Using Shame & Rage When Setting Goals, Octopus For Breakfast Story, and Flipping Disadvantages

Here is How I set goals. So that I can actually hit them. And this is coming from some guy who is You know, frankly Pretty lazy.

And um You know, I don't Um I'm not like you. Like I'm not like oh I need to To lose weight, I must have a five hundred calorie deficit, therefore It is done. I will now like, you know, track this thing. That always felt like too much work to me, but let me tell you what does work for me.

Um By the way, it's the exact opposite. It's less work to do it that way because then you don't think. You just like do. You just do what you're supposed to do. Classic that somebody who has discipline and willpower says. Like oh it's easier to just do it right the first time. Yeah, we know, bro. If we if we know that that's true, we just don't live life that way. Like it's okay. You know, I I I speak from the procrastinator's perspective. Alright, you wanna tell us about this game or what? Well, first of all, I think we need to spice up the intro.

I think the intro needs to be Like right now we're just casual with it. We just come on like it's just a conversation. And people love that. They love the authenticity. But you know what? You know what works when you become a cheese ball. And you just start performing and make it a show, and you give a proper intro, and you do all the things. This is My First Million, the podcast that has Two future trillionaires that come at you Oh, by the way, did you see this? Did you s did you see this guy who went on LinkedIn and then quoted the manifest cowboys thing?

Wait, well, what happened I tagged you in it. Some guy was tell he's telling a story. Oh bro, I'm going ham on LinkedIn right now. Are you wise? Like what do you mean? Like trying to get popular. I told you I I hired that content remixer guy. Brandon. And so Brandon's been amazing. What he does is he just takes my old good tweets and posts them on LinkedIn and people on LinkedIn Bro, it's a gun to a knife fight. They're like wow.

Incredible content! This is f Wow. What a conversation. This is stimulating. Cause you know, LinkedIn is like the most boring content farm generically, right? So like I've been over here fighting on Twitter against like You know, fucking professional tweeters who are researching eight hours a day and like creating these like epic threads. And you know, I just come off the dome, bro. Like, you know, I I I'm that painting at the top of the Sistine Chapel. I'm just off the top.

And Now I bring that to LinkedIn. And it's a whole new it's a habanero pepper for them. And so it's a ghost pepper. It's the last wing on hot ones and they don't know what to do with it.

And so this guy's been posting, so I just get to check the um The notifications. And I'll be like, Oh shit, he posted that thing from like a year ago that I said. And people on LinkedIn are loving it. But it's getting popular.

Yeah, I think I added like I don't know. thousand followers this week or something like that. I knew this woman named Candice. You maybe knew her too. And she was an entrepreneur and she owned a bikini company. And she was like,

You know what? I'm just gonna start this was in two thousand uh fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. She goes, I'm gonna start posting like stories about our bikini business and like, you know, how things are going. And so it like like new product updates, whatever. And it was all like, you know, hot ladies and bikinis, you know, like big boobs and stuff. They look great. It went crazy. It broke people's brain and she eventually got banned and she obviously did the right thing of like making a a public fuss about it. It's like what?

I'm just talking about my business. What's wrong with this? This is professional content. I sell bikinis. I've got it so it worked. Awesomely for her. And so I think that if you have a business that is like uh related to something like you know, like that, you can kill it on LinkedIn. But anyway, so you're crushing it on LinkedIn right now? Yeah. So this guy yeah, this guy Thomas Angel, I'll give him a shout out. He um He posts he goes. It says quote.

I don't do business. I manifest. And then he goes. Yeah, Sprouts Farmers Market was number one on our vision board when we launched The everything latte uh altitude function functional beverages. I guess that's his company, altitude functional beverages. So he goes, after thirteen months we're now in ten stores, blah, blah, blah. We're great. We're great. We're great.

And he goes, Thank you to the OGs. Hashtag manifest cowboys and then he tagged us. And I totally forgot you had said that on the last pod, and I was like, wow. That is incredible. Manifest Cowboys is one of your top five uh little creations. And like I just feel like we need to go all in. On the only podcast w featuring two trillionaires.

The manifest cowboys. The men who never age. Haven't seen a wrinkle in my life. Same body fat as your milk, two percent. Like that's how we need to go. And then we say Hey, I too. Play that back. Go back 15 seconds. Play that again. Did you pick up that two percent nonsense? That's beautiful. Again, off the top. I told you I'm good early in the morning. We just we moved our podcast to an early morning recording, and I just have like an extra 10% juice. Early in the morning where I'm a little crazy.

That's so funny. I'm just roll out of bed and these are the thoughts of my head. Dude, you're like a rapper right now. You just keep you keep rhyming. Oh I saw this I saw this hilarious clip. Of um It's actually my favorite form of marketing. Is you take a clip from something else, so

You've seen this one where it's a bar. And they're wa uh the whole bar is watching something on a big screen. And it's like the the original clip was like from the World Cup and like the guy scores a quote in the park. You just put whatever on there, right? Like I'll put like the milk road the milk road like shows up in your inbox, like you know, the the email pops up and then the crowd just goes crazy. And so I saw a version of that somebody did it with Joe Rogan. It's Joe Rogan talking to s somebody And he's like, Have you seen this? And then the guy's like, No. He's like, Pull that up. And then they just replace it with this tick tock of this young chubby white boy rapping. And he's really horrible, but it's hilarious. So then he's like dancing and rapping at the same time.

And Joe's like God, how do they do it? And like They show the reaction, but they've spliced it together. And uh I saw one of those and so that just really, you know, made my morning. I spend so many hours in the morning and at night just scrolling through Instagram and TikTok and just laughing constantly at all these Just young people are so funny now. I don't think

When I was younger and like that age doing stuff like this, uh w no one was this funny. Like the amount of funny people is it's it's way higher now. Me and my sister, we send each other maybe she sends me like twenty-five TikToks a day. I send back maybe ten. And like the caption on each one isn't like It's not like Oh, you gotta watch this. Oh, this is really funny. Or uh

Ah, that's so true. It's Every every like seven lines she's just like People are too good. Like w how how are they so talented? Like because TikTok is the greatest talent show ever created. It's America's funniest home video every hour. On the hour, right? It's like

It is this giant talent show, and when you watch it, you're like I am nothing. compared to these people. I am miss the dirt on their shoe. They scrape me off before they walk into their house. Like You feel so dumb.

Um And I I just like I can't I don't understand how they come up with these, how they film them. Like where the where the inspiration comes from, it's too good. It's so good in the subreddit, The Fighter and the Kid, that you and I like. Just like the commenters are so funny. It's like every Every top comic.

It's like one of the best jokes done. By a comedian that I like. You know what I mean? Like it's it like it like that's how high caliber it is. I just And it's almost like the way that I describe it, it's like it doesn't matter if you're into the outdoors or not, when you see a big mountain, you're like Oh wow, that's epic.

You know, like you appreciate the epicness. That's how I feel like when I watch TikTok. I'm like, I don't even like this thing that they're talking about. But how on earth did someone come up with this? And it's just that over and over and over again, and I'm in awe. I mean all constantly. Yeah, people talk about how uh these things are a waste of time.

Uh I don't know what their TikTok feed is like. My TikTok feed is incredible. It is the most entertainment per second. I've ever experienced in my life. It is. Funny, it is like insightful. I'll learn stuff all the time, little life hacks.

