The World's Richest Fashion Billionaire, A New D2C Biz Idea, And Working With People You've Never Met

All right, let's do this. What uh what topics you got today? I've got a billion of the week. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.

Alright. So I'm gonna tell you some facts about this Billy of the Week and I want you to see if you can guess who this person is. Alright? Okay, I'm game. So Steve Jobs appro so one time Steve Jobs approached him uh on advice about designing the Apple stores. And when they discussed each of their products, Steve said to this guy, I'm not sure if the iPhone is gonna be very popular in twenty years, but I'm certain that your products are definitely going to be popular. So that's one interesting thing about him. Intriguing. Okay. He's had multiple tennis matches, which

with Roger Federer. He lives in a hundred and fifty year old castle. And last year his company did eighty four billion in revenue and twenty two billion in operating profits. And This might give it away. This year. His company was the fourth largest company in the world, and oftentimes he's number one.

on the richest person in the world. The Louis Vuitton guy. The Louis Vuitton guy. What's the name of I don't know how his how to say his name because it's French. We're gonna call him Bernie, but uh it's uh it's Bernard Arnold. Yeah, I don't know if the T silent.

Sorry. It's it's usually not a hard T, but we're gonna go with that. Is that a hard T or is that a soft T? I don't I don't know. Bernie Arney, you are the man. So so Steve Jobs really went to this guy, huh? Dude, yeah. And a lot of people really respect this guy. So I'll I'll like give you a little bit about his background, but some facts about him. So he owns forty six percent so the Louis Vuitton Empire, it's called L V M H. So it's a multinational luxury goods conglomerate deal, market cap of four hundred and thirty billion. Oftentimes him, Elon and like Bezos go back and forth. Um but he's kinda the odd man out.

Because he's not like he like dresses really nice and he like looks as like a someone who owns Louis Vuitton would look. He like has this black turtleneck and a nice sports jacket But he's been called the um Uh well, I believe it's like the the the uh the wolf in cashmere sweaters or something like that, because he's like he's pretty ruthless, but he like dresses nice. But um

Uh yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about'em. So at twenty one th it's kind of an interesting background. The denim fox. Yeah. I wish. The j the jor juggernaut is what they call it. The dog and the Canadian tucks. That's what I'm known for. Uh the denim dog. Uh so listen. At twenty one, Bernie joined his father's construction company after fin finishing his engineering degree. And by twenty five, he was the CEO of a company. The company wasn't small at all. Uh uh at the time it was doing uh something like ten million in revenue, which is the equivalent to forty million now, and it had a thousand employees. But right when he joined, he like he said, let's expand. So we got into like some he started investing investing the profits in some finance businesses into real estate things like that. Then in nineteen eighty one He goes to the US and he starts expanding the business and eventually he like specializes in specializes in townhomes, sells a bunch of them, makes the equivalent of seventy five million dollars now.

Uh which was twenty five million back then, or that's what he sold his company for. I don't know what he made from it, but there's an interesting thing that happens. So he's in the cab, he's in a taxi in New York, and he asked the taxi driver if he heard of the president of France. And the taxi driver was like No, never. But I know all about Christian Dior.

who uh you know, Dior's like a like a luxury uh a luxury brand. And he started thinking, he's like Okay, so this guy who's like just a normal guy in New York doesn't know who the president of France is, but he knows all about Christian Dior, like Maybe I should explore uh like luxury brands. And so he he buys the holding company eventually of Dior. And it was like all like he got inspired by that first taxi cab meeting. He raises a bunch of money, buys it, fires a ton of people

Turns it around, sells like the br the other brands that DR owns, and it's a really good success. And that's like his first big entry into luxury brands. Then In nineteen eighty seven, he gets the idea uh uh to buy Louis Vuitton and he does the same thing where he raises a bunch of money and he buys it and he fires a bunch of people and definitely turns into Louis Vuitton a A big deal? Was it doing successful at the time or was it like distressed? It was Christian Dior was like distressed when he bought it. They both were distressed, but they were both brands. And so that kinda brings us to like the big point here, which is

D I I mean Louis Vuitton has been around for hundreds of years, um, or at least a hundred years, um, I think from the since the eighteen hundreds. But they they were kind of mismanaged. So have you seen that movie with I think it's Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga, where she like is the Is that how they say it? Lady Gaga? But she have you seen that movie where she plays like the wife of like the Gucci guy and like murders him? Yeah, you saw the trailer. Yeah, it was only D's. But uh, you know. big ga fan. So uh they uh it's like mismanaged. So like a lot of these family businesses, they like have great style, but it's kinda like you know, like a a a singer managing their own career, like maybe like

You know, the left part of the brain doesn't actually work well with business, but it works well with trait and stuff. And so it was the same thing where it was definitely mismanaged. He raises all this money and he just turns them into an operation powerhouse. And then he just starts going on a on a on a spree where he starts buying all the stuff. So he owns all these brands. He owns uh you know, I don't Freaking buy any of this shit. So I'm gonna look like an idiot talking about it. But Sephora, which is like the big makeup thing. Um

Fetty, which is another popular thing. Bulgarian. Mark Jacobs, like Yeah. Every thing that a woman aspires to own, he owns like a huge portion of of that market. But

I want to tell you about a few of the things um that interest or that make me interested in this guy. And first, have you ha have you heard about him? Do you know all anything about him? Uh I had only seen him'cause he's at the top of the rich list and he's you know, L L V M H but I I didn't know I didn't know this backstory, so go on. So what interests me about him is I think

Peter Thiel has this book. What's that book called that Zero to One. Zero to One, and it's awesome. Um, I I really like reading that book and it it kinda had an impact on me where he talked about like extreme personalities and uh having extreme results and all about like an engineering culture, yada yada yada. But there's one part of the book where he lists out all the motes. He's like you can have like you can like know like a secret that no one else knows. You could have like a patent. You could ha have technology that no one else has. Whatever. But and then he mentions there's this one moat called Bran. That's a huge moat. And I think he's like, I never understood brand, so I don't know invest in this. There's one sentence that he says, This is definitely a moat.

