Flying First Class, Grant Cardone, and How Sam Enraged Goldman Sachs

I was reading an article in the New York Times. And it was about um these uh h malibu homes and how like the these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes. And Grant Cardone was one of the features. And they didn't feature him as Grant Cardone. They're like Another local buyer. is motivational speaker and

real estate entrepreneur Grant Cardone. And it he you know, he was just like a guy they were interviewing, not like this Internet And he recently bought a house in Malibu, I think it was for sixty million dollars. And he was like I'm gonna spend another, I forget, tens of millions of dollars renovating it. And That's one of those things that when you see people what they spend on their personal real estate, you know I mean it's it's hard to fake that. And I'm just thinking

Who would have thought? That those things that he's selling Would make that much wealth. I have a question. When was the last time That you have flown.

I just flew last week. Uh no, sorry, not last week. Last month. Why. Well Hawaii? How about before that?

Uh yeah, I don't know. Oh when we went to Austin, Miami, something like that? So like once a year at this point. Or once every six months. Yeah, I'm not flying a ton right now.

Um, when you flew to Hawaii, did you fly first class or coach? Yeah, first. So I uh I went to Idaho this weekend with Ben. Podcast Ben.

And I spoke at an event, which we have to talk about convert kids new thing. And I don't like to travel. You don't like to travel. Um and this was work related. So like they wanted me to speak at a conference and whenever they want me to speak at a conference, I say, Yeah, that's cool, I'll come and speak. But you have to pay for a first class Flight from me and Sarah, my wife. I'm like, that's a fair trade. You don't don't pay me to come'cause I like you, but like I do want you to pay for my uh flight and it has to be first class'cause I don't like flying coach. Well

My Uh Flights got screwed up for some reason. Both ways. And I had to fly like middle sea like back row because like basically the flight got canceled and they like fed me on these like last ones.

And I was flying on this and I started thinking Do you know that Stereotype. a story of this like rich billionaire and they say like Oh yeah, you know, even though he was a billionaire, he's still flu coach. And like nothing changed.

Like I think the Ikea guy is famous for that. Nothing changed. And I think that is. Oh, Amazon, all their desks were old.

Doors. Which I tried to Dude, I did that. I did that to be cute at her office. It cost more to do that. Wasn't a door expensive? I bought the shiniest door that was like. Yeah, I bought like the shittiest door and it was like eighty dollars and then we bought cinder blocks and it was like a pain in the ass. I'm like, dude, this thing's in Ikea for twenty five bucks. This is way better. Also door flat.

Doors that were indents in them. That's a stupid story. It's like maybe like they had a door while they like folded t shirts on that door like for a day while they waited for the real supplies to come. Uh, this whole like flying coach as a rich person thing. And I'm not talking about like rich like Uh millions or tens of millions. I'm talking like when you hear billionaires or hundreds of millions of dollars people say this. I think that is total nonsense. And I tweeted that. I'm like, this is that is just a lie. Any rich person that I'm talking like real rich who says they do that.

They're lying. And I wanna see proof if that's true. And I had a bunch of really, really rich people holler at me and tell me they do it. And so Do you know who Palmer Lucky is? So Palmer Lucky started uh he created Oculus, which he sold for He is in the ballpark of billions of dollars and he has a new company worth tens of billions. So if he's not a billion, he's like He's like right there, basically.

He tweeted back out. He's definitely a billionaire. That guy's definitely a billionaire. Dude, he tweeted back to me and he said, I only fly coach. And then I had a other I had yeah, and I think that's crazy. I had other some other people DM me they go in who I know to companies public and they're like, I'm worth hundreds of millions And I I'll I I fly first class no matter what internationally.

But like I have no problem taking southwest if it's like a short flight. I understand that argument if it's like an hour, but if you're going from New York to LA or something anything above three hours I don't believe it. I think they're lying. I just think they're full of it. I asked Darmesh on HubSpot, I'm like, Do you do this? He goes, No, that that's a ridiculous thing. Of course I don't do that. And he like had this thing is if you're like us at the Buy First Million Podcast, where we are cultivating that trillionaire mindset, that multi-trillionaire hashtag mindset, hashtag grindset. You have to

Even before you ha you have multi trillions. You better be flying private. You better fly private when you can't afford coach. Because if you can't afford your future Can you afford your present? And that's how I feel. I just thought it was the most ridiculous thing. When I was sitting in this

See. Uh I was just like My back was sore. And it was just terribly uncomfortable and it took forever to get up to flight. Just the vibe of the peasants that you're sitting next to is awful.

It sucked, and I don't have a problem doing it. I mean I I will do it. But I'm just saying if I could like If I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars What's the difference between fifteen hundred dollars and five hundred dollar ticket? And anyone who lies and says otherwise, I think they're an idiot and they're lying.

Yeah. So some people were like oh Bill Gates I s I read that thread'cause it was pretty interesting. They gave you a ton of examples. They like slammed you with examples of it of it happening. And I think the main fake stories. Well yeah, so so that's the thing. I think The main thing that they were saying was like

X person used to do this, which is either Simply just Their PR team being like, Hey Bill, we need you to do a coach like uh flight here. And like, you know, whatever. We'll we'll keep your your private jet and Epstein's jet like off the radar, you know, just so we can kind of have this measure of austerity here. And so the you know, I I'm pretty sure it and because it works, by the way, like

The fact that so many people posted articles of billionaire flies coach. It's like dude, that's not news, by the way. But the fact that it's newsworthy Is Like More proof that this is likely a PR stunt because

I've done it too. I've been like oh you know Bill you know, um Warren Buffett, you know, still drives an old beat up You know, eighty three you know, Camry and like um Yeah, oh, Sam Bankford Fried, he's the newest young billionaire, and did you know that he only eats bananas and Sleeps on a beanbag and you know, like these stories work. They're like worth telling.

Which makes me think this is like a PR scheme. But the other interpretation was They did it so that they could like tell the company, Hey, from the top down, we're all being frugal. We're not wasteful. So like, you know Mr, you know, senior director of business development. is not like, you know, flanked first, you know, to every contradiction. I understand that.