How stuff works. Um watching a TikTok about like you know, how a a farmer like you know Farm squash. I'm like, Oh, I didn't know that, right? Like I'm just learning stuff that I didn't even know I wanted to know. Cause I would never click the YouTube video. But bro, if I go on YouTube now It's like You know, we know when you go to a city

And they're like Uh, you know, there's like by the tourist destination they're like, Oh, you wanna get on this horse carriage? You know, did it'll bake for a funny picture and like in a it's a romantic date and you gotta like Do this old slow uncomfortable thing because uh might as well, you know, you gotta do something different. Life's too good now. That's how I feel when I go on YouTube. Like I'm getting back on the horse carriage.

After I've experienced like an F one car. And uh I don't know how YouTube's gonna survive. Dude, speaking of like this type of stuff, speaking of like uh uh entertainment and like doing epic shit. I'm reading this

Book about this woman named Elsbeth. Elspeth Beard. That's an interesting name. And in nineteen seventy nine or nineteen eighty, I think she was twenty two years old and she's just like says, Fuck it, I'm gonna ride my motorcycle around the country. Or sorry, around the world. Around the globe. So like you like

ship and go to America, right all across America, get on a ship on the other side, go to Whichever continent is on the other side of California. Is this just your female pen name? Dude, I did it across America, which is soft. That's soft. Like there's a McDonald's every fifty miles, you know. She did it like in Iran and shit. You know what I mean? Like there there's levels to this game. And she did it in nineteen seventy nine. And so like she was like we couldn't even get maps. But anyway, I was reading it and I was like I'm such a pussy.

Like why why don't we live more do we do we need to live more epic adventurous lives? She did this thing at age twenty two and now she's like sixty five. She's still giving talks on about it and making money. Because we are all so weak and we refuse to do like these interesting it's not that hard nowadays to ride a motorcycle across the world. It's not that hard. You take six months, you buy a twenty thousand dollar B and W, it ain't gonna break, you use your iPhone, it ain't hard. But I just A thought it was interesting that she did this thing at age twenty two. It's kinda like whenever I like see people like um Whenever I see like the Rolling Stones perform, I'm like, This motherfucker's eighty years old and he's playing a song that he wrote when he was eighteen. That's longevity. That's good. That and that's like kinda what she's doing. So I'm like amazed that you could do one thing at a young age and live off of it forever. And B We're soft, man. We gotta do more epic stuff. Like we're just sitting in our houses all the time doing this lame stuff all the time. We gotta we gotta be more adventurous, right? What would you do?

I've always wanted to walk across America, so I would do that. I've already ridden my motorcycle across America. I've driven across America a bunch of times. I think I could drive my motorcycle across. What was genuinely hard? So not like um It sounds hard, but what genuinely was hard?

I um With with riding a motorcycle across the country? It was in general. Other stuff you've done. Any anything you've done. What's the actual thing that you've like That's been really hard. Doing an Iron Man, that was like legitimately hard. Like I felt pain. I think it'd be fun like ride a bicycle or something like that across America and I think that would be genuinely tough. Like physically and emotionally tough. I did an Iron Man and that was like legitimately hard. I felt like I was in pain for almost the entire time. It sucked.

Did so Uh Ramon and Sulie they they texted me. Ramon was like Guys, we gotta do this Iron Man in Hawaiian year. I'm signing us up. And like he caught me when I was in that when I had that trillionaire two percent body fat energy.

And I just W two words. All caps. I'm in. Did you really say that? Did you even know how to ride a bike? No. He was typing his speech bubbles and I just I just responded, I go I go Ramon, say no more.

And then he stopped typing in the iMessage. Okay, three hours. He booked it, didn't it? Three hours pass. Yeah, he starts sending me like PDF ticket reservations, he starts sending me stuff I'm like

And I now realize what I have done. And I realize Your boy's not as hard as he thinks. He's not as tough as he thinks.

He's not as in as he thought he was in. Do we even know how to swim? Have you ever swam before? I have a fifteen foot pool. And I can swim in it. But I've never it's like a one mile free o like an ocean

Freestyle swim. Just to start the race. And so I go And so I then I had to back track, so I just came quick, I go, um Hey, I've seen the first one, but can't wait for the second one. They go what?

Iron Man, right? That's what we're talking about? The movie He goes, No, bro, you're not getting out of this and I go No. I am. And then he's that's I have a reason. And then he's so then every day he's been texting me like Hey, here's this cool link to how to train and I'm like, I'm not opening that link,'cause if I open that link, there's no if I know what it what it entails, there's no way I'm gonna do this. So I was guilt and do this by him and I trained for six months and I did pretty good. I did all right.

And he got last. And you're very, very fit. And you're saying it's hard. If I trained an artist for a year, I would not be as fit as you were before you trained for your Iron Man, I would be the before photo. And so it doesn't make sense. And so then I just told him, I go

If I don't talk to you anymore, I don't have to do it. And so I have to stop responding to it. And we'll see if this is the first time. Just for the listeners so they know how stupid like it was like the three stooges. We went down there and I trained. I I I was a division one athlete. I trained. I did fine. I was great. But They and I hire a coach. I did everything the right way. These freaking idiots who we went with they bought they bought the bike the day before when they were down there. And like then the night before you set your bike up at the place and they leave it there.

And Suey and Ramon were like, Hey, so how do we use those pedals with that c attached to your feet? We bought them, how do we use them? They were like setting it up there. And Sully, that's not the guy who we went with He did the swim. He did the entire thing in backstroke because he didn't know how to swim with his head underneath the water. And they assigned a kayaker, lifeguard, to him because they were so afraid that he was going to drown. I swear to God. And he finished, he did it. Of all the nine thousand people there.

I'm not exaggerating. They got Literally last place. Last and like nine thousand. Yeah, and I was nine thousand And they were miserable and then the next day they're like This is sick, bro. You wanna do it again? It was the craest shit on earth. These guys are idiots. They also asked me if I w if I wanted to go climb Mount Kilimajaro with them.

And uh I was like No, no, I'm out. No, I do not want to do that. I'm they're like I don't know, seven to ten years older than us. So they're like in a midlife crisis and we're getting dragged into their midlife Fighting against Father Time uh, you know, thing. And now we are doing these things as well. Yo, so actually this is a topic I wanted to talk about, which is How to Set goals. I think you had something on your thing about setting goals.

Yeah, so let's talk about this. So I I don't know what you wanted to do, but I had this idea of What is your approach to setting and hitting goals? Is that what you were gonna say? Yeah, well let me like go on a little rant here. So I've been doing this thing called intro. You know that intro thing? Like you just like talk to people and it's actually really fun. That's why I do it. I do it from Friday at five PM to seven PM. So if they just turned off the money, you'd do it,'cause it's so fun? No.

I am doing it because it's fun and I get paid uh two thousand dollars an hour. Obscene amounts of money. Yeah, so uh both. It is it is it's fun money, envelope money. Um And I've been doing this and a question that I ask people constantly and they never rarely have answers to and they act like I'm like profound for asking this. I'm like, dude, this is like table stakes, which is what does success look like in five years? Like specifically, like if this is a money thing, like how much money do you want, how much revenue, how many users, whatever. Mm.

What I've learned and then I've been working with some family members and they're like want to get their finances in order and I'm like, All right, well, how much do you spend every month? How much do you want to spend every month? And then let's work back from how much income you think you need. And I think the vast majority of people They don't write shit down.

And so I did this one intro call with this guy and I was like, Hey, so here's this app that I used for a long time. It's called My Weekly Budget. You just every time you spend a cent, just write it down and just do it for f uh four weeks and then just look back at how much you spend. And like, oh, I never thought about that. And he messaged me and he goes, I've been writing this down for like two weeks. I had no idea I was spending this and that and this. I've been saving thousands of dollars now that I know. And I do the same thing with weight loss. I say I want to weigh this much weight, therefore I have to burn I can only eat twenty one hundred calories and I'm just gonna write down whatever I eat. Um Just writing things down, both goals as well as like the things that you're doing, so you kinda like have an idea, is the easiest way. to get to where you want to go without really changing a significant amount of your behavior.