Not for me. I don't get it. I don't understand it. And I always thought that was funny because when a lot of like tech people discuss moats, they talk about like technology, networks effects, yada yada yada. Rarely do they discuss brand. Well, this guy, Bernie That's truly what he understood, where he was like, No, they're like that's where all my margin is, is because I can create a brand. I'm gonna create luxury goods. I'm gonna get luxury margins. And not only that, it's gonna live for forever. So uh Louis Vuitton, by the way, was founded in eighteen fifty four. And he ba his whole thing was like

Uh, in ten years there'll be far fewer luxury brands and the ones that survive will be more important because people are getting richer and richer and richer. And if a brand has been around for fifty years, he thinks it can be around for another fifty or a hundred and fifty years. So that's like his whole shtick. And uh I thought that was interesting. And he um Has this rare combo. Of operational excellence. And also like good style and understanding brand.'Cause typically This might be an overreaching statement, but a lot of times these really rich people are like

Maybe like Uh, what's his name? Um Uh, Warren Buffett might be a little bit like that, where he like sees like what a good business is and he's like, Well, I don't care. This could probably last for a long time, let's just do it. I can look at the spreadsheet and I can understand it. And then other times there's people who are like, This is a sick brand and they just totally but they totally mismanage it and they're not numbers oriented.

But then you got a guy like this guy who like does a pretty good job of like being pretty ruthless that you like you need to be in order to make the business usually profitable and very successful, but also like understands like vision and Some of these intangible things basically like how to make shit cool, which is very, very, very challenging. It's hard to have just that. Let alone both of those features. So I thought that guy was interesting. Um, and he has a few interesting quotes and I'll wrap up. So luxury goods are the only area in which is possible to make luxury margins. For me, luxury is how do you create desire. And then he says, I'm optimistic long term.

pessimistic short term. So interesting. Interesting guy. Here's another one I think that's like um something about being rich without Uh being famous. He has some some quote like that. And he's not quite a recluse, but he like

owns this island in the Bahamas where he spends of his time Obviously flies private. And is somewhat under the radar compared to Bezos who's in the news with his, you know, new girlfriend and things like that. This guy's pretty low key and his business, he owns like all the voting shares and all that. And he when he dies, he always says he's giving twenty percent to each of his five children. And it's run like a family business. So in that regard, he's pretty low key and out of out of the out of media uh Mostly.

Right. Uh yeah, okay, I can't really fully find it, but uh he had said some there's some French phrase which is like the only Uh something about uh Something about being you know, being happy. Uh

You know, th basically it was it it was it was something around the idea of you wanna be wealthy but not rich. And he had some cool French way of saying it, but I can't find it off the top of my head here. But that's all right. Sure would. Dude, I have another like weird internet culture thing that I was uh kind of related to like your engineers. I was thinking about this. And I think that what I'm about to say is incredibly not normal.

But I think for you it's normal and it's incredibly normal for me. And it's probably normal for a bunch of our friends. So I was thinking about this. We got we I have this new re researcher that you're trying to steal from me a little bit. Um And He I met him through a friend of a friend, but it all started on Twitter, the Twitter DMs.

And without talking to this person, like uh uh whether phone or or Zoom or whatever, meeting in person. We just like text And We hire them and we do a business exchange and like you put a lot of trust in one another. And I've realized I've done this.

Like twenty times where some of like my best co workers and best uh some of my best friends, in fact. It just started like through internet culture and we very rarely exchange words and we've done like some relatively big business together where we're like exchanging tens of thousands of dollars a month or we've invested one another companies. Or whatever. So I've done it with No partner of my latest company.

Uh Joe. We basically were Facebook friends. Have you ever got Yeah, maybe only like six times. Um, but like we knew each other for like five years before we really uh like talked a lot in person. I've done it with this guy, Diego, who uh I'm helping him with his agency business. I heard a funny story from about you on this, so Uh somebody who's work with you goes Yeah, Sam gave me the login to his Instagram or something like that, or to LinkedIn, I don't know what it was.

And what is it that you requested back from this internet stranger, Sam? I asked for His social security number. I asked for his girlfriend's social security number. I asked for uh A picture ID of both him and his girlfriend and a utility bill, so I knew exactly where he lived.

The Sampar School of Background Checks. Like, dude, what is your plan? Okay, let's say what is he gonna do? All right, let's say he p he posts something or changes the password. What are you gonna do with his utility bill and his social security number? What is your what is your revenge? Well, I don't know, but I know it's scary enough that if someone has that I I don't know, sign him up for a credit card. I would I would show up to his house for sure. I would show up. I'm gonna commit a crime. Yeah, I I don't know, but uh I don't know, maybe it's like scary enough that it worked. But have you done this? Have you like done business with a bunch of uh it's not anonymous people'cause you actually get to know them, but Internet. It's like a weird internet. Totally, totally. That's like very normal now at this point, which is strange. It shouldn't feel almost feels like it shouldn't be normal, but it is. I don't think it's normal for most people.

I mean it just seems natural. See, I feel like I know these people. I see their writing or I hear their podcasts or they they email me a bunch of times and we go back and forth and then they're in my Slack and then sure sure enough it's like hey You know, here's everything. Yeah, here's the keys to the castle. And once you get that, then once you're working together or you're doing things together. that builds even more trust and it just layers on and then you meet them four years later and you're like You see him in person.

And you're like nice to meet Two Uh you know, you don't know what to say. It's like nice to see your Nice to see your body. Dude was an accurate way to say it. Nice to see your face finally. Yeah, like sick legs. Dude, I'm I'm okay not meeting these people. I I like it how it is.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like I I enjoy these types of relationships. Yeah, we feel feature, not a bug, right? For sure. And we have this one dev. I have this dev working on a project. Yeah that I have and He's in Hong Kong and he's in high school. And he built this amazing thing.