But it's like dude w you and your three kids are taking your vacation to France and you're gonna fly coach on Spirit Airlines. Yeah. Now that ain't that ain't that ain't gonna happen. You're lying. You're lying. It's an absolute lie. And I would say that's the thing. Show me Bryan Air receipts if you're really doing this. Like show me your Spirit Airlines frequent flyer miles history if you expect me to believe this. Like Dude, I've sat in Spirit Air and I've had the pilot come out mid flight. And rearrange the seating'cause someone was too fat and had to like

Hey, we need to do a two for one trade. You need to get to the left side of the plane, and then two of y'all need to move to the right. We need better balance. Like that's I've literally unless you've done that. You don't have that trillionaire energy. Yeah. Dude, I've done that on pontoon boats, like where you have like where you have people in the back, you're like, Hey, you guys got switch seats. Uh those boats going a little sideways, but I've never done that on a plane. I didn't even think it was real. I thought the pilot was joking and it wasn't a joke. They literally were like we need to rebalance. I was like, Jesus Christ Let me tell you about one more interesting thing. Another rich guy thing. So you know who Grant Cardone is?

Of course. I know Grant I met Grant. So I'm not gonna like even comment on if I like him or not, but I will I like him. Okay, that's cool.

I don't entirely dislike him. I don't dislike him, I don't really like I don't like everything he does and I like a lot of what he does. Um And but I kinda pay him as this guy that was kinda like in the internet markety world, just selling like Talking like cheap books and cheap courses and so rich, why are you selling a course, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A question I've asked myself many times also. Yes. Speaking of new course available July eleventh, power writing. Sign up today. Go to Maven.com and sign up, baby. Mark it's down, daddy needs a new course. I was thinking about that. I'm like Alright, if if this is this course guy and he has this like Uh, he's wearing all these nice suits. Like, is that legit? Is that real? And I was reading an article in the New York Times.

And it was about um these uh Malibu homes and how like the these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes. And Grant Cardone was one of the features. And they didn't feature him as Grant Cardone. They're like Another local buyer. is motivational speaker and real estate entrepreneur Grant Cardone. And it you know, he was just like a guy they're interviewing, not like this internet

And he recently bought a house in Malibu, I think it was for sixty million dollars. And he was like, I'm gonna spend another, I forget, tens of millions of dollars renovating it. And That's one of those things that when you see people what they spend on their personal real estate, you know I mean it's it's hard to fake that. And I'm just thinking Who would have thought

That those things that he's selling would make that much wealth. Is that's pretty cr that's pretty crazy, isn't it? You know what's even crazier? So the one time I talked to Grant Cardone for an extended period of time, like we had like I don't know, a forty minute conversation. Twenty minutes of it was on why buying a house is so stupid and why he rents everything. And he was going off like people were like, Oh, your penthouse is rented that you're in.

He's like, yeah, bro, your house is not an asset. Why would I buy a house? And he was like I he's like I buy real estate that pays me, brother. And he's like, you know, um Yeah, I rent this pen house. I always rent I rent everything. I wanna be able to move. I wanna live in the place I like. And I take my money and I put it to work. You see that over there?

That's my money working. And you know he's like a big time showman, right? And so uh it is. Like dollar bills like digging holes? I don't like what's the pointing at. He's he's like He's like, hold on, brother. I can't hear you. I got something in my ear. It's a voice tell it's asking me one question. Who's got my money? That's what I gotta ask. Every every morning I wake up and I look to the heavens and I say

Who's got my money? And then I go and I get that money from them. I was like, Whoa, this is incredible. Wait, where do you where do you hang out with them for forty five minutes? So he used to use Blab, the same product that where I met Martin Schrelli. I've it attracted a whole bunch of grifters and uh Greg Cardone was there and I was like all right, who's the I would go into all the rooms I had a big following. I was like, Okay, you're this guy's driving a bunch of uh growth and engagement, you're a power user, who are you? And sure enough, like, you know, it was it was often, you know, people who are are Yeah, somewhat controversial. That's who

People like to watch. Live stream. And so Grant would go on there and he would do his ten X Meetups. And you would just see people come in, they'd be like Uh uh I gotta keep doing my pressure. It was so r if you haven't gone into this world, by the way.

You need to spend three hours. And I need you to watch the video. I love watching his videos. He's got great videos. Watch his uh Watch his community.

You'll be like Wow, this is like the Kool-Aid drinker. So they would come on, they'd be like Brand They put up the S. Uncle G, what's up, man? What's up, brother? And they'd be doing the Ten X, ten X. All right.

Uh thank you so much for all the content, man. I was I was broke and homeless. I used to eat McDonald's wrappers instead of the food. And now I'm I just had I I got a Ruth Chris uh subscription membership. And I just want to say thank you and had a question for you. Right. So they would do this. And then it'd be one after another of Uh Brant, Brant, ten X, ten X, brother. Um just wanna thank you before I was thinking where the sky's the limit. And now the sky's the floor. Am I right? Amen, brother. And so they were doing this stuff and I was like, wow, these people are like really like they're this is these are the converted, right? And they so a lot of people really found value in his thing.

Um 'Cause this wasn't like a recorded testimonial. This is a live stream where random people are calling in. It'd be very hard to like fake this and they're wearing the hat, they're holding up the books, they're like they really liked his stuff. And I had never heard of this guy. He's like In the tech world you don't You don't know who this character is, right? Like in your if you're in real estate, you know

If you're in the motivational self self help thing, you know But he's not leaving like Ty like Ty Lopez crossed all boundaries. People like all knew who he was. Grand Cardin's like not like that. So that's the first thing you should watch. Second thing is He does these deal. Breakdowns?

Very interesting to watch. So He's sitting at a at a table. And it's like, you know, what's that guy, Ramsey, Dave Ramsey, who like you called in and you're like Dave, I I I make eighty thousand dollars a year and I got student debt, like what should I do? And he's like, Save your money. And so people do that with Grant. They're like, Hey Grant, I got two hundred thousand dollars. I'm looking at a property

The address is thirty nine oh nine. You know, West Boise Street and uh in Idaho, whatever. And then people and he'll go and he he basically Googles it. He's got a whiteboard behind him. And he basically he's like talking to the guy, he's like, All right, so what are you putting down? All right, what terms are they giving you? And he basically like workshops the deal with them. He like kind of like uh Sort of like a speed version of underwriting the deal live.