You have you noticed that? I have noticed that, yes, and I do that. I think I think a lot of people think they do that, but let me go into A little more detail on Some sh some stuff I do that I think is maybe a little bit different. All right. So I'm gonna give you a couple bullet points. Here is

How I set goals. So that I can actually hit them. And this is coming from some guy who is You know, frankly Pretty lazy. And um

You know, I don't Um I'm not like you. Like I'm not like oh I need to To lose weight I must have a five hundred calorie deficit, therefore It is done. I will now like, you know, track this thing. That always felt like too much work to me, but let me tell you what does work for me. Um

By the way, it's the exact opposite. It's less work to do it that way because then you don't think. You just like do. You just do what you're supposed to do. Classic. Yeah, we know, bro. If we if we know that that's true, we just don't live life that way. Like it's okay. You know, I I I speak from the procrastinator's perspective. Here are some things that I do that do work for me. First is and y and you tell me if you do this or not. I set picture goals or movie scene goals, not

Just written goals. So for example Uh, sometimes it's hard for me to figure out like let's say it's a financial goal. Okay, how much money do I want and when? And then I kinda like I'll pick a number, I'll be like, is that too high? Is that too low? And I gotta make it real in some way. So sometimes what I'll do is if it's a number goal

I'll do the math to add it up. I'll be like, okay. Here's how I wanna live. I wanna spend this, this, this, and this. What does that actually come out to? And I'll go bottoms up. To create the goal. Or I'll just simplify it. I'll be like, I don't know, numbers and logic is a little too hard to understand. I'll go on Zillow. And I'll just find the picture of the house I want, I'll be like this, this is my goal.

And I can just look at that picture of that house and it has a whole feeling and a whole like set of assumptions. That if I was living in that house. Like Life is pretty good. That is my motivating goal. Like I'm more motivated by a picture or a little movie scene in my head. than I am by

Just this like kind of written text that it that requires my brain to do a bunch of like work to try to like make life out of this out of this text. Yeah, I do it. Yeah, I guess I just described a vision board. Okay, cool. So yeah, that that's the first thing. Pinterest. Yeah, great idea. All right. Let's keep going. Second thing I do. Floor goals and ceiling goals.

So I don't set one goal, I set a range. The floor goal that I'll set for any project. It's like All right, at a minimum, this is like the minimum that it would take for it to feel like a win. And so I just will write that down. I'll be like all right, this is the minimum goal.

And because and what that what uh what was happening was normally I was writing a goal. Then I'd be like Kinda beat myself up like I'm not ambitious enough. So I need to set a more audacious role. So I set a bigger role, bigger role, bigger role. And then I would like, you know, inevitably like sort of under deliver on that, and now I'd have to like

Basically I'd either be disappointed'cause I didn't reach my like super ambitious goal, but still clearly a good thing happened. Or I would have my super ambitious goal and secretly in my head I'd have like my back up goal that like I wouldn't tell anybody because it wasn't so cool. But like I knew logically that that was good. So then I just started writing it down. Here's the floor, here's the ceiling. Ceiling is The the the F yeah. Like what would make me say F yeah that really worked out? Um

And so like Uh I g I'll give you an example I'll give you an example after this. But all right, the floor and the ceiling goal. That's the next one. Do you do anything like that? Like a range. No, but that's a good idea. I just No, I just like put the Maybe I kinda do. I I say here's what I think will happen but then I say in the best case scenario

I think this might happen, but I'm not expecting that. Right. That's how I started this podcast. I was like the floor goal is If I just invite a bunch of cool guests on Well, I'll probably like

If one of these a week, fifty two guests. Let's say half them are cool. Let's say half of those cool people become kind of like buddies or friends or you know, we we like each other. Cool, so I'll make like maybe twelve, fifteen New friends that are like kind of

Heavy hitters enough where I could I could invite them on a podcast. I was like, that's a win. That alone is a win. It's enough to like Do this th do this podcast for for for you know, once a week. And so that was my floor goal. My ceiling goal was well, what if people actually listen to this? Wouldn't that be sweet if people would You know, on their commutes and they would they would listen to this and

And you know, w we'd have this big audience of people who like, listen, and trust us. That would be amazing, right? Well I do now with uh I use that methodology for risk taking. So I say, should I quit my job and start this company? Well, the worst case scenario is that it's gonna take me six months to find a new job. Therefore, I'll have six months of savings lined up. And if I just so happen to build a successful company, that's gravy. That's awesome. But the s but I just basically I'm taking the risk that I'm gonna I just I'm assuming that I'm I'm gonna find a new job and have six months of savings. Great. That's my baseline. I'm fine with that.

So floor and ceiling, that's the second part. Um Okay, goals and anti goals. So I stole this from Andrew Wilkinson, who stole it from somebody else probably, but Yeah. Uh it's really easy.

Two Set a goal. and not acknowledge some of the common trappings you could get, even if you accomplish your goal. Simple example. Um

In college, my buddy dated this girl. Her dad was like a partner at a big consulting firm. And he was a partner. He guy would make you know a million, two million dollars a year probably He was he made it to the top of his like But also he was, you know.

Oh every single week he would fly out. Monday through Thursday, he would come back Friday, be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday he would leave again Sunday night. And he was just gone for like half of her life growing up. And so that's an example of achieving your goal, but Maybe hitting an anti goal as well, which was

He probably didn't plan and set out to say I don't wanna see my family, you know, m my kid growing up for the first eighteen years of life, I'm only gonna be there half the time. But it just kinda came as a byproduct of trying to hit their goal. So now I set out specific anti goals. Like, oh yeah, I want to do this podcast, but I don't want it to feel like a bunch of work every week, right? Like I'm not trying to make this my job. I want this to be. A fun hobby, right? And so

I w an anti goal might be All of a sudden I'm drowning in work trying to edit this thing and upload the thumbnail and write the show notes and do all this stuff. That would be an anti-goal if the after pod recording took five hours a week or uh you know, ten hours a week to go to produce it. And so by identifying the anti goal up front, you can make a game plan that that solves it. Do you do that? I do it a little bit differently. I don't call it an anti goal, no. I say here's what here's the price I'm willing to pay to achieve the thing I want to achieve. So for example, when I was s I said

Um when I'm gonna start this company The Hustle, I told my wife, I go, when we were dating, I go, just so you know, the business is gonna come first for the next handful of years because then when we get married and have kids, I'll have more time for that. But like right now, business is first and I'm going to give up vacations. I'm going to give up the price I'm willing to pay is we're just not gonna have that much time together. Unless uh if the business gets in the way. Right. Baby, tell me again uh who's number one on my priority list? The business. That's right, baby. Say it again. Say it again. Say it again. Say it again. Yeah, tell me. It's Valentine's Day. Who's my date? The hustle. That's right. That's right. You got it. You got it. You understand. I have to confirm. You gotta double opt into this shit. So I always say, Here's the thing I'm willing to g I'm this this is the price I'm paying.

You know what I'm saying? You wanna look good. You know, you gotta pay a price. Right. Um I like that. The next one. In your face daily. So now we're on number four. We painted the picture. That's kind of the mood board, the movie sc scene, the floor and ceiling method.

The goal and anti-goal method. And now in your face daily. This is one where I think a lot of people make a mistake. They write down the goal at the moment they're motivated and inspired and they They read that book, they watched that video. You know, they got their pen and paper out, they write it down, then they close the book. And then they just go back onto autopilot for the next like seventeen days. And they can't even revisit their visit their goal.

