sorry, five years, twenty five million dollars. And the government goes, All right, fine, deal. You do that, then we'll we'll keep making you the exclusive vendor of vanity license plates. And this company did it. And they're crushing it. They've sold over

Uh half a million of these plates. Uh I read a recent article, they're still over half a million. And if you assume On their page it said that prices range from a hundred to two hundred dollars. That's

Like Basically close to Ten million dollars a year. Yeah. So they're basically uh They're doubling up, right? So they they they have this guaranteed payout.

But then they probably have their own costs. So I don't know how great of a business it is, right? They have their own marketing costs and things like that. But let's say they did forty million, fifty million uh you know, across that time, they had to g pay out twenty five million total. For the rights. Um that's still pretty pretty damn good for a business that has like by definition Zero competition.

Well and on LinkedIn. I saw two employees. That's it. Yeah, beautiful. This is very similar to what we talked about, the trend of going to a school The guys who the tailgate guys who go to the school and say, Hey

We wanna be your exclusive tailgate provider. We'll pay you a guaranteed You get this flat thing and then let us charge what we want to charge to to do like turnkey uh tailgates here. And getting that kind of exclusive partnership is very hard to do. But once you do it. Your business is like so defensible because, you know, n obviously nobody else can get in.

Yeah, it's it's sick. I came across this dentist showed me and I was like this is actually really badass. This is kinda cool. Yeah, that's cool. I've been I've been looking into licensing recently. Have you ever licensed a product? No, but the only thing I know about it is our friend Sully who did it. And he like told me how it worked and licensing is If you're the person who owns the license

It's like It's amazing. Well yeah, in this case, th like these are non exclusive licenses, but I've been learning how like You know, like how does the Disney licensing pro process work? Like what if you wanna put Mickey Mouse on something How does that work?

And it's like, Well, you gotta like get in touch with them. You know, that's like you know, hurdle one. And there's brokers that'll do it or you can just get in get touch with them directly. And then you basically are like, I guarantee you this much. And I'll give you whatever, fifteen percent of all sales. Um and you have kind of veto rights on on the design and all that. You have to approve it before we sell anything.

The whole process takes kind of like a year. But It's so powerful to be able to sell somebody something instead of from your brand that they've never heard of. you know, on a brand like Lion King or something where they have like already an emotional attachment to it. In this case, like it said that the top sold license vanity license plate was twelfth man. Which is like the the nickname for the crowd at the U T at the Longhorns game.

And so um you know, if you're a if you're a Longhorns fan, which is like pretty popular in Texas Like you have that emotional connection to the team. And so you're gonna get you know, get that kind of benefit. So I think licensing businesses are quite interesting in general. That's interesting. Yeah, I I didn't really know much about it. Um I remember Sully like had some crazy story about how they did

Did a bunch of licensing stuff. What are you trying to license? Um brand you know, any popular brand. So for my e commerce store, we're just trying to uh look at any kind of like popular brand that we think Would Do well on apparel.

So you know, you can go to a sports team or you can go to um you know, like a big movie franchise, Star Wars or whatever and Turn it in. That's how you get You know, at Costco like a you know, some hoodie with Star Wars on it. It's not It's not Star Wars making that hoodie, it's some company that's paying Star Wars for the rights to make that hoodie.

What's um what do you know about Logan Paul? What do you wanna talk about with him? Uh I can't tell this full story, but I can tell a part of it. So I met a founder today. I'm gonna ask him for permission to tell his full story, but The part of the story I th thought was amazing. This is just a little nugget. So

This guy was in college and he wanted to start an e commerce company. And he's like, Okay, I don't have any money for marketing. So um I need like, you know, maybe like an influencer to shout me out. I think that would be cool. This was back in Maybe two thousand fifteen.

So this was like a a while back. And so the founder was like, All right, uh in college, doesn't know what to do and starts he's watching Vine at the time. He notices that all the Vine stars, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, King Batch, uh, you know, like all these people He's like I feel like they all live like in the same place because they're all their doors look the same. He's like looking at the door handles. He's like

What are the odds they all just have the same door handle? He's like they probably live in one Building That just has this door handle. So he does so. It was like an apartment building, right? And so yeah, so he finds the apartment building and he's like, Oh great. He's on the East Coast. He just moves to LA, moves into this apartment building, like finds like whatever the cheapest apartment is in this building. Gets in, moves in, and he's like, All right.

I'm here. He's like, they're they're here. I'm here. And he started he's like, All right, uh how do I bump into them? He's like, Okay, they hang out at like they go to the gym all day. So he's like I started going to the gym. Like five hours a day. He's like, I'll just hang out there. He's like First of all, I got ripped, which was awesome. Cause I was just at the gym all day, every day. Secondly, I would just see Logan, I'd see Jake, I'd see King Pat. I just see these guys.

Every day and then sure enough we you know became kinda like friendly and then we became sort of like friends. And then he's like, Hey guys, like you know, have you guys ever thought about, you know doing some merch and uh ended up doing like a merch run with Logan Paul. And that kind of kickstarted his E commerce business, which is now doing

doing quite well, does you know, millions of dollars a year. So um But yeah, I just th that was amazing st amazing hustle story of like It's the pr they found the line. Between Determined?

And creepy. Um like Creepy is like um hanging out in your driveway. It's like oh dude, leave me alone. Like, you know why are we in the parking lot every day. The difference between like creepy and not creepy is really if you could just make the recipient smile a little. That's what I've noticed. If you could just make the recipient smile.

Well like It's kinda like when you're like wanting to flirt with someone, it's like You could say two phrases the exact same words but with different um emphasis on different words with a different tone of voice. And if you could get the person a smile, one's creepy, one's not. So like the Do you wanna share what your pickup line was for your wife, by the way? That story I think is the perfect example. As a friend, I recommend not telling the story.