And I actually learned a bunch from it. Like I'm sure somebody who's like, you know, a real estate master is probably like, Oh, this is all just like This is the Jim Cramer of like real estate here, where he's saying things that make it sound smart, but he's actually not considering a XYZ. But just from a like If you're a beginner in real estate, which I am

You will learn and you'll be entertained just in the style that he does things. So I like that. The last things. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why I'm doing the first acious'cause I'm like th why I said I like him. I like him because he's entertaining. Like I like him because I've learned some stuff and I've been very entertained through the rest. Like

Have you seen these videos on YouTube where he just does sales calls for an hour? I have. I think I they're so good, I think they're fake. Yeah, it might be fake because he'll be like He's always pulling a rabbit out of a hat. And you're like, oh dude

It's like a pickup artist. It's like you watch their v video, you're like, Oh my God, sh you know, she was uh She was like literally just she was running she was getting into her cab, but he said this one thing and then she got out of the cab and started talking to him. This guy's amazing. And you're like, wait a minute, maybe he just like edited like three really good ones out of five hundred failures. Uh into this video. That's kind of what it feels like. But he's doing an hour of continuous sales calls and so It might be scripted where the guy on the other line is like

Yeah, I'll say yes. Just call me. Yeah, we'll play we'll role play here. It's like the TV show Pond Stars. You're telling me like Holy shit, in one day you had a guy come in with like a like a civil war gun, a guy who had Napoleon's hat, and another guy that owns a Picasso, all in Las Vegas coming into a pawn shop. That's crazy. Yeah, it's like dude, the Undertaker was dead and then he came back to life and won the match. It's like yeah, you're falling for a scripted Drama, right? Like So it might be that. But nonetheless, these sales calls are very entertaining to listen to and like They're it's obviously like very wool of Wall Street style, like

Macho sales, but I like to see it'cause I've never seen anything like that. Like, first of all, I don't do phone sales. That's not like It's not even like in my life. Secondly I don't know people who are as ridiculous as Grant Cardone and are willing to say things as ridiculous as Grant Cardone.

And third, like This is not a style of communication or saleship I've I think you can read or study or into it. And so it's just nice to like see it. So anyways, I've I've I've gone down these rabbit holes of Grand Cardone and I've come out the other side being like Yeah, he is definitely self promoting and he's making most of his money, it seems like, on the like

the brand and not the like meat and bones of his business. But um you know, respect. He hustles really hard. He's a good self promoter and he is smart and like you know, he does well. So you know, I I I don't think that Yeah, you're not learning from somebody who's a hack. Uh he's something like that. I don't think he's a hack at all. I think

Well I think I maybe I just don't always agree in his values. But I don't think he's lying. I think the the criticism would not be this guy's dumb or or lazy or anything like that. The criticism would be Um He's just selling you, you know, a bag of dreams, basically, and like

you know, he makes his money on people who wanna be him and want to be like him, and they're not really gonna be like him, and he's sort of like, you know, promoting that dream. I I would say that that's probably true, but I think that's true of a lot of things in life. Like that's true of Nike also. Like When I go buy Nike sneakers, you know, because Michaordan wore them, do I really think Michael Jordan's a scumbag for Yeah, I'm not he's not tricking me into thinking I can I can be like Mike, but yeah, that is actually what the commercial literally says. Dude, I'm um I'm working on this new thing. I wanna

tell you two things about it. I'm working on this new business and I'm like I'm still like M V Ping it out and making sure it's legit. And I I I I've got six figures in revenue now, six figures of cash in the bank. Um And

It was all from phones. I from calling. Calling constantly. No website. A type form. And calling them and then setting a stripe link.

So what's if what are you doing that's effective on the call? Give me the give me the strategy of the call. Uh without sharing you don't want to share. I'm not in I'm not really selling. So basically the thing that I'm I'm making like a community for a particular type of salesman claim. I'm not gonna sell you anything. Well because because here's here's the thing. No that's the no offense, but of sales. So the the the place where the business is at right now, which is like I only want like let's say fifty people to join right now. I don't want a lot of people to join because I want to make sure that it's like legit and good. And also because it's an exclusive, like private paid community I need to make sure that like each person actually can provide value for one another. So I can't just let anyone in. I can only let in the type of person who

Makes the next person feel yeah, feel more valued as they came in. So in a way I'm like no, like I'm I really like I I don't know if I have space for you. I don't know if we can make this work. Um but we we may be and that's why I'm here to interview to see if this'll be a good fit for you. And uh That's basically what I'm doing. It's like I also

You're using the bullshine, but this time it's not actually bullshit it's real this time. I I yeah, I guess that's true, but like I don't know how to explain it. It is true. Like we we only have a certain I can only make it truly work for a few amount of people, otherwise it sucks. And so remember how we interviewed the chief folks. She said that they had sixty thousand people apply, but they only have like ten or fifteen thousand members. So I kinda believe it. Um

Uh but anyway, I'm working on it and I and I went to this pr I'm starting it with uh my friend Joe and we did something interesting the other day. And when I had started companies in the past, I did I partnered with the wrong people, not every time, but sometimes. And the mistake that I'm trying to not make this time is basically making sure I partner with the right folks. And we did this by the way, you're saying partner like business partner, not like a external partnership. You're you're talking about like your co founder type of thing. business partner, like someone who you give a substantial amount of equity to.

Um which is very similar to a marriage. And I I actually did this in my marriage, but I've never done this in a business partner uh but we basically like said like hey like separately write down three things. Write down what like what does success look like to you in ten years. What are you willing to give up in order to achieve that? And um Like just your day to day, like what what do you value and how do you want to get there?

And so we each wrote that down and we came together and we're like, All right. Here's all the things that are important to me. Let's look at what what's important to you. Oh wow, they actually align really nicely. This thing doesn't align. Is that a game breaker for you? And then we and then there was another thing that we went through scenarios where like, let's say you're Lance Armstrong. It's nineteen ninety nine. You know that everyone's cheating.

And you have to cheat if you want to win. What are you gonna do? Right. Like how how do you wanna play like what do you want to play? And there's no right or wrong answer, but it's just like let's just see how our values align in different scenarios. And so anyway, we've been doing this thing where we're like trying to figure out why won't this partnership work. Let's get all that out of the way at first.

And it has been awesome. More people should do this. Have you ever done this? Uh I have actually done that, which is so funny you say this. We did something so similar We we sort of stumbled upon it organically in our first business because The first business I ever created was that sushi business and

Um the idea was to create like the a Chipotle like restaurant chain for sushi. And so we're going about it. We've been at this at this point, we've been doing it for I don't know six to nine months, something like that. So we're not like it's not like the it's not like day one. We've already already committed. We already have the equity splits. And we're all best friends. We've known each other for four years. So like Surely we know everything about each other, right?

And A smarter business person's kind of like a mentor type. Dude was like At this time we were we were really big on mentors. He was like, Oh, um It was like you know

Um How aligned are you guys? He's like, If I so it was the guy we wanted to partner with, the chef. He was like He he flew each of us out one by one to LA and hung out with us and he told us he was like Yeah, I feel like all of you guys say the same words, but they mean different things.

I was like, What do you mean? He goes. Like you all be like, you know, Oh man, this what really matters is that we do this like The right way. He's like but I think you all have a different definition of the right way. Or like We w yeah, we all want this to be a success.