So my big thing is I need to see it daily. Right. The goal is like the barista. If I'm going to get coffee before work every day, I'm gonna see this face. I'm gonna see my goals face every single day. And so I will set this up in Slack. I will set up I'll just use the remind.

uh function, I'll say remind me every day. That my goal this week is for Milkrow to add this many subscribers or to go viral with one post on Twitter or to, you know, um to chase down that investment that I'm really bullish about and make sure we get in this round. And I will s set that reminder so that it pops up every single day. And it's only me who sees that, but now I do that with my team.

At the end of every uh you know, either daily or weekly, I will repost the goals that we had for the week. And just be like, you know. Here it is. Make sure you keep this top of mind or as my next My next method is

The tip of your tongue test. Which is If you can't Say what you want. If it's not at the tip of your tongue what you're going for.

You you're not clear enough about it. And like you are not giving yourself the best chance to succeed. Because you can't articulate Your goal at the tip of your tongue. Ben, can I can I pick on you for a second, Ben? Are you there? I know he's like in the at the beach, so he may not have the best uh audio video.

I I got kicked out of my last spot. I can I can try. Okay, try it. Ben. With your podcast, How to Take Over the World, what is the goal? The goal is to be a top one hundred pod Cast overall.

Uh in in the Apple Podcast ratings. Okay, sounds good. Sam. Critique that real quick. He's missing one critical element. Do you know what it is? Uh probably the input. The input meaning what?

Uh Like y y i I think that for a goal setting it's probably a little bit easier to be input oriented. So like what you're willing like. I'm gonna do X. You know,'cause you can't exactly control the output.

So like it'd be more input oriented. I would also probably say if if for podcasts I would put a download number on it, but I don't know. What do you think? Or a time box, right? Like by when Oh, by when you have ten years to do this or one year to do this? That's a critical element to a goal is to be at five It should be Pass fail. Like it should be easy to figure out did this happen or not? And if you don't have a time box, you can't you can't ever judge it, right? Sean, do you have your do you have your computer open?

Yeah. Go to my Twitter handle and what's my bio say. I have made this f for the past uh month or two and it's been working wonderfully and it's exactly what you're talking about. Oh, perfect. You go, I own the hustle, sold it to HubSpot, I tweet about this, I do the podcast, and then you said

Losing another five pounds this month, parentheses August. Yes. I always whatever the the goal is, I put it up there in Twitter so I see it every day. And the thing that you didn't mention that I love doing Is I love shaming myself. I love shame. I think shame And rage are the two best fuel.

To like get something done that people never talk about. I I like I still do things to make Erin Coyne, my eighth grade girlfriend, angry. Like I'm still in my head, I'm like, what's gonna prove her wrong? You know what I mean? Like how am I gonna win and like prove that she was wrong for breaking up with me. So I think rage is awesome, but I think like shaming yourself or like guilting yourself where you put it publicly and you have to do it. The other thing that I do constantly that works wonderfully is you have to like set appointments or put something on the table. So for example, I I have these a couple of bad tattoos I want to get fixed and I've been wanting to do it, I've been so lazy. You just You gotta make the appoint you make the appointment, it's like fuck, I can't bail. I already put down money on this thing. Like I have to do this. You know what I mean? And I think th those things really, really help.

Yeah, like my Iron Man competition coming up. But um Shame and rage. Uh that's a pretty good I mean My first million's a good name. Shame and Rage would have been a great name for this podcast. Dude, Shaman Rage is such a good fuel. I don't know like people say like you don't be angry. I'm like

No, fuck that. Anger. I love anger. I love anger. Anger gives me so much goodness. Like I I'm still like What is the phrase? Chips on shoulders, put chips in pockets. I love anger. Anger is such a good uh a good uh emotion to drive you. I used to do that. I used to I used to have a a thing that I've taken off this list which was Use your own psychology against you.

So it'd be like oh if I state publicly what I'm gonna do, then I feel the pressure. To go ahead and do it. Or like Yeah, if I use kind of insecurity or anger, that could be like a fantastic fuel. For accomplishing my goals. Uh, but I don't I personally don't do that anymore'cause

It makes the process of doing the thing. Kind of unpleasant. Uh it is effective for hitting the goal, but You've got a huge problem. You know what your problem is? I'm too. You are emotionally stable and happy. Yeah. You've got that's a really big issue in your life is you're just too emotionally stable.

Um so You know, like I'm sorry that your parents were wonderful to you, but that's just the price you have you have to pay. You know what I mean? Yeah, Sam goes around to his house just like shaving half an inch off every table. Just try to get it to have a little bit of instability in it. He's like this is better. I want the place to slide, baby. Yeah. You know, I had the advantage of, you know, having a a problematic childhood. You you you you are have or disadvantage by having a perfect little life. This data is wrong every freaking time.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Spot grow better. Alright, I'm gonna finish my goal thing real quick. I got three more. All right, last three, the most important three are Uh I don't move unless I actually believe that it's gonna happen.

Yeah. So a lot of people will say, and I would say, Ben, I I I I you don't have to come back on, but People will say things like Ben just said, and I would say at least half the time, if they are honest with themselves. I want to be a top hundred podcast in the world. By you know. By you know, in in twelve months.

If you What do you think are the odds that that's gonna happen? They'll be like, Well, It is Yeah, hard and it is risky.

And they'll sort of like Th if it comes down to it, their belief that it's actually going to happen is quite low. And I don't let myself move unless I actually believe that it's gonna happen. Because there's just like There's a virtuous and vicious cycle. Belief

drives action. If I really believe that some shit's gonna work, if I really believe that this person's gonna say yes and buy my product, I will pick up the photely and call them. It's only when I don't believe they're gonna pro buy my product that I some like Well, I'll call them after I finish this PowerPoint day. I'm gonna Actually, you know, Friday's not a good day to call because of this. And h hold on, let me just go clean my room real quick, you know, because that's yeah, I I just want to get that done. Then I'm gonna be a better headspace. Like

It's your belief that drives the level of action you're gonna take. Like massive belief equals massive action, massive action equals a good result, and a good result reinforces the belief. This is also what happens to people who become have a lack of confidence. They don't believe Therefore they take timid action. Timid action creates shitty results and that just reinforces to them. They're like, see?

I knew it wasn't like I kinda knew it wasn't I knew it was gonna be too hard. I knew I knew this wasn't g like the odds were against us. And then it just happens again and again. So I don't move until I I work myself into a spot where my belief is super high. Um Last two. baby goals or giggle steps. So I've kind of learned that like if you have a big goal

You gotta set a baby goal or a giggle step. A giggle step is a step Is that a trademark? Giggle step and just a tip are your two. I met this woman and she she created this uh phrase. She was like, Hey You know that book Uh Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I was like, Yeah, yeah, she's like it's It's all right. And I was like, Oh, you mean like the best selling book that's like sold like three million copies this year? Like one of the greatest self help books You know, in the last decade in in terms of She's like, Yeah, it's okay, but it's missing the most important thing. I was like, What is it?

She goes. He's he got it kind of right that you need to set like a simple first step. But it it's even his is way too hard. Like if you wanna set a habit to floss your teeth every day You actually want to start With something so simple, it would make you giggle because it's so not a goal.