And I don't really know anything about'em other than I want to work with you for a very long time. And like I was just the he sent me some of his work and it was so awesome. And I just realized This is super odd and also amazing. And I don't think a lot of people realize that you could like do business like this, because I'll tell my family. And they'll think I'm crazy. But it's become so normal at this point that I don't even th I I forget that it's not normal amongst others. Right.

Right. Yeah, totally. I've also a lot of my real life friends I just sort of like shifted more to online. I'm like Hey, let's we can hang out ten times more. through the group chat and through a bunch of a bunch of these little like two like you know apps or things like that. I I feel like I get to know them better that way almost and Yeah. Ain't nobody got time to hang out in person anymore.

And now we know why the birth rate in America is declining rapidly. But yeah, this basically like is uh a thing that I do and I thought I should bring that up'cause I don't think most people realize like how some of that stuff happens. And it's actually quite random how it happens, but if I see like a nineteen year old who's like impressive or t I'd twenty one who's impressive and like writes well and is like clever In my DMs. Some this sounds like Creepy. But I'm like I'm I'm I'm interested in giving them a shot on something. And so it's really cool how these like little projects actually turn into like pretty meaningful things after a while.

Right. Yeah, they're I Y Bs, interesting young boys, and the list Isn't that a Michael Jackson? All right, I wanna tell you about somebody interesting I met recently too.

So Did we talk about Chris Uh sparling on the podcast yet. Yeah, so uh we have this great friend named Andrew Wilkinson who has

maybe close to a billion dollar empire and Chris is his partner in crime. And I had never met him until we went to that event in Vancouver for the show. And uh You guys are really similar. You guys are very similar.

Me and him? Uh uh you have similar some some similar uh parts of view. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um A couple of a couple of observations I would say about him. Um I wanna I want you to tell me if you'cause you've interact with him, right? You've you've met him?

Only a couple of times, but yeah. And we're both very interested in these kind of like high performers Especially in this case, it's a high performer. Who went and built their own island and did they won in their signature way. I think that that's particularly what's interesting to us. Like if somebody's just like I don't know, some VP at Google, I'm a lot less interested than somebody like Chris, who basically

Made their own path. I think hi he you know, Andrew met him when he was working at a bank. He was like a banker. Uh not like a cool investment banker, but like a go to the bank, I need to write a check, banker. And they started talking about

cars'cause Andrea drove up in a cool car And uh they both nerd out about cars and then they were like, Okay, what's going on, you know, what what do you need for your you're getting like a line of credit or whatever for your business, what's your business? Uh Chris was like, Yeah, I'm like studying to be like a CPA or like I'm I'm about to get my my license to be an accountant or something like that. And um Andrew was like, Hey, you wanna just leave here with me and like, you know, work with me?

He didn't say it like that, but he you know, he offered him a job. He's like, You should come work with me, uh like I need help. But he at the time Andrew just had Meta Lab, his design agency was doing well. and um had gotten to maybe a couple million dollars a year of profit. Um You know Let's call it.

I don't know four or five years in, something like that. Uh but so so he hadn't started what became tiny, which was acquiring a bunch of other internet companies. And so Chris tells the story. Here's the some of the things that I took away from this uh this this meeting. So one interesting part of the story, he goes So my first day at work, I show up Uh Andrew's not there. I'm just like waiting at the door and um

Thirty minutes go by, Andrew's not there. Andrew rolls up in an Uber with like you know one airpod hanging out of his ear or whatever. And He's got he opens up the trunk, he takes out this giant box full of papers. Oh, and he's like he's like, You're here. Okay, fantastic. Here's uh all of our papers for like, you know, here's the business finances. Um I gotta go to a meeting and there's no office space for you. So I talked to my neighbor, they have room in their basement.

So just go knock on the door, tell them you're with Andrew, and like there's a desk in their basement and like here's this box of papers. And he's like, Andrew left and Chris is like, Man, I made a huge mistake. Uh who is this guy? What what is happening here? He goes, he knocks on the door. He's like, Hey, um Do you have like a basement desk for me? They're like, Yeah, come on in. And they like When you see the guy with the hole in his boot, you know you're there. Exactly. He's like So that's how it started. And then I go, Okay, so then that time he's just doing metal lab. So what How did this become tiny? And he goes, uh Well We looked at the business and the business was good. Business was generating revenues, generating profit. It was like okay, well like what do we do with this profit? Um

What are we supposed to you know should we reinvest this in some way into the business? Like can we grow? Can we should we hire people? He goes, Oh, I don't know, what do all agencies do? He goes Agencies hire a bunch of people. Uh and they buy fancy offices and they put a basketball hoop in the office. Like you know they put a pl a play pit in the office. He's like

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a good idea. We should not do that. That's kinda the only thing they agreed on. L let's not do that. They go well Okay, we can't follow agencies to figure out what we should do. Like you know, w how should we think about this? And they go, Well Look, we're a business that has clients. And we have, you know, like a service team and then we have some profits. Like w we are a boring law firm. Let's just pretend we're a boring law firm. Uh let's not try to be a cool agency. Let's be a boring law firm and not get too high on our own supply.

Okay, so what what could we do with our these profits if we weren't gonna like Try to just get flashier and flashier with the design agency. Um and that's where they decide let's buy a better business than our current business. So like let's buy a business that has recurring revenues, maybe that has less service oriented, more of a product. And let's use the profits from the service business to buy increasingly better businesses. So I th I like that story, that frame. I enjoyed that.

And what was the first thing that they bought? Was it dribble? No, that wasn't the first thing. I don't I don't know. I don't know exactly what the first thing the bot is, but Honestly it's probably another agency is my guess, but Yeah, regardless. That that's kind of the start of their journey.

So I never met Chris. Andrew uh talks a little bit about'em, but you know, you never really know. Uh what people are like. Here's my observations. Chris had the juice.