As a podcast host, I am hoping you tell this story because it's hilarious. Bad about it, in my opinion, because like Her family knows and like it worked. Like we're married. So it worked out. But um so I mean I was

With my friend Lily, a a a girlfriend of mine, a a friend who's a woman, and it helped the reason I say she's a woman is it helped me look a little more more disarming. And I was with Lily and this woman walked in the bar and I go, Lily That woman's beautiful. Like I'm I I can't let her like I gotta talk to her before I leave. And what should I say to her? And as I'm saying this to Lily Sarah my now wife walks by and I go, Hey, um

What's the difference? between a chickpea and a lentil. And she looks at me funny and she goes, What? I go. I don't pay four hundred dollars to have a lintel on my face. Yeah.

She was like I never gas it. And I was like Yeah, classic uh Classic hummus joke, big fan of hummus jokes, are ya?

And uh Oh. We became now you're married. Now we're married and if we basically like fell in love like Ten days after that. So It worked out perfectly.

And so. My point that the difference between creepy and not creepy is just getting that laugh. So Uh. Kudos to this guy. That was like the most high risk maneuver. Ben's Ben looks so sh I've never seen Ben so shook. He's I as a man of Georgetown law, what do you have to say about this? Because you've met my wife. My wife is like uh a little bougie. She's like uh H higher class than I am. She's a classy lady. That's what I was gonna say. She's a classy lady. I wanna know how many times

Did you ever use that pickup line and how many times did it work? Um I used it on Tinder once or twice before. And Mm. It was a good litmus test because If you didn't think that it was funny, then we weren't gonna be a good match. And also if you weren't quick enough to get it.

then I'm like, Oh man, I don't know if we're gonna be a quick mat uh a good match either. Um it would be leads me to think that like the best pickup lines are not necessarily the ones that work the most. They're the ones that are the best Uh filters, yes, exactly. It's a perfect filter. Filter pick a one. If you don't think like a a dirty joke is if you think a dirty joke is not funny, then then this just isn't gonna work.

So that was the that was my reasoning. Sam Sam, uh you know Ghetto country Romeo. I'm like who's water Romeo over here? Crazy, crazy joke uh out of nowhere. When you told me that, by the way, I was one hundred percent sure you were lying,'cause I was like, there's no way that's a true story. That's a That's a fake story. It's a funny fake story, but I was I was still happy with the fake funny fake story.

And then uh Sarah was like She rolled her eyes, she was like, Yeah, and then rolled her eyes and was like, Wait. Is that real? I should say yes. Ha ha ha I'm telling you it works.

Classic copy I I would the the best thing that has helped me Meet women'cause you know, you know, like Like a lot of computer dork, I'm just I was just a nerd. Learning how to be a better copywriter taught me how to like Grab people's attention, get them interested, make them desire, and then take action.

I'm telling you, it was a classic copywriting. Yeah, anyone listening, go go try that. Let us know how it goes. Go try that line out. The difference between it working and it not working, remember, is getting the recipient to smile. I'm telling you, that's like the key. And good smile. Not like Not like uh you know, like you want to say like Wow, not like Wow. You know what I mean? Uh all right, what else we got? Um

You wanna do one of yours? Uh you have uh Uh Darmesh is amazing on here. So listen to this. So Darmash? Um Darmash is the founder of

HubSpot, the co founder. We had him on the podcast. He um Very likely just based off his hubspot stock as a billionaire. Um knowing Darmash he probably has like other like he's made other investments that have made him a huge sum.

Um, but I don't know. And He basically win this app. Wordle came out. He got obsessed with it.

Or just become a fan of it. And he created a new game on its o uh his own game. Where I believe I don't play Wordle, so I'm sure you've seen it because you play that game. It's like basically is Wernal a once a day thing? Yeah, Wednesday.

So Darmesh's app is like once you're done with your daily wordle, come practice and train on my Wordle app. And it's a like a training wordle app. Right. It's really good. Have you seen it? No, but I need that because every day I do the wordle and then I'm like

Not satisfied with the one minute You know, like I need more of a break. So then I go Google Wordle Archive and I go to this bootleg site and I start playing an old Wordle. Uh, just to play a little bit more. So he is Twitter, look at his thing. Wordplay.com. I think that's it. Yeah, it's just an amazing domain.

So Basically, here's why this is amazing to me. Is the He is not able to do this. Because he is a billionaire who has time.

He is a billionaire because he is doing things like this. Like Constantly creating, constantly learning. He told me, I think, last sh. He goes like my son wants to learn how to become a YouTuber. Because all the kids are you know care about that. So I'm gonna create a YouTube page so I can learn and I could like keep you know, like I could teach'em how to do his homework.

And he's doing really good. His YouTube's great. And I saw that when Wortle came out, he came out with this thing. And it's awesome. And he basically coded it by himself. Like sometimes he'll DM me at night so I know he's up at night on his computer. Um and

He's just like working on this stuff and this is why this guy's amazing and why so successful is because he's prolific at making stuff, even if it's a silly game. But the the the passion that he brought to like a silly game, I imagine, is what he brought to building hub spots. Pretty amazing, right? It is amazing. I'm playing the game right now, so excuse me if I'm a little uh little off. I need a word that's are you

Blank blank why. Are you blank blank why? Rubby? No. Ruby. Runny. Can we ruddy? What is it? Ruddy? No, there's no D. Are you D D Y

But this is amazing, right? That he's able to do this. He also, um when BitCloud came out I believe he was one of the largest uh or most active one of the more active participants on Blick Bit cloud. And I was like, why? He goes, Well, I'm not sure if it's gonna work. But I wanna just understand this technology so I know what's going on. Right.