I I think if I asked you what you mean by success, like Put a number, put a time frame around it. Like I bet you it's all different. And so we came home, we he totally gave us that feedback. And we did it. We did this same exercise. We go, I I created a list of questions and we all went sat in our corner of the room silently. And we wrote our answers and then we came and we compared.

And Jesus, they were so different. Me and one guy were like pretty lined. And then the third guy and we all thought we were all totally alive. The third guy, his was like way different. And the biggest differences were like Time scale. Like how long do you How long do you expect to work on this before we see any

Like Any like tangible success. What are your expectations on that? And then What would be a win for you? And it was like one guy was like oh man, like if I could be making six figures in like

You know, and you know, I'll do this forever. And then I was like, Oh, dude, I wanna like I want to make ten million dollars in You know, three years. And the other guy was like somewhere in the middle. And then we were like, Oh wow, like we all have a like you would be happy with one path and I would be completely unhappy if that same thing. We both are and if we didn't talk about it, our definition of success would have been very different. And the same thing with values of like what for one for two of us

It was super important, like Look, I don't know if this business is gonna work or not. But I want to do it our way. Like the thing that makes this fun for me, like there's a lot of shitty components to doing this business. The part that makes me like want to wake up and do it every day is that I feel like we're putting our own stamp on this. And for the other guy he's like, Yeah, that's cool, but like

I don't really care about that. And we're like, Oh shoot, it's important to know how important it is'cause we're gonna spend a bunch of energy doing it. Yeah, it well it was clarifying. Like we were sort of at the part of the The partnership you gotta do this early on'cause it's In a way a business partnership is actually

more of a commitment commitment than a marriage because with the marriage you can just like End it. And be over with a business screwing up your cap table and someone owning a portion of your business I mean, that could be It it it's just a it's just kind of an irreversible decision and the only way that you reverse it is by spending a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money. Yeah, like w what we did what was lucky for us was that

We were all twenty one years old, so we were all like a blank slate. It's like, dude, I don't know. This is just my first thought. I'm not like married to this to this belief system, you know, like Some it was very few things that we were like, No, I am certain and I'm stubborn on that point. Now in my life, if I said something, if I if I made if I answered ten questions Eight out of the ten would be things I'm like, no, I I stand by that. Like that's really that is what I've thought this through and that's what I believe.

B back then it was like I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it, but if you had now you're asking me to articulate it. So I'll just say these things. So what happened in our thing was W we kind of w we would all hear each other's answers and then we would be like Oh, I like that. That's right. Let's all agree to a line on that. And we were like, yeah, yeah, like sure, that sounds better.

I I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. It was that wasn't I'm not married to that. And so it worked for us because it got us to like Get to a right answer versus who's right. You know what I mean? Yeah, this exercise that I've been doing. Um, we should publish this, by the way, because you know, we we I think we talked about this one time, it was like some New York Times article that was like

Seventeen questions you should ask your future spouse or something like that. Like before. It was like it was like twenty seven questions to ask on the first date. as a single guy who just wanted to like meet girls, I was like, Oh, I'm just gonna ask or it was like twenty seven questions to like make someone fall in love with you or something like that. And it was like for like relationships and I was like Oh, I'm asking every woman on this like this is the first day question. This is the first hour first day question. And I remember doing it like three times and I'm like, those fuckers at the New York Times. I didn't know what the hell they're talking about. None of these people like me.

Okay, yeah, maybe I misremembered. But I do think it would be useful. Whatever you and Joe just did.'Cause I did this like I don't know. Ten, twelve years ago now. Uh I think you did it just Like last month. So y you should definitely like compile these. So that more people can

Can do this'cause it'll save It'll straight up save people years of pain in their life if they like can identify some of these things up front versus just rushing in to the co founding. I I I like it was like all right, so here's what I want just in my personal life. And then I put like a net worth Um, I said I want I want to have a seat at the big boys table and I want people to think that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to business. I want

freedom. I want to be able to live in different cities with my family. I want to be present in my children's lives. I want to own a bunch of real estate. I want to have fun and adventure. Uh and I wanna work like really hard for three or four weeks or for uh six or seven months and then I wanna chill for like three months. Uh and then it was like all right and Uh ways I wanna get there is I wanna build this particular business. I don't want a boss, I don't wanna have any meetings, I wanna have few, if any, employees reporting to me.

Um And then it was um the ways in which I'm gonna approach this particular business. I wanna be incredibly aggressive about it. I wanna treat it like a job. So we're working forty hours a w a week on it. I wanna have close to no standing meetings. Few Employees. Um

And Basically that's it. Yeah, oh and and a revenue target of a hundred million dollars in five years. I don't care if we actually hit that, but I want that to be the target. And then he like answered Similarly, on a lot of those, it's like all right, there is like some alignment here. Nice, nice. Okay, I like that. And um

Yeah. Okay. I think yeah, I think you should uh I think you should publish some of those things. Also the Lance Armstrong things, I think those are If if nothing else like It doesn't it doesn't really matter, but it's like at least knowing how the other person is wired. And being like, Am I okay with this? Am I okay with the weird

psychology of this person. Um, I think it's not so much that do all of our answers just like in a marriage, it's not Do we believe do we think the same way about everything? It's like do we think the same way about the Really important things. Um

All right, so what did you say would you would you if you're in the Lance situation, what do you do? I for sure cheat. Uh you basically have two options. You either exit the sport Or you cheat. Right. Like uh it's not even cheating at that point. When everybody is doing it, it's just the new normal, right? Like there's not a It'd be one thing if it's like Is if one person's cheating and they're winning and everybody else is clean, would you would you cheat to to try to win or would you stay clean? It was like

My belief is that all these Olympic sports Plus Pretty much all professional sports are full of P D Like you know.

It's just a It's just a naiveness test. Whether you believe that people are clean or not. It's like In the same way it's like Oh my g yeah. What percentage of NBA players do you think cheat on their wife?

It's like um Like you know I don't know, but it r yeah, the answer is yes, not a not a number. And so like there might be one outlier. And like cool, you know, credit to that person for for being the the the you know the the the outlier, the A C Green of this, but but I think Same thing with cheating. So yeah.

That one's an easy one for me. Our software's the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot, grow better. Mm. You wanna You've got some you wanna like quickly go through some of your topics, or do you wanna uh

Talk about a company that I had listed that what do you want to do? Uh let's do one of yours and then we'll do one of mine. We'll finish up. Alright. Um, have you heard of this company called N Two Publishing? No.

What do they do? The reason I like this story is because They're succeeding wonderfully in a place that everyone thought that it was impossible to succeed. So it's called N Two Publishing. They just rebranded it like last week to Stroll. And it's basically neighborhood magazines.