And it was very surprising to me that Chris had the juice because normally in these partnerships there's like the outgoing Uh face of the brand that everybody knows. And then there's like the quiet, silent but deadly operational partner, finance partner, whoever partner that's like doesn't really care about the spotlight, um, and usually is more reserved.

I would say most of that is true, but at this dinner I thought it was remarkable that he was kind of like this like It was shy, but he still had the juice. And I've never really seen that combo before. Like I think he would have rather just been at home.

Reading a book? But He had this thing which is like I'm at this dinner, so the flip is the the switch is flipped. And he was like super talkative and not with uh not because he's Mr. Charisma or he's not like dripping with like, you know, he's like smooth charm. He has wisdom, it feels like. He was he was just like I would call it honest. He was just like

He would ask you a question and if you said something he'd be like Hold on hold on. So is it like this? Or he'd be like But you're saying this Is that because you think that? Or is that because your parents taught you that? Why did you say that? And ask these questions that were very pointed.

That's what reminds that's one of the ways in which you guys are similar, is you ask those same questions. I do, and I so I was eating it up. I was loving it. I was like, Oh, this guy's right up my alley. The other thing he did though was like we Times ten is he was like Mr. Framework. Exactly. You guys are the exact same way for that reason. I called about the dinner, I was like, Bro, you have just named fourteen different like cognitive biases in one dinner. Like he'd be like It's like the Shristan effect mixed with the thing that you know the the the the the the like you know the sucker's bias and it's like Like, what are you talking about? He had just like an index. He had an index of mental models. I was like, this I was like, did you download Twitter threads and you just memorize them? Like how do you know all this? And why are they so top of mind for you? And that's really how he thinks. He he he truly seems to think that way, which I thought was really interesting. Well, you know why so Andrew told me this. I don't know like the what

Chris's story is, but Andrew said they basically were like building their own companies and like reinvesting the profits into building their own things. And then they read the biography of Warren Buffett. I think it's called Snowball or something. And then they read like a Charlie Munger book. And they go, Oh yeah, let's do this instead. And so they start buying companies that work and they have the you know, like I think Tiny's website says we buy wonderful companies. That's basically I think

Exactly what Buffett said. Uh Tiny is just we buy wonderful internet companies and then there's doesn't have internet in it. Right. And so they basically stole uh you know a lot of Buffett's really great ideas. And also have you ever read a Charlie Munger book or anything by Charlie Munger? Yeah, yeah. Dude, they're all frameworks about everything. There's like one's called like Poor Charlie's alm almanac, I think it's called. And it's like eighty eight different frameworks. I started reading it and I'm like, dude, I need a story here. But Yeah, it was a very strange book. People say they love that book, and I'm convinced that anybody who says they love that book hasn't actually opened it.

Because when you open it, it's not even like a book. It's like a Uh have you have you have you actually opened the book? Yeah, I read the whole thing and I was I found it very hard to even remember. It's hard to read, dude. It's like a list of rule books. Yeah, it's like the table of contents, except it's long. It's a very challenging book to read, but w I what I remember from the book and then hanging out with Chris is like Oh, you read a lot of Munger,'cause you guys are sort of similar in that framework and another thing Buffett does is like He'll say things I forget exactly what he phrases, but he's like a

You know, why kill a mice? Why kill a mouse when we can go and shoot an elephant? Like he'll say things like this, or he'll like create some analogy. Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller or things like that to be we were talking about something he goes So is that like Diomekle Sword? That Slays the Beast and I was like I was like what the fuck are you talking about? Like uh I was like st uh N I don't know what that is. What are you saying in English? And he's like No, like you know the story of Diya, who have the some Greek guy

And I was like No, I don't know any of these things. What are you talking about? Yeah, it's like dude, I need an analogy for your analogy. But I've noticed that Chris, uh the limited time that I've been around him, he does the same thing where I can tell who he's read and he's really good at what he does. And I think he's also naturally like that. He just like thinks in frameworks and analogies and things like that. He can take complicated things and make them quite simple. Totally. And he uh I think he's really, really like super curious, which I really respected about him. Like I I felt like when he was asking questions. Yeah. He wasn't doing it to make conversation. He was doing it because He actually really wanted to know the answer. He was genuinely interested and I think that comes off comes off. And I think that is a huge um

Like saving grace for I think people overthink how to be in social situations and like, you know, the the easiest hack is just simply genuinely be interested in the other person, everything else will work itself out. Um that's how I felt about Chris and I I really like that. We had a uh interesting, different conversation. I'll share one, uh One little tidbit that that can Take a dinner conversation from surface level to a lot more interesting.

And um I forgot who was talking. It was the s CEO of something. And um She said something and I go Let me ask you a question.

Little bit little bit of a weird question. Can I ask you? And she's like, Yeah. And I go, um Growing up I said what you said was really interesting just now and it made me wonder why you why you wanted that so bad. Growing up

Whose love did you want more, your mom or your dad's? Oh my god. And uh, you know, she immediately like is like taken taken aback by the question, and then kinda answers and then And people open up about their like They they open up about their relationship with their parents and

Also like It's kinda like where'd that chip on your shoulder come from? Is really what this question is asking. And I stole this from Tony Robins. Tony Robins ask this question and I saw that like in most of he he does these like uh live kind of coaching sessions or whatever with people during his events. And he had asked this question and it immediately found like the actual answer to the to the problem. And since then I've like kept this question in my back pocket and I ask it from time to time. It's a very revealing question.

Um Hard to say without sounding like just like a pretentious Prick. Um did you have like your like glasses like in your mouth like Yeah, exactly. The tip of the the glass needs to go into the mouth and you have to be wearing a turtleneck. But if you do happen to have a turtleneck on It is such a good turtleneck question. That's ridiculous. And it worked.