Yeah, he's he's amazing. He's a tinkerer and a hacker for sure, which is like One of the um highest kind of like predictors of success in my opinion. is people that just scratch their own itch, they're tinkerers, they're hackers, and they build cool stuff. Uh, there's this founder of Farza who's building this thing called Build Space right now, which is cool company. It's like

Helps. Web two engineers. get into web three and like learn learn learn about web three and then get a job. And uh Over the weekend and he's like, you know, he's raised money, you know, from Andreessen Horowitz and others, so it's like a serious business.

But over the weekend he posted this thing, he's like All right, check this out. And he's like putting this thirty second video up and he goes I bought this nerosity device. Which basically I don't have seen this. It's like a thing you put like, see how my headphones are on my head right now? It's like this. Yeah. And it measures your brain waves. Yeah.

So he goes. I I have this neurosity device and I made it so that anytime I'm focusing or I'm thinking hard about something. It's attached to this motor. On this hat. With a little uh fan on top of the hat. Like you know, those like goofy, like, you know

Whatever. P Herman type hats. It's like this this thing should spin anytime I'm thinking hard. He's like, So watch this. He puts it on, it's not spinning. He goes, Okay, I'm gonna do some math. Two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eight is sixteen. He starts going up. And uh the th the wheels start spinning super fast as it gets to like a hundred twenty eight or whatever. And I was like, wow, this is amaz it's useless, to be clear. Uh but it's also

Completely amazing. And uh and so you know, I give'em credit for it. If someone made that, I wouldn't bet against them. Yeah, exactly. It's like This person they they're just gonna shoot a bunch of shots on goal. And they're eventually gonna get it. The same thing happens on the marketing and in marketing side. People wanna hire somebody who's a marketer. It's like Oh yeah, I ran

You know, I ran market I was head of marketing at Coinbase. It's like Dude. There's probably fifteen people that say that they led marketing at Coinbase, first of all. Then secondly, um

Like you know, the things you had to do with it. Yeah, the things you had to do there to make Coinbase grow. It's actually like Coinbase is already growing. Rapidly. And you just helped kind of like, you know you know, soften up the edges. Um, and whereas the person who's like

Yeah, I made this web like this guy who's uh I love this guy. I've been trying to hire him for Milk Road. Um This guy Rohan Vora. If you go to his his Twitter, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So R-O-H-U-N. Vora. Um

V O R A. And the thing is just I created bitcoin or shit.com And Bitcoin is dead dot L O L Um and so if you go look at those, it's like BitcoinOshit.com. It's like

It's a little mini website that just says Um if you bought bitcoin instead of Uh stupid shit, you'd have blank by now. So you type in how much you spent on like, you know, whatever, a TV that you bought. And it's like you would have had this by now. It's like shows you if you had invested in Bitcoin instead, how much would your money be worth? Dude, this is the way to go. And yeah, this little site gets like a bunch of traffic because it kinda goes viral and it was simple. And he just like worked with some, you know, random developer to make it or built it himself. And he's built like ten of these types of projects. You know, you've only heard of three of them.

And then um guess what? He got a job as the first growth guy at Main Street and drove like a shit ton of growth from Main Street. Because he was like scrappy as hell and was like, Oh, cool, I think I can figure out how to grow this thing. Just like I figured out like clever ways. To make my little projects. Go somewhere.

And Hiring people like this is like these people are much higher lik they have much higher likelihood to be like a trajectory changer for your company. versus the person with a bunch of experience at a larger company who's never who never tinkers or creates stuff just for fun, just to see what happens, and actually gets these random hits.

When I was uh running the my company, I would if I got an applicant from Apple or Facebook or Google At first I would flip out. I was be like I am so honored. that a rocket scientist from Facebook would want to apply at my company. That alone I feel like validated in my existence. And I The hired

Uh, I'll try to be vague. I hired from one of these huge companies It was horrible. It was horrible. We We it didn't work out. Um and But what I learned was like basically they just don't do anything. Like

When you're at Facebook I had a friend that worked at Facebook and His job was basically To c um Figure out what stickers

Two Uh what stickers to make in order to put on a picture that gets people to upload more pictures. Right. But they didn't actually do the work. They had a team of like eighteen people, and then they got approval and I'm like And I was like oh like so like Are you like skilled? Like what are you good at? They're like I'm not good at anything. I just like organized shit. Like I'm I can't do anything.

And so I learned the hard way that it the It's not interesting. Yeah, this is why when you interview people you have to be like, you know, okay, cool. So So what's what's a project you did there? Like, oh I did this project. Cool. So talk me through, where'd the idea for that project come from?

This other person. Okay, cool. So then um You know, explain to me maybe like the three different directions you could have gone with it and then w which one you chose and why. And they're like, uh It's like oh you didn't think, you just kinda did the first thing. All right, cool. So you didn't actually weigh the options about which way to go and come up with three plans and pick the best one.

All right, great. Um cool. So then when you wanted to do it. Um You know, what what'd you what'd you do in the first kind of like, I don't know, ten days? Like I don't know,'cause they don't think on t short time spans about like How do I get momentum? How do I generate so velocity and momentum?

And actually get the ball rolling. It's like No, we just like did it. Took a year. And I never considered it taking kind of like less than a year. And uh you know, so that was that. And I was like, Cool, so how would you measure success? Well, it was hard to measure for these reasons, you know, so it's

It's too many variables. Thank you for coming. Yeah. The question I ask is what tools do you use? And if they tell me like, Well, I just use like Google Slides and then I take a screenshot and I just drag it on over, like I'm like in. But if you say that it's mostly like Excel or database stuff, like SQL, I'm like I

I don't know if you can actually create. I don't know if you could do it. If they say that they use tools Where I'm like, I don't think that you I don't think that you can actually make something that A user Cs, then I don't know if this would be a good fit. I asked them how their competitors are doing and not like what are your competitors good or bad at. Like

So how much revenue or how many users do does this other company have? It's my my number one kinda like Instant filter of how like minded we are and how Like I it's a it's an instant red flag for me when people don't know. The numbers of their competitors.

