From $0 to Billionaire By Starting A Toy Factory In China - Billy Of The Week

So age eighteen. Him and his brother Get on a plane, they go to Hong Kong. And they're like we're going to start our Toy Factory here in Hong Kong.

They get there first night, he literally sleeps in a bush. Because they didn't have like, you know, a place to stay that night, so he sleeps on a bush right outside. Why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk? Too hard, bro. He you know, you don't want to sleep on the ground. So he sleeps on a bush outside of the air. All right, we live. I got something good for you. I got a crazy story. In fact, this is a Billy of the Week. Million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion

Dollar. You know, sometimes we get a little fast and lose with the billy of the week where it's not a real billion. This guy is a real billionaire. Okay, so Have you ever heard the name Nick? Mowbray? No.

Okay, so Nick Mowbray, here's the Here's my headline for this. University Dropout from New Zealand becomes a billionaire with zero Dollars invested. Okay, so what ha what happened?

Um I'll click. Yeah, you clicked. All right, here's here's the next bit. Two brothers, um when they were in I think middle school. They enter a science fair. And in the science fair, they create a hot air balloon modeling kit and they end up winning the science fair. So

Here's Nick, twelve years old. wins the science fair and he decides all right People really liked my hot air balloon kit. My like model hot air balloon kit. I'm gonna go sell these. So he goes and starts selling them door to door. And he opens up a farm, uh, a little like factory in his his family's farm uh to to like build the kits.

uh as he's going, but like he's having trouble scaling up because he's trying to do production himself and uh And he's doing the sales himself and it's like okay, this is tough. So age eighteen. Him and his brother. Get on a plane, they go to Hong Kong.

And they're like, We're going to start our Toy Factory here in Hong Kong. They get there, first night, he literally sleeps in a bush. Because they didn't have like, you know, a place to stay that night, so he see on the bush right outside. Why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk? Too hard, bro. He uh you know, you don't want to sleep on the ground. So he sleeps on a bush outside of the air. Be normal, use the bench. They end up getting a apartment that I think was eight dollars a month.

Um, and that was their their apartment. What yeah. They start a factory. This was now maybe Uh, fifteen years ago ish, something like that. And so and they're in a very small city in China. And so not they're not in Hong Kong anymore. So they they end up creating a a a factory. So here's the factory. So they they create a factory. Nick ends up sleeping in the factory for eight years.

And um they had thirteen thousand dollars to their name. That was what their parents loaned them. uh to start this business. And so they're like, um They're like, How do we make this work? And so they they want to create um This like kind of toy company.

And so they're like, All right, and so they do they start doing two things. Number one. They're like, all right, we only have this much money and now we're living in China. We gotta like make this stretch. So these guys are like doing all the like, you know, the hustle porn stories you hear for entrepreneurship. They're doing it where he's like We used to eat only off the dollar menu at McDonald's in China.

And he's like every day, he's like for b Christmas we would go get the Big Mac and it was like two dollars and change. And that was our celebration. Um he's like I would eat half my fries and then I would go back to the counter and be like, Hey, this is like not even full. Can I get my full. Full container of fries? He's like That's how we did it. He's like we had the thirteen thousand dollars from our our parents and then we had to make this work.

And so They end up creating a bunch of Um fast forward till today. They have um They have basically like uh the

Like they do a billion dollars a year in sales on their toy company. This guy is personally a self made billionaire. They've created toys uh Zuru. Z Z U R U. And so they've created a bunch of toys that you've heard of, like RoboFish. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. It's like a like a little fake it's a toy fish that'll swim around in a in a jar. Uh like a fishbowl.

Um they've created a bunch of balloons, which I bought this a bunch of times. It's like you could you put the hose in and it'll fill up a bunch of water balloons all at once. Um, and so they they you know, the dark blaster, they've sold thirty nine million of these or whatever. And so they basically built all these um Like hit viral toys. And so and early on what they did, like at the beginning what they did was they would basically just knock off other

Good toys, like gimmick toys. And they would just make them themselves and try to like out Execute them. So they were like trying to out manufacture them or out distribute them. So there'd be like a light up frisbee that was like hot.

So he w they would like clone the light up frisbee and then they would go and they would like Like to get into retail stores, they crash the like The buyer's dinner. for dick sporting goods. And then his sister just like showed up and kind of like schmoozed her way in and got the account. And they just did that over and over and over again. They you know they and they they would get sued by the companies like, Hey, you're copying our toys? And they're like, Oh yeah, okay, we're gotta create original toys.

And so they they kinda knocked it off. They They brute forced their way into retail and then they started creating their original toys like a bunch of balloons and Robafish. And the stuff. And so basically Um they uh you know they they were basically

Sell these at Walmart, wherever. And um their big thing was like, how do we manufacture this? With no people. So they're like, um can we do this where it's automated and 10 times cheaper than everybody else? And so they claim

They claim that they're factories that have the robots that produce these. Have like no humans on the line. Uh, I don't know if this is true, cause like even like Tesla, which tried to do this with the factories was not able to do this, but like maybe maybe it's true, or maybe it's like Pretty much true. Like there's very minimal human intervention. How did you find the Um someone DM'd it. Remember I talked about

Being known well, somebody was like, You're gonna love this is a perfect Billy of the Week. Uh by the way, whatever it is I Forgot your name. And it looks like him and his brother co founded it and their sister's the COO. Yes. So there it's all in the family. Family owned. F uh they own the whole thing, I think, still.