Oh, it worked. And then the whole the whole table kinda shared their answers to it. And it went from like All right, we can either sit here and we'll go one inch deep or like We ended up fifty feet deep and I felt like everybody actually felt like they knew each other. And um

And it was like after the fact it was like, So what do you do again? And it's like you know, y you're trying to It kind of reversed the order of how most of these like kind of networking dinners go. And I've been to a lot of these. And so like I appreciate something that can break out of that the surface level you know surface level stuff fluff that's not really that interesting. Dude, I was at this one dinner recently and this guy who was a younger guy and he was like a fan of our stuff.

So he was and he like clearly like was learning how to interact with people. Like he was like an internet guy who like read how to win friends and influence people. And the first thing that he said to me and my wife was like He was trying to do what you did and he asked us like Why don't you guys

First have sex and what was it like? I swear to God. Yeah. I like I I was so frustrated and I was like

I'll answer your question, but you got to answer mine's first. How much money's in your checking account? How long is your dick and what was it like when you saw your parents having sex for the first time? And he was like, What? I go, Yeah. That's weird, right? I don't want to talk about that. Don't be weird. And he clearly had like red like a book on how to do this, and then he like saw something you said and thought that would have been a good idea. And it wasn't. It was a total myth. Well there's something mess you gotta do, right? You can't just ask out of the blue. Oh he'll the only reason this question worked on ours was because When somebody's explaining the chip like they have this chip on the shoulder, you're basically it's a natural question to ask, Where did it come from? And then they give you some bullshit. You say, All right, let me ask you a different question and you you dig in that way. You can't just go up to somebody and be like, Hello, I'm Sean, nice to meet you. Hey you

I was curious, what's your deepest, darkest secret, right? Like it does it doesn't really work like that. Yeah, it was weird, man. It was weird. It was one of these guys I'm uh it it was horrible. Uh, but you pulled it off. 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 clients whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and Here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Spot grow better. Well right, what else you got? Um

Okay. Oh I'll give you one other uh Chris little gem that that came out of the the talk. Uh Somebody was telling a story about somebody else. And

And it was kind of a story that was like uh what do they call it? Like a romp? Which is basically like a rock. It's like a tale about like your you know, you could tell a tale of like your drunken days and this the the the crazy thing that happened that we almost got arrested and then we ended up fine. It's like It's a story that doesn't have a lot of like it's not like a meaningful story, it's an entertaining story. And um

And so Person telling the story about like this business romp. So somebody was like gonna get rich and then they like it went almost unbroke and then now they're okay and like, you know, whatever happened. And he goes. And and the the the takeaway was, you know, that you know, that person They said

Yeah, yeah, they could have they could have sold the top and made a bunch of money, but they said, you know Well, if I had done that, then I wouldn't have blah blah blah blah. And he said something that has stuck with me, which he goes Do you think that's the right lesson to learn out of that? And he goes

He goes, I wonder that sometimes. She goes, people always talk about like how the lessons that they learn Chris. He goes, um He was a question I've often asked is like Is it is this person somebody who's learning the right lesson out of things? And I and I thought it was so funny. Uh it was like a blunt thing to say. And so I loved it already.

The second thing was It's so true. I look around the people around me in life that I encounter. And very rarely. Like if if you're not going to be able to

Like a lot of people have exper go through experiences and think they learn a lesson, but if I was to measure like The hit rate. Of are they actually having the correct takeaway out of a situation? It's shockingly low, and I think that that is One of the greatest indicators of success is are you actually able to learn the correct lesson?

from your life experiences. Um Nobody's a hundred percent on that,'cause we all have weird things where we'll Blame other people or we'll glorify ourselves and not realize that we just got lucky. We'll we'll do weird things like that.

But um I realized oh I wanna only be around and work with people and hire people who are high on this score. I don't really care how much experience you have. But if you don't take away the right lesson from the experiences you're going that you have uh and that you're going to have, your rate of learning is just gonna like

It'll be a different rate, or you'll just end up in some weird trajectory where you'll just do dumb shit'cause you're taking away the wrong lessons from your life experiences. And I I just never heard somebody say that out loud. And it really stood out to me and it's like I now I see it everywhere. That's a that's a really good question. I wonder if that is something that he came up with or like was inspired by it. I mean that's a hard thing to that's a real unique that's a really unique question. This one wasn't one of his like frameworks or like go to's I could tell. It was just like He literally just asked the question'cause he was curious'cause it was so he heard like it was kinda like Uh, you know when somebody starts a sentence and you kind of Your brain is trying to fill in the blank of the last thing they're gonna say.

And then they say something's totally different. You're like that is not where I thought you were going with that. That's what happened in the story. It's like Ninety percent of it kinda made sense, and then the last ten percent of the conclusion was like some other weird conclusion, and he was like What? Is that the wait, that was the conclusion? I feel like the conclusion should have been X, but you're saying their takeaway was Y.

What uh and and and so I don't even think he really meant it that way or he really put that much weight into it. But that was my my golden nugget of that dinner was that one question. And uh and I can't st I literally can't stop seeing it everywhere now. Like my kid does something, my wife does something, I do something. And I I tr started to think back, I was like In what areas did I take away the wrong lesson? Like I don't know, if you think back in your life, can you think of an example where

If you if you're honest with yourself, it's like Yeah, actually I kinda learned the wrong I I kinda Did I even learn the right lesson from that? Was that the right answer? There's a few things like you know how that phrase like fail fast? Like I used to believe that that was cool.

And then I'm like I'd rather succeed fast. Like uh Yeah, like I'd rather not fail and I how can I succeed faster than I fail? And I remember thinking it like for years

I was thinking, Well it's okay, I tried something and I'm like But like if I'm a baseball player and I take lots of swings but I don't get any hits, like that's bad. That's not good. That's very bad. So the lesson here is I should swing and also have a high batting average. And I remember thinking like, oh, just shots on goal. That's all that's all that matters. But I'm like No, I need a score too.