Because anybody who's sufficiently motivated And cover will know their competitors' numbers within Like A couple days of doing their project. And um and if you didn't think about that or you're like, you know, I think they're doing well.

Like Oh, you d never thought to go figure out? Where they're at versus where you're at. Yeah, I can't stand that. And I I'm I'm sure there's people who are successful who don't do it that way.

But for me, I'm instantly like, This is one red flag. It's not a disqualifier. But if I hear three more, like this is th th this is a definite no-go here in terms of this person. Cause I I just can't fathom how you would do something and not try to understand where the others are at in in numerical terms and not like Just your opinion of of them. I uh say page. And I do that when I when I'm in when I in making investments. I say, How big a business do you think this and I name like a competitor is and they're like, Well, you know, I'm not sure. It's like

Dog, I I know you're not sure. I didn't ask you if you're sure. I I just said like just like let's have a conversation with me about like I know you've researched us, right? And if they haven't researched, I'm like Fuck, man. I don't know if you're being a it's hard to say. I'm like, Are you sure it's hard to say? Or can I just go to this number this site and this site triangulate. Basically within a very close approximation where they're at. Um Or you know, that's just like a crazy thing to me when when people don't know that.

Do you want to answer Uh a few questions. I'll ask you a few questions on your Twitter. Yeah. I'll um

Pull up your thing and I've got it up too. I've I'll ask you one and you answer first and then I'll answer second and while your while each other's answering just scroll and find another one. So This one's an easy one. Straightforward. General question. But tell me the percentage of your uh personal portfolio, you know, stocks, crypto, rolling fund, real estate, e com, et cetera.

Um actually for this, I don't know if you can include e com or any private businesses because that could be like Right. Do liquid. Uh you could do liquid and I'll I'll I'll do it as well. Okay, I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me, uh, for like updated, but I think I did this last two months ago, three months ago, maybe. Uh and crypto is like I I did it right before the crypto crash. So I think some some of the numbers are gonna be a little different now.

I roughly have Thirty to th thirty to forty percent in stocks. Um Forty to fifty percent in crypto.

Um I own no real estate at the moment. And I have very little cash. I keep less than I don't know. Less than Five percent, maybe three, four percent. I keep a very small amount of cash, uh compared to most people.

Um That's also just because I've I did a bunch of startup deals where I invested personal money into startups and things like that. So that that that took some cash and put it into illiquid startups. And then there's startups, which I didn't say. Uh that's kind of the remainder. Uh so of liquid.

liquid money, that's that's where I put it. uh the business or the e commerce business, like kinda like your paper net worth. I don't count that. Uh I don't um Yeah, I don't count any I don't count anything in net worth from businesses that are not exiting or yeah, that are not not exited yet. So it looks like I'm at eighty five percent equity public equities and and bonds.

Ninety percent equities. Um and that includes Airbnb and HubSpot. Um, and then I own ten percent in real estate. And then I have three point five percent.

I call it private equity. So that's basically angel investments that I consider it they've marked up and they're like profitable and like relatively safe. So I like and I put a discount on it. Um and then I have uh Like five. percent ish of crypto. Okay.

And uh I guess the follow up to that is Do you like your allocation or do you wish it was different? Um It is really painful right now. It's painful. I I've lost a fair amount of net worth in the past.

Three months. Right. Um I if there's anything I wish it was more real estate, but I don't regret not doing real estate. Yeah. Uh do do you do you have regrets? No. Uh you know, yeah.

Basically my my stock holdings are heavily biased towards tech. And my which has gotten slaughtered. Um, you know, over the past I don't know, X number of months, six months, something something like that. And then crypto has also taken a dive recently, but my basis is quite low, so you know definitely still up on all of it.

And then um I forgot startups and private equity, that's a good one to bundle together. That's probably like ten, ten ish percent of it. Uh at least. Um Yeah, I I think it's fine. I I like I like my allocation. Maybe I I think I think I probably should get out of some stocks and go more into crypto, if I'm honest.

Wow, that's crazy. Um I got I got one for you. All right, go ahead. Question. Uh this one comes from Dylan. Dylan asks, How do you negotiate the value of the company you're selling? So how did you come up with the price how did you get to a price with your with your company when you sold it? I made a huge mistake.

I Made a classic mistake. I Said it in the number first. I said these companies typically sell for Blank X and blank X.

And of course, so they asked you they they asked you like what's your what are what are your expectations or what's a range what what do you what price would you be happy? What do they a how do they ask it? I don't even know if they asked it, but I said limited. I think I said like Look, like it's I'm not

I said I'm not gonna mess around like so these companies typically sell for blank to blank So if you're in the market, let me know. And No. First offer was the

Low number of that. And And the last offer was it the high number or somewhere in the middle? And then well. So it was in the middle, but like the thing is is that

When we Sold the company. The Hubspot stock was three hundred and fifty dollars. And basically a week later it was like You can look it up. It was like five hundred and fifty dollars and then like

Three months after that, it was like eight hundred and fifty dollars. So like it it changed the The sale price was one thing, but it pretty much changed quickly. But it was like right in the middle of that number. But um I made a huge mistake, I should not have done that, and r as soon as I said that. I was like

Fuck! Fuck fuck and you say in an email. Did I say it in the email? I think you said I think I don't know. It sounded like the story you're sending you saying you said it in an email. I don't remember uh no, I think I said it on the phone and Sh the woman who I'm now friends with who is doing the deal. fucking lashed onto that like a shark and she tore. And I knew it.