So magazines in like upscale neighborhoods. And I'm almost positive they have like eight hundred of these. Or six hundred and fifty of them. But they're all print. So it's like

In your d in in like Danville or in like the nice suburb, I don't even know what the like the very specific neighborhood you're in, what it would be called. I don't live there, but Blackhawk is like an example. No but Black Hawk's an example of a nice neighborhood in Danville. So what they do is they send you a magazine like once a month. And it's just a magazine, it's like a bulletin. It's like an it's like a newsletter. I don't know what you wanna call it, but it's literally physically a magazine. And the company has like two hundred and fifty employees. Most all the employees are ad salespeople. And they hire someone and not exactly hire, they franch it's a franchise. So someone who lives in Blackhawk

pays like five or ten grand to become the official publisher of that area and that person has to gather a couple of stories every single month. But like the stories really are like They're not that good, but it's just like people there's this old like Uh idea with local publishing where like, dude, people don't care about the writing. They literally just want to see people they know and their friends and places they know in a newspaper. And you could just list all their names and they would like that. And that's kind of what they do.

And it's just like a magazine every month and it says, Here's what's going on like uh Uh, you know, the local high school had their graduation and like eight people went to Stanford. Um Uh like this new restaurant opened and the guy's a Greek immigrant and he's bringing some of his Greek like taste to the area and like the feta's amazing. And like that it just like goes from thing to thing.

So anyway. It's a bootstrap business. It's been around for like eighteen years. And they announced that they're doing like a hundred and fifty million dollars a year in revenue. And they've been profitable every single year. And they don't have a website. So like or they the HQ has a website, but each individual magazine, there's no website. It's one hundred percent done through through paper.

And Everything that they're doing Is something that you would say like it it it it can't be done. And it's Kinda killing it.

It's kinda it's kind of a major business. Isn't that swipe? So how did you get these numbers? Did they uh is it something public that like do they have all their numbers? Uh yeah. So if you Google Stroll Axios. They just did a big um announcement on Axios last week. Or the founder and the CEO.

kinda g he gave their revenue. He said we do a hundred and thirty million dollars in revenue. We have eighteen thousand plus advertisers. Wow We've been profitable every single year. We expect rev revenue to double every four years. That was an uh I believe an exact quote. And we're just expanding to all these cities.

And we changed our name from N two to Stroll. Um It's kind of a really fascinating story. I guess if it's doubling every five years, that means it's growing what, like uh ten uh Ten or fifteen percent a year. So it's not like killing it, but it's doing pretty good. Yeah, that's yeah, fourteen percent a year. Wow, this is

I mean You've done it again. A Sampar special. Like how do you find these businesses? This is amazing. It's pretty wild. No, literally that's a real question. How did you find this business? Uh, I just read like uh there's this blog I read called Flash in Flames.

There's this blog I read called Flash in Flames. If you google Flash and Flames, it's just some guy Named Colin in England, who just writes about cool B to B uh media companies. And I just re I read like loads of trade publications. Like trade publications that has like

Literally. Five hundred. Website visits a day. Like just the the most niche stuff I read it. And if you Google if you dude Google it It's hard to even find their website. The only way you find it is you type the CEO's name is Dwayne Hickson.

And so you have to type in like N two,'cause there's like ten or twenty companies called N two. N2 and then Dwayne Hickson, and that's how I found it. And when I did a little research on him, I think they're uh it's heavily rooted in Christian stuff because they're Their mission is like to pr like to bring like to create jobs and value people and to bring glory to God. And we're just so happened to be doing it through like creating this like newspaper thing. Uh that's our podcast mission, or that's theirs?

Both. Uh so anyway, like it it it just kind of an interesting guy outside of our world. Uh Really fast. This is great. I wonder how many more of these there are. Like I could imagine somebody doing Friggin' doctor's office daily.

Or Doctor's Office Monthly or whatever, Doctor's Office magazine. And you just go to every doctor's office and you're like Hey, here's you know, this awesome magazine for whatever for doctors who run their practices. And you just if you eat the cost of the print. Then you're like you could basically go to advertisers and you know pharmaceutical companies and be like, Hey Yeah.

fifteen thousand doctors offices that read and subscribe to our thing. Um And you know, you should advertise. Selling local ads. So they're selling like the the advertisers Advertisers are like local dentists, local realtors.

Selling ads to those types of people is really hard because you're selling like five hundred dollar ads. That's a hard business. You just have to be like smile and dial, you know, you gotta do that constantly. So like maybe they threw that whole god shtick in there because they're like But you're doing it for the will of God. Therefore you have to be like That's the only way that you can motivate someone in order to like be on the phone all day selling uh a five hundred dollar ad to Kathy in Scottsdale, Arizona, about coming to her open house. That's a hard sell. That's a grind. That's a grind. Ben could Ben did it for two years. He probably wouldn't want to do it for three or four more years. It's a hard job. But but what I'm saying is if you did this for other

Just say other like subgroups, right? So like dark stuff, you wouldn't then need to advertise locally because you could advertise Like two all the Companies that sell to medical professionals. Or like if I created You know, e com you know, Shopify Mag. Right. And I sell I send this to every Shopify owner's home.

And I'm just putting out like awesome case studies about E commerce and they're just cool like st stories of brands or whatever. And in it I just go tell Clavio and PostScript and like every e commerce company every company that sells to e com stores, like every Shopify app.

I'm like, yeah, you should advertise in this thing. We have like, you know Pretty like Pretty like hyper targeted distribution. Basically the question is is this better than a newsletter? Like you know, you you know both spaces. We know our uh Andrew's doing this local news thing but for

Not neighborhoods, but it's for like local cities. And he's doing it through newsletter, right? His company Overstory. Uh, what's better, this magazine idea or newsletters in your opinion? So I actually think that's the wrong question. The the because the what's what's quite interesting is that they're selling a franchise, which is very weird for a media company. That is actually the more interesting thing. Um

Do I think that this I think this is an awesome business. Do I think it's better than a newsletter? No. I would probably do that the newsletter But I would consider doing it this way, where you're like You're like, hey, like we have ten thousand people already pre-signed up to for uh this small neighborhood in Arizona. If do you wanna you wanna buy this list from us as a publisher, it's a ten thousand dollar buy in. And we'll monetize it for you and you get fifteen percent of all the revenue that we sell, but you gotta make sure that you put it out all the time. Um that is that's kind of an intriguing that's an intriguing business model.