That it's achievable and he'll actually do it. So she's like So all you would do if you wanted to flosh your teeth every day is literally Put one piece of floth floth next to your bathroom and like in next to your sink and just Faws a single tooth and then put it down and walk away. And it's like, Oh, what's that gonna do? A single tooth? And it's like it'll literally make you laugh. It takes away a lot of the fear and the built up

Like scariness of it going down this endeavor. Uh I hate that I forgot her name now. Um but yeah, I met her I think at Betsy Betsy something. I gotta find her last name. I don't remember her last name sounds made up so far. And it also might not be her first name, and I might be the w worst person in the world, but like Giggle Steps is good. Um see if you can Google that and pull up her pull up her full name. I've only met her twice. Um Okay, last one is uh

Last one is you gotta revise up or abort down. So I think what a lot of people do is as things get hard, they start to compromise the goal and they'll start revising it down, down, down, down, down, to the point where it's not even motivating anymore. It's like you you sort of took the edge off the goal. And yeah, now you kinda don't fail. But you also don't really succeed. And so my rule is I either revise up

Meaning I oh shoot, I think this could be even bigger, right? This podcast we've revised up. It's now bigger than I thought it could be. And so now I've revised up. Okay. It can actually be Yeah, X millions of listeners every month. Um

Hell, we're already at w you know, one point something, one point three, one point five, something like that million per month. Why can't this be five? Last month we were at one point. Seven, I think. Yeah, exactly. So that's bigger than I would have guessed, right? One if one was my original goal, I'm revising up now. Or I'll just abort down. I'll say, you know what?

This isn't gonna be that sh that that that's a weird word. It's a weird word. You know, eject, maybe is the the better way to say it. I will I will just eject out of uh you know the plane if I feel like You know what? Now that we have given it every throw and everything we've got at this

And we've learned new things, we have new information that tells us that this is this isn't gonna work. Rather than compromising down and getting stuck on something we're not even really excited about, if we're no longer excited about it, I'll just I'll change the goal completely or I'll leave the goal aside. I'll just go do something else. Because Um the new information has kind of shown me

Something to to uh it's just a check to say Don't just continuously dial it down. Tempting to do. And it's very easy to slip into mediocrity. So kinda by forcing myself with something harsh, which is

All right, would I just quit this? It's like so harsh that it forces me to like, no, stick with the real goal and find a way to make it happen. Or Change you know, based on what your new understanding of reality, change this completely. Don't just like Take it down a notch and another notch and another notch and another notch. And now it's all of a sudden not even that special to be good. So those are

Those are my how to hit goals. Those are those are things I do to hit goals. I remember years ago you when we were just Kinda trying to we were coming up, trying to make it happen. You said that you go I think Six million dollars is the number I need to feel financially like secure or I don't remember what word, like stable or like that I need to never work again.

Free. Did that goal change as you got older? You were you right or wrong about that goal? Um, I think I was right, but I Was wrong in one key aspect. And

Actually I said it on the podcast early on and our friend Norinda DM me he was like You're wrong. You're wrong. Six won't be like six is not enough for you.

And I was like Well I don't know, I like I do the math. He's like It's not enough. Like, you know, first of all Uh, maybe your target return of what you think you're gonna make on that six, you know, as you're 'Cause the the idea is if you have a certain amount of money invested What can you

It is gonna earn you know, s it's gonna compound at some rate five percent, seven percent a year, whatever it is. Um could you live off of that compound interest? Rather than and the principal would never go down. You would never have to withdraw lower than the principal. So you would you'd be financially free. You don't need new net income coming in.

Because the money you have is working for your money now and you don't have to go work for your money. And you thought that was six. I thought it was six,'cause I had done some calculation. Um Now I think the number is like the real number is probably closer to ten or eleven. And um

The aspirational number is like twenty five and up because then it's like Oh, it's not even close at that point. So the reason why I'm bringing that up is the interesting thing about goals Is I used to think if I if I achieve this thing, whether it's financial or body or whatever, that like I'm gonna be changed. And I realized that pretty much

Across the board. Every goal that I achieve I'm like, Oh, this was not as cool as I thought. I'm gonna create a harder one. And At first I was bummed, but now I'm like, Oh no, that's not

Like'cause it's it's just the chase. Like I'm born to hunt. You know what I mean? Like I have to chase a goal and I have to accept that when I hit my goal, it's not gonna change much. It's just gonna be a cool benchmark to go to the next one. And for so with goal setting lately or the last couple years, I've been like, Oh, but just know that this isn't gonna change anything, but it will be exciting to Uh chase after it. And so that's what I've that's an interesting thing that I've learned a little bit with as I've gotten older with goals.

Yeah, and specifically financial goals, your lifestyle creeps up. So like Before when I did the let's say six million number, I was like all right, six million If I earn five percent, if I'm getting five percent, let's say they I think the S P like kind of average, you know, uh return is eight percent or something like that. I was like, okay, let's say I can get five. Um

What would be, you know, that's three hundred K a year. Cool. At the time I think I was spending under two hundred K a year in my burn. I was like, oh, that's good. And I have like, you know, thirty percent buffer. Well, now I spend I think more than that. And so'cause lifestyle creeps up. It's like, you know, I started to Pay for more stuff. I started to buy more things. I started to travel a little bit differently. Started to do all the things that people do. And now You didn't travel differently. You don't you just don't travel. But when I do, I travel a little bit differently. Um the the point is the lifestyle creeps up. And so Um

I think that's the thing you have to do if you're If you're not trying to be really disciplined in your lifestyle, which I'm not. I I think life is to be enjoyed and I want to enjoy it to the Fullest extent I I know.

And so as I learn new things, new ways to enjoy, I want to do those things and not feel limited by money. Um, I think you gotta account for that. You gotta like over buffer. Are you looking to buy a house now? I'm looking at Either buying or renting a new house. Yeah.

Dude, renting's so awesome. I've been loving renting, man. Don't buy. Me too. Yeah. It's it's uh it's sick. The only downside with renting is just like sometimes you don't there's not enough inventory for like uh what you want when you're the burbs, but like If you're patient, you could just you can find it. Um and right now, uh the market seems to be at least where I'm at in California and Bay Area. The market seems to be moving where

Everything's getting marked down. So everything's down twenty, thirty percent. Um, except for stubborn sellers who haven't realized yet that they need it mark down. And then even those aren't getting offers. And then they're pulling their thing off the market because they're like, Okay, it's not selling. Now this just looks bad. And they're like switching to Okay, we'll rent this or we'll just stay in it or whatever, like

The market is very quick uh qu quickly turning here. Um to like a buyer's market is what I'm kinda seeing. Mm. Alright, I have something interesting to to share with you. Have you heard of this company call Woot.

W O O O T Of course. Yeah. Woot was like um An internet Staple, OG staple. It was one of the cool websites where it was like You'd go and there was a daily deal. It's like buy this T V for like twenty two dollars or something.

So Ethan Brooks at the hustle w kinda told me about it, but I had read about it for a bit because the Founder interests me. He's this guy named Matt Rutledge, and Woot was like, like you said, the one of the original like daily deal sites. And it was acquired by Amazon. And the story is really interesting. I remember reading this a couple of years ago. So Matt Rutledge is this guy from Dallas and he flies up to uh Seattle to meet with Bezos like uh you know right when it closes and they get a Sunday breakfast And they're like

Rutledge he wrote he's like Bezos had like a weird energy this whole time, but whatever, I'm sitting in this meal. And I finally just say, So Jeff, why did you buy Woot? And Jeff like Um had just ordered breakfast.

And they have their the meals in front of them. And he looks down at the meal, then he looks at Matt and like Fifteen seconds passes. And Matt's like Should I just like ask him if he wants to like move on and we just like skip this? And Jeff looks down at his meal again and then looks back up at Rutledge and he goes

You see, um You're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast right now,'cause Jeff had just ordered like eggs and octopus for some reason. Like a weird ass breakfast. And he goes. When I look at the menu, you're the thing that I just don't understand. Basically he had never ordered octopus for breakfast before and he's like, This is weird. I'm gonna order it. I've never seen it before. I don't get it, I'm gonna order it.