And afterwards I I I've friends with her now. She doesn't even work at Hospital and I'm like You you got me on that. She's like, Yeah, like you said the number. Yeah. A great thing to do is after you negotiate a deal. Go talk to the person, once you're once you're pals and they're on the same team, say, look, we're on the same team for sure. Uh, but man, negotiating was so

You know, confusing for me. Uh what did I do poorly? You know, like What would you have what what do you think you would have gone up to? Make me hate myself. What what would you what do you think you could have gone up to? And you just ask a bunch of questions to try to suss out. What got them interested?

What made them hesitant? How they figured out the value, what they were willing to negotiate to, what mistakes you made in negotiation, because you get so few reps at negotiating, it's important to do that. But it sounds like to answer Dylan's question, you did two things. You said First you looked up comparables. So you found out comparable sales.

That's how you f you got a range. And then you make the fuck up in your actual negotiation of that range to fit to like you you you actually set the the proper range and possible It it cost me many millions of dollars. Right. It's like that one decision you made.

Actually was more important than like the previous two years of operating probably. Yeah. A bunch of like ninety decisions. Yeah. How did you do it? Um We I did not say a number right away. Um, I fucked up on one regard, which was

I let my emotion so when we so the way we decided to sell wasn't there was nobody coming and knocking on our door. Saying You we need to buy you. You're the best. Uh we we we're we want to be in the business of you. I was basically frankly, I saw the writing on the wall for my business. I was like, Okay, I think this is not zero.

But it's not gonna be huge. So what do I wanna do? Do I wanna ride out a middle of the pack like Small like medium sized. outcome for the next five years. Or can I just go flip this thing now?

And I decided I want to go flip this thing now. I was also really tired because I had been doing I've been trying to find product market fit with different startups in our idea lab. For like six years. I was ready for a change in general. And so I told my investor, my co founder, I said, Hey I wanna sell this thing. I think it's time. And they were like, Okay, if you want to sell then let's sell.

And I said, All right, let me let me run a process. I'm gonna try to sell this in the next 45 days. So first that was good because I time boxed it. But I also You know, like uh It added a lot of pressure. And so

The mistake I made when I was figuring out how how to sell, I was I let my emotions of the day dictate how I sold how how hard I sold the company. So what does that mean? At first I was super confident they're gonna wanna buy us. So I went to two two or three companies with my super like swagged out Uh like

Cocky cocky. Like pitch, basically, which was sort of like Yeah, everybody wants us, but like, you know, so if you guys are interested, you know, you you basically like Uh you gotta let us know because this is moving fast with you know these other people, so you We we got approached

We're interested. We might go that path. You're either gonna get on the train now or you're gonna miss it. So I was like Kinda cocky confident. That was like working. But then like two days would go by where like somebody, you know, they didn't text me back or they said they were gonna review the thing and email me and they didn't email me.

Then I started to ha have doubt creep into my head a little bit. So then I would like Kinda like It's like a booty call and like desperation reach out to some other company. And so one of them was I reached out to Facebook. Through somebody I know and I was sort of

Hey, like, you know, we're gonna sell this thing. I I use the word aqua hire. Which was like the wrong word to say because Aquahire means A specific range of what outcome you're gonna get. And it basically means Don't value my company, just value my talent. And um I shouldn't have done that. I should not have said that there.

I was luckily able to recover because it was such a big company that by the time he made the intro to the person who made the intro I had like changed the narrative completely. But the third guy was like, Yeah, you guys looking at Aquarium? I was like, I don't know where the fuck you got that. No. And it's like I I literally had sent an email and it was you know, with myself saying that

But I luckily was able to change it. And actually they they came in with the h Facebook came in with the highest offer. And so we a so I ended up recovering from that mistake, but that could have been critically bad. You wish you would have taken the Facebook offer? No, uh like the Amazon offer w ended up working out great, but um

You know, whatever. Yeah, it w it was a good deal. Uh in the end, I guess. But But that was the main thing. And I didn't have a comparable. I didn't have comparables really. I c I kinda the comparables I heard were such a huge range. But I was like, Okay. I just need to forget I heard any of those numbers.

Because It's too wide of a range. It just means like It depends. And so then I started negotiating. I didn't say the number first. And we waited till we got offers.

They tried to get a number out of us, but I was like, not gonna do it. And um I was anchoring in other ways besides saying the specific number, I was like Leaving little hints or kind of just like You know, just making sure they knew that we had other interests.

And eventually once we got one offer, I was like, okay, that's a ballpark. And then I basically just texted the CEO of Twitch and I was like, Hey I'm gonna take this other offer. Unless you can match. And uh he's like

Yeah. Give me some time. Let me give me some time. I was like, I don't have time. He's like, give me an hour and I was like, Okay, I'll give you the hour. And uh and then he came back with an offer that wasn't quite a match. But it was good enough where I said, Okay, all other factors considered, we think this is the best because They were gonna take more of our team and other stuff that the other one wasn't gonna do. It was a big factor.

It's such a stressful period. Yeah. It's such a stressful period. Yeah, nobody teaches you how to do this. And it's like the most important thing you'll do as the CEO of your company is land the plane. But it's like being a pilot and you learned everything about takeoff and and flight.

And you've never heard anyone mention how the fuck you're supposed to land. And so you're like just kind of pointing downwards and you're trying to land the thing based on like instinct and then like a few fuzzy messages you get from mentors. Or you use like if you use an investment bank, it's different, but we were not at that size. You gotta be doing like

fifty million to a hundred million minimum. in your sale price to be um To be to have a banker who does it for you. Dude, I had this roommate named James And like he was like a p a stoner pothead and like

Like the first day of work. At his new job, he went and he had a t shirt that said I Heart Weed. They just really think I love weed instead of I love New York and uh He um He was negotiating a salary for a company Vungle Jack's company that I introduced him to.