The do I think that it's better because it's in print? I definitely think it's potentially more interesting. I think the ad rates could potentially be higher because I think that like it is actually quite cool to hold and see something. I think it's a very fascinating business model. Um I think you could also do this with a lot of different things. What is the did they say anything about the cost of actually the print and the delivery, like you have to print in mail magazines, right, which is uh

Gonna cost you something. So that's that's like the biggest Attract clicks. And you get no you have no hard costs. For the for the print uh for the shipping and the and the printing of the magazine. Do you know at all what that costs?

No, I don't. So they didn't reveal too much, but they basically said that their national team has editorial oversight on what's published to ensure editorial editorial standards are nonpartisan and community focused news. Um they keep a cut of all ad revenue. They ha local operators, so the people who run the local papers Uh the the local magazine used Srolles national printing, copy editing, and operational resources, and the company distributes the magazine for free in readers mail. Right. It it's pretty it's it's pretty fascinating. It's an interesting business. You know what else is kind of interesting? Did you hear what Convert Kit so Convert Kit is like a mail chip competitor. I went to the conference this weekend. It's a

Email platform, I think you use them, right? Yeah, I use it. Do you see the thing they Loki announced something that's kind of amazing. So and the reason this is actually quite fascinating. They launched this thing. Where they now hired an ad sales team And they're gonna go out and sell ads.

And they're gonna give you, Sean, the user Uh eighty five percent of the revenue that they go and and sell. Yeah, this is smart. I was always wondering why the like Email platforms don't do this because Once you start your newsletter, you're like, all right, cool.

You get people being like, Hey, can I sponsor? And you're like, Yeah. And then you de facto become ad sales. And guess what? You're like not great at it. Because you're not doing it full time. It sucks. And you would happily pay somebody a fifteen percent commission. For filling your ad spots. And doing it well. And I I was always thinking like

You know, uh a sort of a mail champ, a beehive convert kit. Like why aren't they just Making this their business model, like in addition to their SaaS revenue of like Paying for the email stuff. Like couldn't they You know, converted at pretty significant scale. Like I w I wonder

How big this is gonna be for them. Dude, listen to this. The hustle there was a period of time Where Trung was on fire and he was our only writer. He basic we had like people that would kinda fill in when he was sick, but basically he wrote the email

By himself every day. For like eight months. And we were doing over a million dollars a month. In revenue. Right.

And there was like twenty ad salespeople. Yeah. That's ridiculous. That is crazy. It it was pretty crazy. And then we had like Adams. So we had like four Uh like growth marketers.

So like But it That business could have been trung and like four growth marketers. And it could have been making over a million dollars a month. And

But it had We had Like eight or ten or fifty I don't even remember exactly, ad salespeople. And then Each

Like four ad sales person needs an operations person. And then a like uh uh Editors to edit the ad. Like Morning Brew, I think has two hundred and fifty people. I don't know for a fact.

I would bet you that Morning Brew has Thirty editorial people. And Two hundred and twenty. Ad sales or ad sales related people.

Well, there's some management overhead, but like but so with your ad sales team. Yeah, managing the the set the sellers. When you when you had your ad team, you ha you probably has like some commission structure or whatever, right? Like Um Yeah. Well so what was your comp model and then what does what was like the overhead? So The fact that you employed them versus them just being let's say like with Convert Kit, for example.

If I write a newsletter, I'm not paying for the overhead. I'm only paying for the placement. I paid this fifteen percent. placement fee once they once they get me an ad. That's their commission. Well did you spend more or less than that in overall ad sales? For the hustle, do you think? So we basically when we kinda were getting going, we had two salaries.

Like the entry level people, so the people who were like Um, two or three years uh of experience. And then we had the higher people, which for us was like five or six years experience. So still not a lot of experience. But I was only twenty four when I started. So like it's basically like A twenty two year old and like a twenty seven year old. Like Do get my jokes or do not get my jokes.

Yeah. And uh the the earlier ones. Uh the younger of guys, it was like around It ranged from like fifty to seventy thousand dollars a year in base salary and then the upper guys got like

A hundred to like a hundred and twenty thousand a year in base salary. And the upper guys They're ex it was expected that they would sell I forget exactly, but between one to one point five million dollars a year in ad revenue and they would get four Either four or four and a half percent of that. Uh the younger guys, their expectations was that they were gonna sell between five hundred and like nine hundred. We had some sellers like this woman Katie

Who would sell I believe the year we sold, she was going into the year with like Two point five million booked. Two point five million and and so But um So basically but then they had to get seventy five percent of their quota. So if their quota was one million dollars, if they hit only six hundred thousand, they only got their base salary.

If they hit seventy five percent of their quota, that's when the four percent started kicking in. And then if they got a hundred and one percent, then the kickers would go up and they would start making a lot of money. So the highest paid person at our company oftentimes was a ad seller. And do you remember like did you just look at Like Uh, what is our percent of Revenue.

That were paying out in commissions. Like did you have like'cause the let's just say the easy apples to apples math is Let's say Convert Kit launches this thing, it's fifteen percent. As that's your that's your cost of ad sales, basically. Um if if they placed all your ads. Do you remember what your you can oversimplify it.

Yeah, you could oversimplify it. By saying uh uh four point four percent of total ad revenue and then just assume a hundred thousand dollars ahead. Plus so let's say that you've got ten sellers. Doing ten million.

So that's uh Uh a hundred thousand per salary for ten people, that's one million dollars. And then the commissions would be four percent of ten million. So four hundred thousand. So one point four million people, one point four million dollars for ten ad salespeople for ten million in revenue. Um but then of course there was like uh some account executives who would help with that and then like uh operations people. But yeah, that's basically it.

Bro, you just did a shitload of public math and um I forgive you? Because you're my friend. Um you know We don't do public math. But that's easy. So for you to just do that? Listen.

It's just not who we are. It's not what we do. Did you follow? I I I tried to follow, but it's like you're speaking another language. Ten million in revenue. You did it right, too. Ten million in revenue percent, right? Which is about the same as theirs, right? So you For all that headache of employing all those people, you saved like one percent, let's say, of like the commission rate. Now, maybe you would feel higher or maybe maybe you'd do a better job than like the centralized service would. Probably, I would guess.

But um But here's why it's also a better model. One time we had like Goldman Sachs or something uh as an advertiser. And we had a story on Fuck Jerry and how Fuck Jerry Fuck Jerry's like this meme Instagram account that says like funny stuff. They like launched like fuck Jerry News or something like that and I was like

Oh well let's for this email, by the way, every single sentence, let's use the word fucking it. And then like another time we we talked about Donald Trump and we're like this entire email, let's write it in the voice of Donald Trump. So like if you so read it to yourself, it sounds like Donald Trump. And Goldman Sachs got really mad at us and they're like, You you said fuck like Literally eighty four times in this email, like we we're not sponsoring you anymore.