You're the thing that I've never had. And I must have For breakfast the octopus. And that's why he said he bought this guy's company. And this Rutledge guy was like Dude, you're fucking insane. Like he didn't think about it like it it my takeaway was Retlinge was not like oh you're a fake story. That is a

Fake. Story you either just made that up No, I read it in an article. Those were quotes. That is too hilarious. To be that is too hilarious to be real.

The exact points here is the credible. This is this is I'm gonna read it verbatim from the article. And this is Matt. in Rutledge saying, telling the reporter, You're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast. When I look at the menu, you're the thing that I just don't understand. The thing I've never had, and I must have Breakfast octopus.

And he just and he and that was like a twenty seconds pause for him to say that. Like just like this fucking weirdo, like you know, like Star Trek type of guy. And uh as you would expect, as one would expect from What? There have been many great stories on this podcast. Many great stories. Thousands of great stories, I might say. This was the greatest story I've ever heard on this podcast. First of all, you told it great. I didn't know where you were going with this.

The breakfast, the looking down, the looking up, the fifteen seconds. And then that line is all time. Weirdo. That is so weird of a thing, but what do you expect? What do you expect? I was actually I did a podcast the other day with someone and they asked me about my successful friends and like what do they all have in common? I was like, Well, they all like work hard, they all like are smart, but they're all fucking weird.

They're all weird. And like everyone I know who's successful is pretty fucking weird. Who do you know that would say that line, by the way? Not our world. No one. No one, but that guy's like Bezos is like the weirdest of the weird.

Yeah. Yeah, like I've heard him say like yeah, like your business is one Google away from me destroying you. Like he says stuff like that, but this guy says I must have the breakfast octopus. But this company, Woo, it's really interesting because it's basically just a daily deal site, whatever. And like Matt is like he said Amazon ruined it, as you'd expect. And like, but they did all this funny stuff. Like they would sell a daily deal and then the deals that they didn't sell, they would create this feature called the bag of crap, which is a a a a thing that like users would just buy blindly. And in the F A Qs it says like well if you don't like it, just list it on eBay, but we don't take refunds. And um Anyway, he leaves and he starts another thing and he calls it the me uh a mediocre corporation. That's originally what it's called. And the uh

And the underlying premise is that we're building a store that you don't need to buy anything to have fun. So like their copy is really, really good. And he basically said in an article, he was like Um, I want everyone's expectations to be incredibly low with this business, so that's why we called it a mediocre corporation. And it's pretty hilarious. And I was reading their copy and so now uh a mediocre corp corporation. They basically own like eight different websites. So

Um and they're all like daily deal sites and all of them have like three hundred fifty to two million dollar uh two million visits a month. So I bet you they're it's actually a pretty substantial business. And if you read the copy, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful copy. And I was thinking about this the the basically As I've sold my company to a big company, I've realized that basically for the longest time I thought Basically the only thing that a startup has that's better than a big company and why a startup can win is like focus. We could focus Harder on stuff. And we can move faster. So we can move fast and have more focus. And then I started reading about this guy and I started thinking about like the hustle and like what made it interesting. And the second and the third thing that I've add is that basically be because there's less bureaucracy

You can have more soul, you can do more funny, interesting stuff. And the reason you can is basically the founder comes up with something says, like, we're just gonna do it. Whereas at a big company, there's like middle management and they're like, I don't wanna lose my job, so I'm not taking this risk. I'm not gonna pitch the bag of crap. like feature. Even though that's hilarious and users love it. I ain't pitching it. I am gonna I'm not gonna do it. And I'll give you a good example. So I love AppSumo. App Sumo was started by my friend Noel Kagan. And uh No Neville uh Maduro is my good my best friend and he like uh helped run it and it was a daily deal site as well. Listen to this copy. So they ran a deal one time where you could purchase like fonts. I don't know how you buy fonts, but that was the thing. Listen to the opening uh paragraph from the daily email that he sent out. Neville wrote this. If the name's Lusanda Sands Unico.

Unicode or Cour Courier New don't mean anything to you. Go ahead and close this message. You see, my friend, today we're reaching out to the community. A people known as font horse. You know who you are.

If your knees go weak when I w whisper Garamond. You might be one you might be one of them. Ha And I read this. I remember I read this years ago. Before I met Neville and I was like

This is this is beauty. This is beautiful. This turns off the people who you want to be turned off and it gets, you know, the people who you want it and I was just like in my head I'm like Dude, you're writing about having sex with this font. That is so funny. That is awesome. You are making the most boring topic really cool. And You cannot do that at a big company. It's incredibly hard. And it's not hard because the company's bad or good. It's just that's the rules of the game and it's just like you're playing, you know, the game on hard mode if you're trying to like make

A big company cute. And I would just think it this is just this company woo. It's just such a perfect example. You should go to some of their websites. The their uh the mediocre corporation, they own Casemates, uh Mediocrity, that's one of their things. They own the site called Meh.com, Side Deal, Morning Save, and it's just deals. And I thought it was interesting and the copy is hilarious. And this is and I've been thinking about businesses that you can build, which you are building. And I did. Where it's just like one or two people can kinda be the taste makers and that can scale and be leveraged really nicely, kinda like a daily email. You know what I mean? But as you get bigger

You it you can be able to do it all. It's gonna get worse and worse. And I think that's just what's gonna happen. Yeah, totally. By the way, their domain is mediocre.com, which is a a amazing domain to have. Uh this is such a cool story. I love that and I love that that email by Neville. That's uh amazing copy. The um

I think it's so true personality. Personalities. Yeah, you said soul, I would say personality because it's kinda personality to interact with. It is such a differentiator in life in all aspects of life, but it it it also works in business. People go into business assuming you have to play some role.

You have to like put on the suit and tie and be some character. And all you're doing is simply blending in with every other suit and tie that exists out there. And so they'll like I see this all the time. Founders will try to play the same game as the companies they admire. The big companies, the successful companies, they assume because they're successful

that I need to act like them if I too want to be successful. What they forget was that Before they were successful, early on, the way they got successful was through having personality, having a point of view, having some edges to them. And those edges, they keep some people away because it's too rough for them. It's not what they wanted. And for other people, they're like, wow, this is the handle I need to grab onto because I love this.

And so you know, before Apple was Apple. They were, you know, the homebrew they were at the homebrew computer club, right? They were basically They had the two advantages you talked about. You said focus, I call it freakishly obsessive. And I I use that word specifically because they are obsessed with that some topic, whatever it is. It could be raspberry pies, it could be blockchains, it could be whatever. They're usually obsessed with something that's not mainstream. Um,'cause it's not that fun to be obsessed with something that's already totally mainstream. There's not there's not much joy in that for this person.

The second is that they're freakishly obsessed, which is Not only just an extreme form of obsession, but they're they're willing to go to a length that other people wouldn't. And they're willing to like The topic is usually niche and weird. Um so you know Fonts is a good example of one of one. Um

Of things like that. Then the other part that you mentioned, which is personality, it just gets squashed out of a big company. Cause imagine if the at the beginning, when you're one or two people, the personality of the company is basically the personality of the founder or founders. And it's typically like a room of people and they're like one uping each other. It's like ha ha that's funny. Like All right, but check this out. What if we even went even harder? Like you know, like you get have that like vibe because you're incentivized to do that. You wanna grow, you wanna do interesting stuff.