And he'd been unemployed for ten months and he'd been struggling to find a company that He wanted to work at. And I think he was using like his mom's credit card to pay the bills because I would get like Uh

His m statements and like so I thought like maybe things were going south for him. I'm like, dude, I don't know if you have much money left, I don't know how you're gonna pay rent. And Vungle made him an offer for like a hundred and ninety thousand dollars to be an engineer at their company. And he told me and he goes. Are you gonna are you gonna take it?

He like exhales weed and he's like Oh no man, I'm not sure if it's worth my time. I'm gonna make'em sweat a little bit. And I was like, James, are you kidding me, dude? I'm like, you don't have any money. You've been interviewing and talking to coach for ten months, you're screwed. He goes Yeah, let's make him sweat. And I get a phone call from the recruiter who I introduce him to and he goes

Dude, James Is like A hot engineer right now. Like I don't know if we're gonna be able to land him. Like he's just bargaining so hard and I don't think we're gonna get this guy. And I was like I put the phone down and I go, James, do you hear what they're fucking saying? You better come to an agreement soon. And I go, Well, you know, just give him what he wants. Like who knows? Give him what he wants. Yeah, y you just gotta land'em. And I hung up.

And they ended up upping his offer and he negotiated from a place of having nothing and he didn't care at all. And I learned from him that day that that's actually a really good place to negotiate from, so long as you're willing to accept these horrible consequences. Yeah, I gotta actually say that that was the most useful thing like how we sold our company was I was totally okay if nobody bought it, because I was kind of excited. About just Ending it and going and doing something completely different. Like I was kind of like a maniac in that way. I was like, Okay, look if we If I got zero millions out of this, if I got zero dollars.

I'm actually kind of excited about that path too. So I was like pretty free in that way. Whereas I think you had a real business that was producing real revenues and profits, you didn't have that option of like Not a good like you know. Not getting a good offer. You needed to be.

I'm done. I'm out. Like I just I need to get out of here. So I I felt the s the the same way as you. Uh and I'll I'll learn a little bit differently how to run things so you don't get burnt out. Um all right, last question. Well someone oh we'll ask two more. The first one, how many Twitter someone asked how many Twitter notifications do you get a day?

Oh, I have no idea. I turned mine off. It says uh Like. Way Twitter works, it just has twenty plus or like a hundred plus or something like that. And it's just always like anytime I go to Twitter. It's twenty plus on the little bell, which is the max. Yeah. And then when they go to the thing it says like a hundred plus people have followed you or something like that. So

It's not even useful because And it's very addictive,'cause you can just always go it's like a thing to refresh that's always gonna show you something. Like literally like within two minutes of itself, it'll it'll show you something new, which is crazy. I turned mine on mine off. So in order to see what people are saying about me, I've got to search my name.

Um, but I had it I turned it off'cause I don't even want to know. Well you're talking about the phone notif the phone like Notifications you're talking about. No, but you can like literally when I log into Twitter I only see a notification if someone I followed Sent me a message or DM'd me or

Or mentioned me. That's cool. Yeah, if a random person mentions me, I don't ever I never know. I the only reason I ever find out, for example Did you know that Graham Stefan, that guy that YouTuber we like, he talked about us on his podcast. Alex Hermozzi was on it and in the beginning he goes I wanna give a shout out to My First Millions. It's like I love this pod. I I saw you on that when I was watching the whole thing and it was I watched it a bunch of times.

And I only found out about it because someone Dm'd me it where he was tagging us or something like that and I I had no idea. That's dope. I gave uh Ben my Twitter like account login. And so he goes in there and he'll just be like, Hey, these five interesting people followed you. This guy's the founder of that that brand we like. This person is high up at this company. And so he just kind of manually, he just gets curious, so he likes to see it, or he'll go into my DMs or any any product we like, he'll go DM them as me and he'll just be like, Yo, your thing is like name of name of your thing is dope. Love it.

And then they'll reply. And then like I only see the once the reply's there, it's like a conversation's been started, then I'll take it over. Uh but that was the way it was like the best feature of Twitter is like just give Ben your account and let him like Let them go down. You know, it's it's'cause it's a good resource. It's just mentally exhausting for me to like Try to keep up with. Um last question. Um, who's a bigger asshole in real life and why is it Sean?

Yeah. Is this question from you? No, it someone didn't someone say that? From Shampar over there? Yeah. Uh okay, yeah, I am pr I think I am actually the bigger asshole. I think You I think you would come across as a bigger asshole, uh but you're actually a nicer human. Than I am. That's what I'm saying. Like I think a verbal style could

Could brush like ruffle feathers. Faster than mine would. But your actual intent. I think it's very pure. And I would say more pure than mine almost. Well no, I think

I think that you are better at being selfish because you're more comfortable. I definitely wanna be selfish and say no to all this type of shit. But you're I think you're a little bit more comfortable with Confrontation. Than I am, so oftentimes I come off as

Nicer, even though I don't think that's exactly what I want to be doing. Uh what's a what's an asshole thing uh you uh you did this week? Let's make a tangible. Um, while someone just now was knocking on the door. It was the cleaning lady uh at the hotel and Like she knocked like a bunch of times and I just ran over there and I was like, Hey, can you please go away? I'm right in the middle of something and I just closed the door.

So I get really mad, like um I get mad with incompetence. So like if I'm So like if I go to a restaurant And there's like a menu that's like taped. Scotch taped.

To like the mirror or something, or like to like the glass. I'm like Hey, what are you guys doing, man? Why don't you guys just get like a nicer like like Take some pride. Like I'll say stuff like that. I get really mad at that. That makes me angry and I'm like hey, just so you know, like if you like this stuff makes me not trust you. Um, so that's like an asshole thing that I'll do. Um

What else? When people DM me their ideas, I just say like, Yeah, send it to me when it's live. Like I don't want to hear about your idea. So I I I get short tempered with maybe like People just like not Taking their job seriously. Yeah, that's good. Um, do you want me to ask you uh another one? I have I have one here here's a layup.