And so for years like I thought it was okay to fail. Oh, I'm failing fast, I'm moving fast, I'm breaking things, whatever. And then I'm like Maybe I shouldn't break things and I should actually like Succeed fast. And I remember like that like it changed like five years ago. Yeah. Yeah totally. Uh I can think of a bunch of examples in my life where I've I've I think messed that up, but now that's not the case.

Did you learn the l the right lesson when you got roasted by some people for posting your private chef? Dude, you posted this picture of this nice looking food and people are like, Dude, your blood glucose is gonna spike and you're gonna be so unproductive because you're eating rice. Uh I thought that was pretty funny. All the all some of the hate you got. Also that wasn't rice. Whatever it was, people were like giving you a hard time. I thought it was pretty funny. You only clap a few of them. There's three or four reactions. Reaction one, so I what did I do? I posted a tweet that was just like A delicious meal. I was so happy I was having this meal. I said best life decision.

Was hiring a uh hiring a family chef. And um There was four reactions. There was the uh Predictable positive. Which was ooh, yum, looks good.

It was. Predictable negative which was Uh hey douchebag, people are s struggling in the world. You're posting this like your nice flex, you know, asshole. Uh so there's predictable negative. There was

The predictable um next question, which was how much does this actually cost? Um you know, like I uh what goes into this, which is a f fine question, no no problem. And then uh And then there was just like, you know, whatever. The the sort of like the the the random or like the the interesting the I think the person who had the right answer from it, which was You either should just move on if it's not interesting to you, or if it is interesting to you You should be like

Yeah, that's something I want in my life. Let me put bring that back to the front of my brain. Um You know, I I kinda want and um I th I thought it was very funny. I didn't even know I wanted that until

I'd met somebody who had a private chef. And I was like, Wow, this is incredible. So you're telling me like Instead of them having to cook Three meals a day and they're they're you know, also they have a wife and kids, like you know Instead of their whole family have to cook three meals a day, do grocery shopping, do the dishes.

To end up with a meal that doesn't taste as good, isn't as healthy. Um and takes up, you know, probably on average three to five hours. You know per day if you average it all out, including the the groceries and the cleaning and the cooking and the all of it. Um

And you know, but by the way, three hours a day out out of your like, you know, people have only have like sixteen waking hours, right? Like this is a It's a really significant chunk of time per day. I was like well, I saw it and I was like, Oh, that's a goal that I didn't even know I should have, but I want that and I want that way more than I want. uh uh you know, a a ski home and Tahoe or like a fancy car or those types of things.

And then I uh for I didn't do anything about it for a while because I s assumed, oh, you gotta be like a billionaire to have that. No, you can get'em for as cheap as maybe a A thousand a month, maybe? And then I was like, Oh, let me do the math. Like how much do you actually need to do this? And then I did the math was like Oh, I think I could do this now. And then I just did it and my life got way better. And so

I posted it because A just whatever, it's Twitter, I didn't really think too much about it, but like Um Yeah, there is a benefit in seeing somebody's Uh like somebody do a a a decision in life or have something in life that uh is attractive to you and brings it, you know, to your attention and makes you think about do I want this, do I not?

Uh, can I have this? Can I not? You know, I think there's some value in that too. So anyways, that's the that's my story on the tweet. I thought it was pretty funny. Um I thought it was hilarious. I I'm I was frustrated you didn't like holler at some of these people. I almost started re replying to them for you. Yeah, I haven't decided if I'm a heel or a face yet. So to use wrestling terms like

Um I'm tempted to just be a heel. Uh you know, like In the tech world I would say like uh what's his name? The the Dude who loves bears. Ke uh Keith Raboy Yeah, I called him out. I I don't like that guy.

Well, you don't like him'cause he's a heel. Uh which is fun. Right. Uh you know, he basically um Doesn't mind pissing people off. Telling people telling people off whatever it is and like that's his brand and he and some people are like, Man, I love it. She tells it like it is, or he's funny or You know, he must be you know he he basically

has its aura of I'm better than you. Like like many great wrestling villains. And um And he'll tell you how much you suck. And so people some people hate that. A lot of the majority of people hate that. And then there's a minority of people that love that. And find him like interesting. And either way you can't ignore him. He he's like a you have to take a position because it's so

um polarizing. It's not just like, you know, vanilla. And I would say you actually do a lot of what he does where I don't think you think you're doing it. Uh'cause you're like, I didn't say anything bad. It's like bro, you put a period at the end of that line. That just you know when you put the period there, you're saying like that's a middle finger. You know, that that's not a period. Uh Do you know you're doing it when you're doing it or

Not all the time. Maybe some of the time, but I think I don't like um Like I'm kind of a stickler with language. Like I like using certain words, so If someone like says something and they end it in a question mark, my reply will be like

I don't know if you're asking a question or if you're getting me to agree with you like stupid. Or Do you know what I mean? Like I just it it it like I just like or when people like sensationalize things, like will they say like well this happens all the time. Like s for example, someone replied to you and they go, I've been seeing a lot of this lately. My example what I want to reply with is like Oh, okay, well what are some other examples? Right. I think I did. I was like, like what? Uh yeah. Just curious. So like like what? What are you talking about? I'm a I'm a stickler with language. I don't like when people say this always happens or this never happens or these people are everywhere. Like things like that. I don't like that phrase or this is so common uh that it's becoming an issue. I'm like, well, I I actually don't think that it's any more common than it has ever been.

Uh anyway, so I'm an asshole about that. Um, you wanna do one more topic? Yeah. Uh let's do Uh do you have one? No. I blew my load early.

Oh wow. Just all without birdie, huh? Uh and the internet uh thing. But you think it is that I generate so many more ideas than you. Let's go let's go i did your mommy not love you or your daddy not love you. If we look at the three years that we've done this

I think it ebbs and flows I think that each person goes on a chance, dude. Dude, each person goes on a three month like run. Dude, one hundred percent. I think you talk more. But I don't think that I don't think that you necessarily bring more Topics.