You're not incentivized once the company gets bigger. Imagine a room imagine a room of w of one person. Okay, it's just that per whatever that person thinks is normal to them. You get two people, two co founders. Maybe they're both a little bit weird. And so they riff off of each other to get going. Now you add the third wheel. Even if that third wheel was totally vanilla, they're a total normal person, they're now outnumbered. So they join the thing and they're like all right.

I guess that's how we get down here, right? You had a phrase you go, you need to let your freak flag fly if you're gonna work here. And so you whoever came in, you indoctrinated them into your weird culture. to do weird shit and do cool shit. That was normal there. So the third person comes in, even if they're vanilla, all of a sudden they become flavored too. The fourth person comes in, same thing. But at some point.

The next like I don't know where it is, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people, somewhere in that range. I would say between fifteen and fifty people. The person who gets hired typically will spend most of their time not with the founders anymore. And so now they're now one vanilla person is spending time with a bunch of other vanilla people and they're hiring other people who have a greater and greater percentage of vanilla, right? It starts with they need to be twenty five, thirty percent because hey, we need to be serious and get stuff done around here. Then you start hiring fifty percent vanilla and by the time you know you get to fifty or a hundred people, you're hiring a hundred percent vanilla people. And those people now when they s someone says a weird idea, it's crickets in the room.

It's Risks come first. There's reasons why not rather than why we would. It's Oh yeah, that has this one extreme strength, but it might have some other extreme weaknesses, so don't take the forget. That's gonna offend certain people, or that's gonna like cannibalize this thing or that thing, or yeah, it's just like bullshit excuses. Right. What will they say? What will they think?

And so what will they say about the It comes down to I've got a good gig. I don't want to fuck it up. Uh let's not sh let's not rattle this, you know, I don't want to shake this up.

Yeah, exactly. And and I'm not comfortable shaking it up because I don't know that that's what we do here. 'Cause a lot of time has passed. I ha I don't hang out with the people who that are like Totally high conviction of being weird. And um And yeah, like I I have some I have more to lose than I have to gain by doing this because when I say this idea, I don't get respect in the room.

I get sort of like strange glances and nervous laughter, and then you know, somebody tells me why my idea is a bad idea. So I learn to just keep that shit pipe down. My freak flag is now. you know, buried at the bottom of my trunk and it you know, it's folded up and it's in its case. And so that's what happens at the at the end of these companies. Now some companies fight that off. So for example This is why I think a lot of people like

founder led companies because they keep that soul. They have one person in the company. Who has gravitas. So like I I think I think this ha happened at at Uh Tesla and it happened at a at Elon's companies. He is so publicly weird and big thinking and out there and willing to just go with it.

That he kind of sets the tone, even if you don't on a day to day ever have meetings with Elon or work with him, or you don't get the culture from him inside the company. You get it from seeing what he does on Twitter. Yeah, exactly. And so Now if you're at Tesla, you're like Okay, the the boss's bosses bosses boss likes that weird shit.

And it gets a bunch of play on Twitter, and we've seen five things pay off by going overboard. Like Does a cyber truck window really need to be bulletproof? No, but Elon would think that's fucking cool. So we're gonna do it. And I know Elon thinks it's gonna be cool because he lets the flag fly. on Twitter and so I see it even though I don't interact with them day to day.

So that's one way to scale. That personality is to have a such a strong personality and do it on blast. Another version I remember when I was at but he's gotta put up with so much shit for that. And It it's actually to be in his position, I've been in this position and I've like weakened out a bunch of times where I'm like

Oh, fine, I'll let you guys get your way this time. Like you know, like You're gonna quit if I don't give into this. Fine, I'll let you have it this time. And in my head I'm like, but this is the wrong decision, but I'm only make I'm only agreeing to go with this even though I don't like it because like I don't want them to quit and like I just don't want this headache right now. Whereas he's the type of guy because he's like, you know Like on the spectrum. No, I don't like pick up on this social cue like we are not doing it. Like we're this is fine. I'm okay being uncomfortable here. You know what I'm saying?

And that's uh that's how I'm inspired by him a little bit. The belief in himself and also just the lack of self awareness. uh i is is important there, right? You can't be like us. You can't be A self a werewolf. And just have too much self awareness.

You don't give a fuck in your system in order to do this well. At Twitch. one thing happened. I remember that I was like super, super proud to like be there, working there at the time, I was like

'Cause I give it a lot of shit, you know, I just do the sort of like the The stereotypical startup guy thing where you're like startup cool big company dumb. Big company slow, big company boring, big company no risk, big company no innovation, right? Like it's the startup caveman who's just like You know, like um you know, small startup good, even though small startup is like failing and has no money and like no users, no no impact, no nothing. It's like still in our head. There's like something

to be really proud of there. But sometimes. At these companies some really cool shit happened. So one I remember one was They released this campaign. For Prime Day. So

Twitch gets bought by Amazon. Amazon wants all of the Amazon companies to really push Prime Day. It's the like It's basically its own Black Friday that they created, where it's like, yo Here's an excuse to go spend a bunch of money that you otherwise weren't gonna spend. And Prime Day's huge for for Amazon.

So they you know the memo comes down, Twitch, you need to support Prime Day. And then everyone's at Twitch is like shit, what do we do? And Twitch has a user base. That is so easily offended. It's like Anything Twitch does, any policy it creates, it's like hey, we're um increasing, you know, the safety and uh for women. It's like Why,'cause women can't defend themselves? It's like, dude, we're like we're just trying to help. Like we're not trying to offend anybody every step of the way, but you could sort of do no right.

And um So the so so people were just like, dude, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna promote this like Amazon Prime go buy shit stuff? Like people are gonna think we're just total sellouts. Like this is not gonna be cool. What are they? Go over well.

So I don't know who the genius is in this company, but somebody was like Like imagine like a TV show where they're like, God, like everyone's think we're just sell out. Everything is just a sellout. And if you cue the dream music, like sell out, sell out. I got it. Twit sells out.

And they made it uh they like turned it on its head and they went self aware, you know, like in and it's always sunny. It's like the gang, you know, the gang goes to a Trump rally or whatever. It's like The it the event was Come watch how hard Twitch will sell out today. And they basically lean into it completely instead of trying to do it and then sort of like set themselves up to catch a bunch of arrows from fans from the the users who were like, God, stop trying to promote Prime Day. This is annoying.

This is why it was this is why I didn't want Amazon to buy Twitch. Like it I knew it was just gonna sell out to this corporation. I call that the eight mile strategy. Have you seen eight mile? Yes, exactly. Like this one like the last scene, M and M's like, Yeah, I am white. Yeah, I am poor. Yeah, this did it this guy did have sex with my mom. Yeah, this all happened. And then it it like he makes it entertaining, and then the other guys are like Well fuck, I can't make fun of them about that anyway. Yeah, like I can't I can't mock that. You you just took it away from me. You know what I mean? I'm powerless here. It's the eight mile strategy and I love it. Th that's exactly what it is.

And so yeah, they went full slim shady. They basically what they did was they created a QVC style set, right? Like the cheesiest, salesies set. And then they invited the big streamers and it was like they created this like ne this neon eighties logo that was like Twitch sells out and then the people would jog onto the stage and they'd be like Today I'm gonna sell you this shitty blender. And they like and they and people found it so entertaining and it was funny and it was self aware and they They just like and it sold like crazy. Like it was so successful. And I don't know who this was. It was somebody in like the creative marketing department. Um I think I met them at one point, but I was like

Hey, you don't know this, but like That was the number one thing I respected, you know, that we d like of all the features we shipped. Of all the projects we tried, that was my favorite. That was my number one. I thought that was so well done. Whoever came up with that, you had guts. You had creativity and you like turned a disadvantage into an advantage, which is like for me That's the highest form of respect. When I see somebody who can take a disadvantage and flip it to an advantage.