How do you vet your ideas? There's so many ideas out there. What would you do if you're starting from scratch? Plug your thing. Uh Wait, what are you doing? That's what this is, right? You're like literally teaching. The idea is your boot camp. So When when I I me and Sean research like crazy. He was he you use the word Sean triangulate.

We do that like like a mofo. So I created a course on about that. If you go to Maven.com, you'll see it. Although I'm not even taking people anymore. So we had a hundred and fifty people sign up. I'm afraid to I'm not letting more people in. I'm really nervous. I want to nail it. Right. Um were you are you were you nervous ahead of your I'm scared. I might have stage, right? I thought about that the first time and I said I was gonna cap it. I think I did end up capping it, but I capped it at double what I was comfortable doing.

What what did you cap it at? I think the first one was two hundred something people. Uh m this is So this just costs a hundred thousand dollars. It's it's uh a hundred and fifty people times six hundred ninety nine, whatever that is. Um I think that's like a hundred grand.

And like I'm scared. I'm like legitimately nervous. It will get it. It's gonna be the same either way. Whether there's 150 people there or two hundred people, you're not gonna notice the difference between that. Like if you had only thirty people, yeah, you would have a different vibe.

But once you get to one hundred fifty, two hundred is no different. Two hundred fifty is no different. I think once you get to like five hundred or a thousand, now it'll again start to feel different because It's just nameless, faceless people that are like they know that you couldn't possibly keep track of everything. But do you feel like you're giving how much was your did yours cost? Nine hundred fifty bucks.

Oh my god, doesn't that intimidate you? I also did the thing you're doing now, which is I underpriced the first cohort. So I priced the first one a half off'cause I was like, look If you're my true fan, you want to take this first one side on scene, and I'm telling you, my first run is not gonna be my best run. I'm gonna give it to you half price. Fill up these seats and let's do this. And so I gave the person a half price.

And then since then I no I don't do any discounts now, nothing like that. It's just full price. But were you scared? Like I just I have like dude, you know your shit. You know your shit. As soon as you do your first class. You're gonna be like You're just gonna be effortlessly spitting off these like things because you've been doing them for a long time. Like it's not like you're teaching material you don't know. You're teaching the thing you know really, really well.

And as soon as you start, you're gonna say something that's obvious to you and people in the chat are gonna be like Like I always tell them I right I say right I tease up the bing, I go, Your job when you're here for an hour? You're here to get one golden nugget. A golden nugget is an insight. that you can take you can go and you can actually act on.

That's like a kind of a game changer for you. So when you're listening, if it if one comes up for you, just type it in the chat so I know what the golden nuggets are for you and other people can get excited about them too, because you're kind of like grabbing this insight that's coming out of my coming out of my mouth. And so Now like I'm seven minutes into one thing and people are like golden nugget and they have one, and you just see people in the chat saying this, and it's like

Then you're like oh Yeah, I didn't even realize that's so s that part is so second nature to me. I that wasn't even my That's not even my A stuff. My stuff is coming thirty minutes later into this thing. But oh if that's nervous.

You weren't nervous the first time? I wasn't nervous, but I did feel a responsibility. To do well. That's why I was like, I'm gonna make more money doing other stuff, but for some reason the fact that someone's paying me just for knowledge. I'm like, then I'm gonna give you fucking I need to make sure that I'm giving you fire knowledge, but I'm not

Nervous isn't the right word. It's just I took it really seriously to to to like I was like, I'm gonna overdeliver. Whatever they think it is, I'm gonna overdeliver it. So I like spent more time on my stuff to make sure it was really good. I think there's a world where I'm not sure.

Right now you've got a bigger Twitter audience for than than I do, so I'll say for sure and you have an email audience. I don't have one anymore. There's a world where this becomes a half a million to one million dollar a year stream for you. Is is that That's the current world. Yeah. The question is. Do we try to get out?

Do you think it could be above one? One million's a lot. For doing I mean that's that's a what I don't know is if I teach it often, like to do to do a million, you basically need to teach it five times a year. So if I taught it five times a year, the question is Am I gonna exhaust my existing audience of like the people who are in my audience who cared about want to improve this part of their life? And are willing to pay for a course and can afford it and all that good stuff.

I think I'll run out. Maven's like no, you won't run out. Uh like it'll you'll keep growing your audience and trust me, like This is only Two hundred fifty people at a time. That are joining this thing.

So Think about your total audience size and think about two fifty, it's a very small percentage. Yeah, but that's not how many people are seeing the page. Yeah. I think that's a flawed way of looking at it. Not that he's wrong or right, but the right way is how many people saw it and didn't sign up. You know, like how many.

people will come to your landing how many qualified people will come to your landing. But that's a lot.'Cause like if I send an email to my list about something I'm doing. It'll get like Thousands of clicks, tens of like close to 10,000 clicks. And so the ten thousand people will go look at the page to decide if it's for them or not. So I don't know, we'll see what happens. This year I'm gonna teach it more times and if it runs out, it runs out, no problem. Like

I'm kind of excited to teach something else. I wanna teach a crypto. So that's like my The main thing is I teach this writing thing right now, it's good. But I'm like itching to teach a crypto thing instead because that's where I'm more interested right now and where I'm learning a bunch and I want to share a bunch of things. In fact, that's the question that I was gonna ask you, which is some this guy clay says If you could invest anything for Sam with his money. Um that he would not

feel comfortable with at first, not like at first, but would ultimately thank you later for. What would it be? And vice versa. Um, so I know what my answer for you would be. So Well, you say it and I'll think about what I would do for you. It would be in the crypto space. But it would not be something super high risk. So what I would do is

Have you ever heard of a stable coin called US T? Mm-hmm. Terra. Luna. Any of these words sound familiar? Yeah. Well, you you told me about Luna. Yeah. So basically what I would do is I would buy a stablecoin. So I take let's c say a hundred thousand dollars. And I'd buy you a hundred thousand dollars of a stablecoin, which is gonna be sort of like by definition worth the same amount. It's not a highly volatile asset. And there's a protocol called the anchor protocol.