Right, right. Uh I think that would be a Thanks for your permission. When I was selling the hustle You Carried me. When you were selling Milk Road, my shoulders got tired.

That's all I'm gonna say. These don'ts weren't weren't gonna come from nothing. These are no pro I'm gonna say. So I think it adds and flows. There was a there's a guy who basically took every idea from the podcast and put it in a database. This is how I know I win because he took every idea from the podcast and to put it in a database and he said it was seventy five percent me, twenty five percent you. But that's specifically on ideas, not topics. But that's maybe ideas. Yeah. Yes. Like This Bernie guy? That's not an idea.

But come on, that's that that's that's you're definitely the king of the Billy of the Week. I think uh you somehow know a bunch of these old ass motherfuckers in different spaces and uh And you you you find these guys, I don't know how you find these guys or how you think it's like. Yeah, but like why don't they even get on your radar? You'll be like, This guy used to own this coal mine. And then he bought the shoe factory.

And then he owns like, you know, you ever read the Saint Louis Post? And I'm like, nah, yeah, he owns that. So I'm like I I don't know how you found this guy, but you know More power to you. I just Fucking books. Can I give you a couple uh let me do an idea. I'm gonna go rapid fire. I'm gonna I'm gonna just

empty the chamber here on some some things that have been on my list. Um I have a D to C idea that I'd like to do. Pass. Uh and by I'd like to do I means I'm not gonna do it, but I want to invest and advise somebody who does it who's really good. Wait, do you still ever want to launch an e com store? Uh I don't know. I'm torn. I don't want to operate it myself, but I do want to like incubate them. I do want to like incubate them and hire a CEO that that will run them in theory.

But uh that might also be difficult. Um So I have a uh a gut health one. So gut health is uh this is nothing new. So let me just start this by saying, Oh bro, this that exists. Yeah, I know it exists. Um Almost every D to C idea you've had.

Exists. Um Gut health is a uh A trend that is going up, up and up. And it fits a sales model that really works with D to C.

What do I mean by that? You mean you could just buy it over and over again and you never know if it actually works? So what works in D to C? Uh a D to C pro a great D to C product is one that is gonna be high margin. So maybe Uh, can you get to seventy five, eighty percent gross margins? Well, with supplements you can get to eighty eighty five percent gross margin. So that's fantastic on the product itself. The next thing that works in D to C is that it's a repeat purchase or it's a consumable. So something that somebody's gonna buy many times.

They shop from you again and again. Because either they ran out, they ate it, they drank it. Or the you know the deodorant stick ran out, whatever it is. Unlike a mattress. Unlike a mattress. Um

So so you want something that people grow out of or run out of. And um So High review purchase rate. Well, supplements have that as well. Health and wellness has that. Um as well.

You want something that Is a uh is a problem solution fit. So basically you want something that is not just like kinda nice to have fashion item. Um what works better

Uh in what's what sells better is something that you can say Do you have this problem? We have the solution. And this is why you see if you go scroll down to the bottom of a New York Post. article, you're gonna see a toe fungus ad. Why is a toe fungus ad always there? 'Cause guess what? People have to fungus, it's a very easy problem to point out.

And people are looking for a solution and willing to buy something that tells that that promises them that it's going to uh go away. So Uh do you remember um The prom the best promise solution ever. is uh Claude Hopkins, he invented

the advertising for toothpaste in the nineteen twenties and he said Rub your tongue over the Your teeth. You f you feel that film? Now brush with our toothpaste crest. Now rub your tongue over your front teeth.

That was the best problem. That's like an easy to understand like Oh, I see exactly what you mean. Well and this s this solves it. Why that one's even better is when you get to be the one diagnosing the problem. You have way more authority and you're basically creating a new problem category for people that they weren't f fully aware of. And so this happened this is why I like gut health a lot. Five years ago, I didn't hear anybody talking about

Gut microbiome, leaky gut. I personally I love that phrase. It's beautiful branding. I hear gut. I have I have a family member who's just like oh I'm super worried about leaky gut and I'm like what and then she's like, Yeah, I bought every book, I watch these YouTube videos and it dude it scares the shit out of me and like now I drink apple cider vinegar, I do this, I do that. I'm like Mm. Interesting. Somebody just like Created a problem, taught you about it. You may or may not have it, no way to know. It's a beautiful one. It's a it's a it's a spe it's a it's spooky is what it is. It's a spooky phrase. Just like cleansing.

Like I'm gonna do it like juice cleansed. Like, bro, I don't think like this juice is like a pipe cleaner and it like is going through pipes. I don't know if that's how it works. So I um So I bought this domain, drinkguts.com. And I have this idea for this brand called Guts. And guts is a basically a drink that uh that you drink for uh it's like pro it's like a protein powder. You drink it for gut health.

And um It helps with digestion. So a lot of people who are either constipated or go to the bathroom all the time. Uh it helps with weight loss, it helps with uh sugar control, it helps with those those sorts of things. Um so yeah, so I think I can incubate this brand and I just need an amazing marketing CEO and so I'm looking for that. Um have you um Have you heard of Alipop?

Uh I've heard of Ollipop. I've drink an Ollipop before, yeah. So Ollipop is basically it looks like a soda or a seltzer. It looks exactly like this. I'm drinking spin spin thrift right now. It's just like water with a little bit of fruit in it. It looks just like that. Except it says like probiotic on the can. Yes. Which always turns me off. By the way, I'm like, nah, I don't like that weird stuff. Turns me on. Probiotic? No. Who's antibiotic? You? Dude, I'm antibiotic. I'm not probiotic. I'm neutral on the biotics at least, but I'm definitely not pro.

But uh you know how do you feel about oxidants? Oh you're pro oxidants. Michael Scott said he goes I wouldn't say I'm super sticious, but I am a little sticious. Uh Alipop, do you know how big they are? I think they're huge, dude. I see them at every grocery store. A hundred million plus.