It's like that's you're my person. You are you're everything that's right about business in my book. I love that. I'm gonna look that up. I wanna see uh I wan s I like I wanna see the content. I bet it's hilarious. It's good. It was really well done. We need to come up with a better way to end the show. If we're gonna come up with a way to start it, we have to come up with the Sean. You never talked about the basketball game.

Oh yeah, you gotta talk about that. Do you wanna talk about that? Uh, yeah, let's do it. I I I gotta be a little vague about it, but yeah, let's do it. You guys saw so I sent you guys the guest list for this thing. Um I guess I should explain what it is. So I went to a conference. Yeah.

Yeah. I went to a conference. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun. Um, but I don't know about you, but I have this like feeling before I go to a conference, which is like there's like a forty eight hour period before where I'm like What are the reasons I could not go to do this? Yeah, what are the reasons I could get out of this?

And I don't know why that urge comes over me. I think Like just the idea in my head of what a conference entails is like the stuffy ballroom. Like awkward handshake conversations with people who like, you know, nobody knows each other and it's just like It's like just like the worst. first day of college all over again, every day in my you know in my professional life now.

And so I was like, Yeah, I just hate that feeling and I hate conferences, but like There is some magic at conferences that happens or I do like meeting new people. I do like learning new things. Um And I do like some of the like little side events that happen in a conference that are like not The speaker on the stage and not the like networking mixer where I have to like

That will barge him to hit. What are you guys talking about? Oh, you guys known each other for ten years? Cool, well uh I'm uh I'm shot.

Do you guys like podcasts? Oh you're a really nice No, I was just asking if you guys knew where the bathroom was. I was just waiting this whole time to partake and ask that. I'm gonna go now. See ya. So by the way, this been the best the best way to approach that I've learned is just saying

Hey, I don't know anyone here. Can I join your conversation? I've noticed that to be just the best. It's it's the upfront method. Um yeah, exactly. So so I dislike conferences for that reason and I was like all right. Um And and at the same time, I'm like

Dude, I miss doing some stuff that was really fun that I just don't make a lot of time for nowadays. I was like, I miss just playing basketball just like Dude, I used to play three hours a day, just pick up was a s it was so fun. That was like the best time, just me and my friends and Just playing it yeah, we used to meet a bunch of cool people doing that. And so I was talking to Ben and I was like Not producer Ben, but business part of Ben, I was like

I was like, dude, what if could we get like the magic of a conference to combine with the magic of Why just go and play? Playing pickup. Like is there a way to do this? And he's like, Yeah, I got an idea. And so We came up with this idea, which was

We have a friend. Who trains some of the biggest like NBA stars. And he's been training them for years and like these are like, you know All star Hall of Fame level level players. And um

He's their personal trainer. Like he'll go to their house and work with them every day in the summer and th that things things like that. And uh we've become friendly with him uh because he's a he's an entrepreneur and we've we got to know him that way and kind of helping each other out with our businesses. And so we were like, Yo, um His name's Alex Basil. We're like Alex. You know, you train

Tyree Irving, you train Trey Young, you train Carmelo Anthony, you train these guys like Dude, what if I just got a bunch of business dork together who all love basketball and like, would you just train us like you train them? Like a fantasy camp? Like Can we just pretend for a weekend like we are We're those guys? And he's like, Yeah, I'm down. Like just you know, pick a weekend, as long as I'm free, like we'll do it.

And I was like, Okay, and then I was like one s I had one side of it. And I was like, all right, so let's what if we just got like ten, twelve people who were You need your anchor though, you need your whale. And we needed our whale. And I was like, How do I get people to come to this? I was like first of all, I don't even know who plays basketball, who doesn't. I was like who would I wanna who's like number one a great hang. Number two loves basketball.

And number three, like successful enough in business where If I go invite the next person The pull is that these other people are coming. Right. That's the key to any great event is These other people are gonna be there. The people are the event. N that way I don't have to be like great with the food and bev and like the environment and I've all these logistics I'm not good at. Like

The people are the event. As long as the people are there to work. And so uh um I won't say who, but we landed one big whale. Famous person X. And then the domino star. World famous world famous, mainstream famous type of person.

Exactly. So mainstream famous type person. And then I was like, Okay, cool. And I started to get a couple of friends in and then I sent you the guest list because you're coming. Yeah. And producer Ben is coming. Uh or like I told you guys to come. I don't know if you guys are or not coming, but you should come. It'll be fine. When's the d did you say the date? It's next month, or it's in twenty days. So it's twenty days from now. Um But you saw that guest list, dude. It's coming together. There's some pretty awesome people going now. And now it's way bigger than like ten people. Like we got twenty people. This is like

How many do you want to be? Their dad owns this NBA team. And this person, they just sold their company for all this money. And then this person, they're the CEO of this publicly traded company. It's like, I didn't even know that guy likes to play. You know, like, There's a whole bunch of really interesting people. I think this is gonna be dope, and I think this is a way better way. I think this is a hack. Where I don't have to go attend conferences, I get to host the street. You should invite uh

Lori, uh jet.com. I should invite him, yeah, I haven't invited him yet. That's a good one. Yeah, I mean he's awesome, bro. I will invite him. Um But yeah, what do you think about this? This is awesome. It's gonna be the best. I think it's gonna be really fun. I think you should invite

even bigger, more famous people than just like internet dorks, like Mark would be cool or uh I don't know who else. Uh that's actually the hard part is to think about who to invite. But yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I think it's gonna be really fun. I think it's a great idea. I think making yourself the center of these types of things is is badass. I it's a net win. There's no downside. Are you out of pocket any money? Um, I don't know. I haven't even thought about cost yet, but like yeah, like uh it'll cost money to do this, but it's not gonna be super crazy. And I think every I think everyone would pitch in. Everyone would pitch in just uh nobody we're not trying to make a profit off this thing. We're just trying to like, you know, cover all the cost and do make it dope. No, I think it's a great idea. And it would be it was gonna look sick on social, like it's work related.

Which what's uh Let's tell uh daddy HubSpot to pay for it. Hey fellas. Um

Quick break between between the games here. Just want to quickly talk to you guys about your CRM needs. Ha ha ha. They'll be into it. I think they're trying to do it. If everyone can just gather around, I have a quick PowerPoint that I'd love to just run you through.

I mean it's I think they would But no, make them pay for it. If we can record yeah. No. Oh that's what we think about. We only need to record one or two things.

We should record oh we e each day we could probably record two or three like things. We can even have like Two people on at a time. So it's not like uh And have people playing in the background. Yeah, the game is just running in the background. The audio sucks. It's just so much like screaming for basketball. The full sen guys did a uh the full sen guys they had a wedding. I think it was like Post Malone's manager or some some like famous person was doing a wedding and they set up a studio

Off to the side of the reception area. And they were in there recording a podcast for an hour and like Logan Paul popped in for like ten minutes and this other person popped in for like five minutes and it was really cool. It was a great pod. We should do something and they were like, All right, you guys wanna go back, like I think dessert's at our table. And they went back. It was it was pretty awesome. Yeah, it was a really good idea. It was like if if you explained it to me, I was like, Oh, this isn't cool. But I saw them pull it off and I was like, Oh, this is actually really neat. We should totally do that and ask HubSpot to uh front the bill. All right, great. All right, done.

Done. All right, well Good idea. That's the pod. That was a good one.

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