And basically you could put your money in there and you can get nineteen percent a year. Fixed. Um, and so I would get you a nineteen percent a year return. Fixed and you would be like Okay, this is great. So I don't have to worry about the price of the the stablecoin going up and down.

And I'm getting nineteen percent returns. That's way better than my index funds. It's even better than maybe this real estate project once you count all the time and effort I have to put into it. I can just get nineteen percent on a just for my dollars, basically. And I would take nineteen percent any day, though. Yeah, so you love that. You it so I think you'd be comfortable with the idea once it's explained, as I just did. I think it'd be uncomfortable if I said, Hey Sam, go figure this out, because you'd be like, Fuck, okay, where do I even get this thing? I gotta sign up for this other thing. I gotta move it to a wallet. I'm kinda scared I'm gonna lose it.

Is this legit? I'm I get really gonna get nineteen percent. Where does the nineteen percent come from? There's all these questions. And so the thing I would do, I would just do that for you and then you would just see your number going up and you'd be like, This is great. Isn't there there's not a way where I can just click buttons and like wire money and it works? Yeah, it's all clicking button button buttons and wiring money. It's just how many buttons and and are you comfortable with are you comfortable with where you're wiring the money to, right? Like That's the the question. You have to have the confidence that if I wire this money, I'm actually gonna go my money's gonna be mine. I'm gonna get nineteen percent. Like

That's the trick with crypto is navigating it, you know, sort of a little bit of a minefield of knowing which buttons to click. And then Doing it in a way that you feel confident with. Um, all right, well thank you. Maybe I'll do that and then I'll wrap up with my answer for you. I think it would be

Do you own a squat rack? No. I would love for you to Own a squat rack. And to hire a coach.

and teach you how to squat. Uh properly so you can lift heavy weight. I think that I think that I think that or build you like a really nice home gym for like four grand. I think that would be I think what are the benefits? So why do I care about lifting heavy weights? Real what is what what am I gonna get out of this?'Cause it just seems to me like That's cool if that's your your hobby or your ego thing, but like

Do I really care if I could squat? Two hundred seventy five pounds or five hundred pounds, whatever. D does it really matter? The number doesn't matter. The number is irrelevant because The effort that I you the when I say heavy, I want you to be able to do uh uh an exercise where you can only lift the weights. Five times.

And on the sixth time you wouldn't be able to do it. Gotcha. So it doesn't matter what what the number is. It just Because I think that When you squat heavy I think a a couple of things happened.

First, it releases chemicals. I'm I'm not a doctor, but like it releases hormones and chemicals in your body that impact the rest of your body, not just your butt and legs. Number two, you I gain a ton of confidence when I have that weight on my back and I can do it properly and I feel free and I feel like I've overcome some adversity and it makes me feel really good and like a mini high. So I would say those are like the two biggest things. And three, I do think that Being able to put some weight on your back and squat really low and stand up is just an all around really good for your joints and everything like that. I'm not Saying like

Hundreds and hundreds and I don't necessarily think that getting like Huge is the best way to go, but like being able to squat like maybe your body weight or a little bit above your body weight is really good. Did we got one great question that we should have answered'cause I I don't know what I don't know what my answer would be. Liam goes. Liam goes.

What's a physical feat you could bust Sam's ass in and go, Sam, what's one way that you're much more charismatic than Sean? Embrace the debate and then it's a picture of Kanye West holding a notepad that says, I'm here to stir shit up. I'm just here to sh stir shit up. You would bust my ass in basketball, I think. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I don't think I could I I just I just don't have I've like not shot a basketball in like ten years. I think you'd kick my ass in basketball. Yeah, I'm good at basketball. Uh and then Or probably golf. You could you play golf?

No, but I'm good at basketball. The so I'll we'll stick with that one. I don't need two. One one was enough. One one was enough for me. Uh and then this charismatic one, I feel like you're already, you know, more charismatic or as charismatic, so I don't feel like it's a fair question, really. I'm willing to admit, I think you're on fire. I think you've had a good year. A good two years. I think you excited. No, no, no. Here's why.

No, I I think you care more because like Since I've known you for like the last Eight years, you've told me you wanted to be an actor or you've wanted to and you used to be an actor as a kid. Or you want it to be a stand up comedian. So I think you study this trade. a lot and I studied it I study it a medium amount and you study it a lot amount and I think you're also natural at it. So th I would say that you you care more, not in the sense of like it's

Good or bad to care, but you you You're fascinated by this craft a little bit more. But I am also fascinated. Yeah, I love speak I love public speaking, I love content, I love comedy, I love all that stuff. All right. We're done. Ben, what'd you think of the episode?

Great stuff. Uh just one last question is did you ever figure out what the word was, Sean? Oh no, I still have it open, I forgot. Do you know? What what have we got here? I just guess rugby, I think, is my best guess. Oh, rugby. That's gotta be it. Bam.

Perfect. Let me see. Rugby. I would have not got that because I did I was going through my head R U G, what what could go after that? Ruggy, no, ruggly, no Rugby. Wow. Got it.

Uh all right. Uh I thought it was a really good episode. Uh That's why you got the Georgetown that's why you got the Georgetown diploma and I don't know. That kind of that level of analysis, good episode. You don't get that just anywhere. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be But I want to I'm putting my law in it like

So on the road less travel, never looking back

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