And they're doing a new one, by the way. Poopy or Poppy. You seen this one? No, but it's like an even more uh it's like a gut health soda or like a um probiotic Like LaCroix. And uh I see that one popping up at Hope Foods Diddy. Probiotics, I think diarrhea.

Like you're gonna do something to my poop. Yeah, so that I think that's where the branding opportunities come in, uh to to to fix that. Guts doesn't exactly help your cause here. I know, but I think it's a loud um splashy name that can be almost like so bad it's good. And uh I don't think it's very trademarkable. I think that's the the the the problem with it, but I kinda wanna work with a designer just to make a fake CDC like packaging of this.

I kinda wanna crowdsource this idea through MFM. So basically I'm like Let's find a marketing CEO through this. I have I have a guy in mind. Um Let's get somebody who's a design agency, like let's make the packaging for fun.

And uh and see what we could do. Somebody who's like a supply chain guy, let's go find the formulation lab. Like let's just like crowdsource this idea. I think that would be a lot of fun. Here's w something I want to test. So this what you're saying reminds me So we're in the fifty fifth minute or something like that of this pod, and you're saying like something where you want to you're saying a call to action. I'm curious how many people you're gonna get. Last episode or two episodes ago, I we were talking about my Airbnb and I said marathonranch.com. I go, Yeah, if it's Airbnb, you can see it at marathonrange.com and I just kept talking.

Uh, I was curious how many people went to the site. Um, do you have a guess? Oh, I mean I guess it's low. I'm gonna give you the homey guess. I don't know. Hundred visits?

So we set it at minute thirty eight or something like that, like not in the beginning. It got like Three or four thousand views. And not one not one booking, by the way. Not one booking. Uh not one. Yeah.

One time I shared it on Twitter and it got two million impressions, not one booking. So n not one booking, so it didn't help me at all. But I'm curious I bet you you'll get maybe fifty Team qualified people messaging you. One time you talked about this thing you wanted a woman to holler at you for this woman brand that you were working on.

And people started hollering at me to get to you. And like four of them were like Instagram women like models, like wearing thaw bikinis and shit. Like trying to reach me to Talk to you and my Sarah was like oh saw my phone I'm like Dude, this This lady like she's like what are you looking at? Like, check this out. This lady just DMed me trying to talk to Sean. It was it was uh

Pretty funny. Yeah. I also like that you say holler at still. Uh if I think tight. When I think something's cool. How about Dank? I'm trying to bring Dank back. Do you remember Dank? I'm still watching T R L when I get home from school.

You can just email me Sean at SeanPurry dot com. I'll put it in the show notes of this like in the description of the podcast too. Um I hired a assistant that just

Reads all my email and triages it into buckets that's like Uh action item needs a reply. Read this and in case you're interested. And then um She filters out a bunch of the crap.

It's a permanent thing. Being horrible at email. Like I I don't see stuff I should. I see a bunch of stuff that's trash. I forget to reply to things. I'll read it on my phone.

think to reply later, never never remember to come back and reply later. I had a horrible system. And now um shout out to my assistant Drea, who's uh helping me so much with that. It's it's like literally overnight Well, I got an email from her saying Sean would like to schedule time to speak with you in Vancouver.

And at first I was like Mm-hmm. What the fuck? Shut are you kidding me? Yeah. Really? Uh and then I was like Okay, this is awesome. And I message you, I go Who where'd you get this person from? Very interesting. She did a good job.

Uh uh two upcoming shows. I'm gonna put it out there now. It's time for another junk ideas episode. Uh, which is where we come up with ideas that only sound good if you're drunk. So half baked Kind of. bad but maybe good start up ideas. So we we should have a very long distant girlfriend, the best one ever. Yeah, exactly. Very long distance girlfriend was was an all timer. Um

The second one is uh I think we should do our version of The Bachelor. So I think we should get M FMs. Most eligible. Uh guys and gals, basically. Submit your application. We need a photo. We need we'll we'll put up we should put up like a dating site, which is basically like um

Uh we we ask a couple questions. And then we take the best And we present them. on uh on the show and then people can reach out to them and they will get like A bunch of inbound of people who want to actually date them and let's see if we can get somebody married out here. Let's see if we can get somebody to fall in love.

The second time we've done that, by the way. We've had one Mfm marriage. But did you um more than one Mfm divorce. Yes, more than one. And that's not a joke. We give it then we take it away. Did you see when I did that on Twitter? Where I like tweeted out like ten of my friends who were single. And that's a great idea. We should just do that as a crushed. A crush. All right. I'll uh tweet that out after this. Uh

Let's make a letter. He wants to call it hot millionaires in your area. Um What can we call it? So what what should we call it? It could be uh maybe something with singles, maybe something with uh Uh let's see, what else? We need to know. No, no, no, don't give up. You could do this.

I don't know. We could change the word singles with shingles. Is there anything there? That's the thing that's always at the bottom of the website. It's like hot singles in your area. So just call it that. Like it's hot singles in your area. It's gotta be like uh Um M FM most wanted.

And the but it's most wanted because You yeah. They're wanted. And it's Dating. Sense.

Yeah, we we get it. We get it. MFMs both want it. That's fine. That's actually great. That's actually great. We're gonna do that. Better than shingles. I don't know. I'm I like I like changing words, you know, called Twitter shitter. Uh It's classic. And then this month, Sean, we probably should do like a merch thing.

Yeah, I'm working on it. I'm I'm going all in on uh on uh Just create great content. I don't understand what content has to do with merch. Uh it's like

Merchant content. To be. Like we're not gonna get rich selling t-shirts, but we can make awesome t-shirts that are like as good as great content. Like it makes you laugh, it's interesting, it's cool, it's fun, it's in you know, it's It's meant for fun, not meant to be like uh You know.

Or Patreon. All right, I'm down. No offense people are Patreon. But y'all are little pictures. Yeah, dude. I don't want to be like I don't want to have a patron.

Um all right, that's the part.

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