And I was like Well good fuck off. Like I don't care about you. Like you know, screw you fuck you. But Katie sold the ad and her commission was gonna get lost. So I was like

Okay, I don't want to hurt you. So I'm willing to like not say certain stuff just because I don't want you to experience the pain, but I don't give a shit about that brand if they want to like You know, muzzle us. Screw'em. So now with this new with with this new uh setup, it actually could be a lot more advantageous for the creator. Yeah. Katie's amazing, by the way. We uh we work with her too. She she's really good. Um so

So what are the uh do we wanna do another one or we we're gonna wrap it? We can do one more, maybe. Uh let's do Okay, I'm let me just do a f You want an idea or a life hack? A live hack.

Alright, so So Ben Business partner Ben, not Podcast Ben. Um Yeah. Ben, I might just refer to you as God's Ben and the the other Ben I'm gonna have to say is it's not God's Ben, so not God's Ben was was entirely. He's you gotta see Jesus.

So he's visiting and I was like, um And so, you know, it's always interesting, right? Like in one way, you know, he he came, he l you know, basically stays in my house. We we hang out for for the week, we get a bunch of stuff done. So he gets to see a bunch of stuff in my world. But how I live life. And I'm sure that's, you know, somewhat interesting to him where he sees some things, he's like, Oh wow.

Thank God I don't do them that way. And other things probably like, Oh, that's cool. Like maybe I should Be more like that. And The but the same thing happened for me because Ben, um, on the last day, I see Ben and he's like I'm like oh yeah, you you know, you're just packing up. What are you doing?

W what do you write now? He's like hunched over his table and he's wr he's like got a pen out and he's writing something by hand, which is not like, you know, we do everything on our computer. So it's like What do you write now? And I noticed he's not holding a pen, he's holding a marker. And he's drawing. And I was like

What are you doing, man? What are you drawing? And he's He's drawing like a Birthday card basically on a giant piece of paper. He's got Six of them. And he's drawn all these card and I'm like, What is this? Like my daughter's birthday? What are you doing?

He's like, No, it's my dad's birthday and he's like, Ah, it's a family tradition we have. He goes Every time it's someone in our family's birthday We all get out a pie get out like paper and markers and we draw them like Birthday cards and it'll be like you know, inside jokes.

Or like Oh, Dad, you're the man for this reason. You know, I we always say that you got the best whatever. You got the best calves, and so he draws a picture of him with like huge calves or whatever, right? You love the s you love the suns. Here's a picture of Chris Paul holding a birthday cake for you, singing new happy birthday, like this player on the suns. It's just like whatever, it's just goofy. And I saw it and I was like, This is amazing. And like everything he's told me about his dad, by the by the way his dad lists a pod, so shout out to shout out to Andy.

Um His dad's amazing. And like I'll tell you one thing is amazing about his dad is he's like So his dad's a huge Phoenix Suns fan, so is Ben. I'm like, Oh, did you get it from your dad? Like your dad you know, growing up as a huge fan, so that's why you are he's like, No, it's the opposite. Growing up, my dad didn't really care about basketball or the suns.

And I got super into it. He's like, My dad just does this thing where like whatever each of his kids is into. He like He's like, all right. I'm into it too! And like not just like in a small that's great dad move. The great dad move, right? And so I was like, holy shit, I didn't even th I'm a dad now. So I'm like, I didn't even think about that. He's like he's not just supportive, because I think that's that's normal.

The common would be You're you're supportive. Oh, you like this, great, go you know, go on, do your thing. I'll I'll show up at your game and I'll kind of be you know doing the crossword on my on my Yeah, in my lap'cause I'm bored. I it's not my thing. His dad's the opposite. He's like, Oh, we like the you like the sun? Sons? No. We like the Suns and we We love everything about the suns now, and we eat, live, and breathe the suns. And so for his other kid

His other son is does real estate? He's like, Oh, you do real estate? No no no. We do real estate. And so he works for his son for free. Just helping him sell real estate!

Fight hours a week'cause he's like Oh yeah, we gotta sell some real estate l I'm in. And so he's like a free employee who's like hitting up LinkedIn. He doesn't pay him? Like he loves this podcast because he'll hear growth ideas and he'll be like, Oh, so I'm gonna do that for my son's real estate business. Wait, that's a that's an amazing bat uh amazing dad and a horrible son. Pay your dad, dog. No, he's the he doesn't want the money, he's that great of a dad. And then the other son, like, he does this like comedy thing and he's like, Oh Comedy? All right. I'm in the comedy scene now. And I was like

Wow. I'm gonna do this. So on the dad side I was like Like Ben Ben works with me. And he basically works with me too. He's like he listens to every episode of the podcast. He responds to every email like we put out. He'll like

He's not trying to get special treatment. He replies like a fan, like he's gonna be like, Oh yeah. I do my five two Tuesday. He's like, I love number three. Or he's like the podcast, Oh, I love the way you and Sam did this. And I'm like, dude How sick is that to have your dad become your wingman?

for your favorite hobby or your passion, like I'm gonna do that. So that was the first learning. The second was this birthday thing, he's like, Yeah, my mom like She came up with this early on, like, you know, love's not about the gifts. And like this is just a fun thing we do for each other. And we always do.

We did it. You did what? Birthday poster, so when you wake up, is this a like a white person thing I didn't know about? I don't know. In my house when you wake up.

On your birthday, you wait m the my mom would put puts like posters all over the house that that all the other kids like threw out. Wow, okay. What did you play? We don't. Where did you get that? No, this is this is new to me as well. No, no, no. Yeah, we had it as well, and honestly, it made my day. It was I like I would I would be so eager to walk upstairs. It's kinda like when you walk upstairs and you see like stuff around the Christmas tree, it was like I felt that same joy. I walk up around the stairs and I see my signs all over the place. And I know that like the I get the breakfast that I want that day. Yeah, it's pretty cool. This so so

I I basically like I don't even care about my birthday anymore,'cause it's always like the same thing and I hate the same I hate the sameness. Of life. There's so many things that are just the same all the time. Like When Facebook came out with the you can write happy it'll remind you of happy birthday and then your wall becomes A thousand people who don't really care about you writing Happy Birthday. I hate that. I hate that'cause then I feel guilty, like I got a reply.

Yeah, I d I never reply and like, you know, and but it's just the same thing, right? Or But what other people do is oh let me throw money at the problem. Which becomes a different kind of burden. It's like oh I gotta get you a gift. Um, I gotta think of something or if let's say I go buy you a nice card. It's like dude the pu the birthday poster is so much better.

Then a hallmark card? Because it's like A, it's like actually thoughtful. B is like kind of goofy and funny. It's like more entertaining. And s it's kinda personal touch, right? And so So I love this idea when we came home from that farming conference. My daughter had drawn a poster that says welcome home data and it's still the

First post like in my bathroom, it's a poster on the wall. Every day I go to the bathroom, I see welcome home data, like the the bathroom is my home, which is you know, a little bit true. And so I'm like this Personal poster thing. Is a great life hack.

And it got me thinking I'm gonna start stealing everybody's favorite family tradition. And so that's my new question for people is like, yo, what are these i family traditions you got? Like what are the things that y'all do? And like people don't even know they're so like baked into their operating life, like they don't even know them. And then you kinda keep digging and you'll find them.

And if it's like if it's a family tradition that's lasted like, you know, twenty years of your life. It's probably awesome. And like I should steal that from my own family. What do you think? I yeah, I think that's good. I'm trying to think about if I even have like my family, we're all atheists, but we still pray before every time we eat dinner.

Like you don't eat until you pray, even though like no one believes in God. Um that's like an interesting tradition. We do do birthday posters. Um I don't think we have any other traditions like that. I w I'd wonder. I bet Ben has a ton. A bunch. But the one that we start I think I talked about this. We started doing our uh end of year reviews where we uh

Like do product reviews and and ta and preview the year to come. That's our newest tradition. I like that one a lot. Yeah, but that that's some new age shit though. Actual product reviews, like I love this microphone, or what did you mean? No, no. Just like uh Just reviewing like the year that the what was Ben's two thousand twenty one or whatever. And then previewing Yeah, yeah. Um

But no, uh the the other like Well we have a bunch of tradition. We do have a bunch of traditions. Um Like one of the simple ones is we eat waffles like every Sunday morning and that's just like a thing I know I can look forward to every week. My wife makes really good waffles with like strawberries. Yeah. There's just one Over the top. It's one meal a week that I know I can always look forward to. And I love it.

You don't have any, Sean? No, I do. I have some. And now I'm like and I uh I give credit to my dad. My dad was really the one who was bringing the like The fun factor with some of these, whereas my mom's more like practical. Whereas my dad would be like like once a week, he would do the same, like the m the whatever, like the Monday night dinner. And it's like, oh, dad's making dinner? Oh, sweet. It's not because he's a better cook, but he would like

He would just add some showmanship to it. So he would like Make he would like get this tray. And so everybody had their own circular tray with like four dishes in it. And and then he would add a quarter.

And we were always like, Yeah, the coin's there, like I got a quarter. Like It's like the equivalent of a McDonald's happy meal, but like with a quarter. And there would be just like some flourish. There was always something that was like a little extra that he would do. And um And like yeah, or like these little things. He would come home and he put his wallet down, but the game was

I would always steal the wallet and I'd have to he'd run and chase me and I'd have to hide it. And like the game was like, Can he get his wallet back? And it was like How do you turn that like two minutes of coming home from like Oh hey, how's it going? Like autopilot. Into

Like something that's actually like fun and breaks everybody's kinda like mood for a second. So he used to do that. That's a great question to ask someone. What family tr w what's a really good family tradition? Yeah, I'm gonna steal them too. Good idea. I had a buddy actually that just came to mind. I don't even I don't think I wanna steal this because I don't think I could convince my family to do it, but his family did it. And I remember because I he started dating this girl and I was like, Oh, how's it going? You know, date Mike or whatever. And she was I I think maybe the other way around. I was like, How's it going dating dating this girl? She's like They got the she's like they got this weird tradition, they kiss on the lips.

Basically, it was basically that. Yeah, they go to he's like I went I went on the their like annual like uh come or annual family like vacation to Tahoe or whatever, they went to a cabin. And I'm expecting skiing and all this other stuff. And there was, but at night they did this thing. I'm like, Oh shit, what did they do? There's like blood cult like what's going on. And he's like

Yeah, they all read Harry Potter, but like they read it aloud and they read it like in the voices. And he's like much. Yeah, exactly. But I was like But for them. It was like their thing. And I was like

I you know what? Like as As cringe as I would feel doing that. And I love Harry Potter, by the way. But as crazy as I would feel like doing, you know, Dumbledore's voice as I read the book. That would be a lot for me and definitely a lot for me if I'm the visiting boyfriend into that family. That was like a lot. But like

You know, respect to uh to have a family that's like willing willing to be a little silly even as everybody gets old. Like I really respect that. And like if that's your thing, that's your thing. All right, whatever. Like, you know, let me go ahead and And read, you know, Order of the Phoenix like in in the voice. Like let's do this. You know, like I say, like cornrows and tattoos. Or cornrows and sleeve tattoos. I respect that others do it, but it that ain't for me.

Not for me. Mm-hmm. I I tweeted this out yesterday. Bother people but I I I called I was like Product managers are the are the bottled water of tech. And it it's just a funny backhanded slide. Like nobody nobody knows what to make of it. Like it's a compliment, but it's clearly kind of an insult. Like I like bottled water, but I guess bottled water is wasteboard useless. And then somebody one upped it and I'm like, Oh, that's my new shit. He goes

He goes, they're more like the throw pillows. And I was like, dude, throw pillows are such a good disc because it's like it's like you know, girls love'em, they look good, but they're completely fucking useless and annoy and like annoying when you actually need to go to sleep. And so calling something the throw pillow of X is Just a awesome slam that I'm like saving up in my back pocket to use. I met people at this conference that I went to and there was like a lot of listeners there and someone came up to me and goes, So, um Like when did you guys decide to make the switch to go from talking about business to just being like twelve year olds?

And uh Ha ha ha. Yeah, that's the thing he said and he goes, Are you happy with that switch? And I was like Huh.

A I don't remember and B, yeah, I think so. But I was like, yeah, there definitely was like a decision. Thank you and fuck. But he's like do you he's like was there but he but he wasn't trying to like roast me. He was like It was Steph's uh fiance, Steph's fiancee and he goes. He's like I love the pod. Um

But like when was that switch made where you were gonna like go from like talking about actual business to being twelve? When I was twelve we had a question like this which was um I was like You probably know what it was like. Um W when did you tell your dad you're gay?

And it was like it was like the the viral question that went through our middle school, like COVID. It was like Instantly someone said this and people realized like oh my god it it's a hilarious trap question There's no good answer to this question. And literally everybody in every school in the school district of Texas was saying this question for like Three months and then I went away. That's what that question is. Like, Oh, when did you guys decide to like switch the podcast up to being like twelve year old idiots? It's like totally like alpha me and I was like, Oh I don't remember Calvin.

It w it was pretty good. And on that note we're out. Alright, we're out to you.

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