And it did basically they have uh eight thousand employees. twenty six offices around the world. Last year they tripled sales to one point one billion. Um in twenty in twenty twenty one. And uh you know, they're still not as big as Hasbro or Mattel or like you know, Pock Proctor and Gamble, which are like Hasbro's six billion, Mattel's five billion. P and G is like, you know, eighty billion.

Um, but now they're like launching new new products and new new brands. So So they do the toy business. They conquer that, becomes a billionaire there. And Then he's like, all right, what can we do next? So they go into other products. And now Like all right, we're gonna create um what does Procter and Gamble do? They have products in every category.

We're gonna do diapers. And so they go into the diapers thing with this brand called Rascal and Friends. And I think in the first year the Rascal and Friends is gonna do two hundred million. Uh that's not the first year, but last year they're gonna do two hundred million. This the next year they're projecting it to be four hundred million. And so um highly profitable just prints cash and uh the toy business basically prints cash, they use it to invest in these. So how did the diaper business take off? Well they saw that

Huggie's is partnered with Disney. And Procter Gambles partner with Warner Brothers. That's why they could do like, you know, Disney or like Batman, like things like that. And so these guys went partner with Coco Melon, which is the YouTube like kid sensation. And so um Rascalin Friends, uh sorry, last year was a hundred million, this year 150 million, next year projecting two hundred million.

Um Then they also did this with hair care. They have a brand called Monday Hair, and they did Pet Food. With brand called Nude. They did a collagen brand called DOS. And they're just trying to replicate this with each thing. So the hair curve brand.

is gonna do sixty million this year. And so there's stacking these on top of each other. But then The coup de gras. The biggest one they're trying to do of all of them. There's this thing called the

Zero tech. Um So what are they trying to do with Zero Tech? They're basically trying to create a factory. That can just build you houses. Robots that build houses is the the big idea.

And so they're trying to create The biggest factory uh on earth. Period. Uh bigger than Tesla's Giga Factory, bigger than all of it. So let me sh let me give you the stats on this thing. Um

Where is it? So They're trying to scale it up to one point six million square meters, two kilometers away. Okay, so two so that's uh that's about a mile and a quarter long. Yeah. Two two thousand two thousand K?

Yeah, and two thousand meters. Yeah. They're trying to h yeah, they're trying to um To trying to hire two thousand more people in the next twenty four months, which is just insane. And so the their idea with this um With this factory for the for the Zero Tech thing, it's basically like you can design a home. They ba basically took a gaming engine like Unreal or like uh Unity or whatever.

And they're like, Okay, if you go into a game like the Sims You can like Create a house and you could paint the walls and you could put a couch there and then you could put make the floors different. Like In the sims, you can basically design a house, you could design a whole neighborhood, you could design a a large house, small house, whatever. So they're like, Why don't we do that? Except it's real. Like when you're done, you click

Print. And then the robots basically just make that house. And so this is what they're trying to do with this thing, which honestly just sounds like Yeah. Frankly bizarre.

Um, but that's what they're doing. And so that's the that's the new venture that they're spinning out of this called Zoo Tech. And it's basically a way to To use robots to build homes, which is just kind of insane. That is built the architecture software using a gaming engine. What do you think made him so special? I mean this guy like I'm looking at him and he he just seemed like a

H have you ever met any New Zealand guys? Yeah, like they're like the same like the stereotype of like an Australian guy is like fun loving Loves to get drunk. bad with money, will spend all their money because they're like they just want to like be care like a lot of Australians don't have a h a lot of savings'cause they just don't mind spending at the bar. They're fun loving. They're always a blast to be around. Uh

That's and that's what this guy like if I had to like just look at him and like oh this guy seems like he goes all in on things Well I think the key to he's a redhead. Key to success. So, you know, redheads, they they they have a chip on their shoulder from day one that they're they they got something to prove. So I think that's like a uh Uh that's a big deal. I would say eighty percent. For real, though. Twenty another twenty percent is hard work. This is a great find. This guy's cool and he's only thirty five, I think. Yeah, so I'm gonna read you some of his uh

Tips for success. Okay. You can give me a uh Thumbs up, thumbs down, or or or meh or whatever, you know, if it's if it's just okay. So the first one. Rethink your vocabulary. I never use the word employee. 'Cause we're high performing team and we're playing different positions. I'm coaching the team. I'm trying to get the best players in all the positions. We have team members, not employees in our business. What do you think? Cool.

I I do the same thing. I I I hate calling them employees. Sometimes I'll use the word staff, but I hate using employees. Uh but yeah. I do the same thing I also I'll never s like when somebody um And they say it worked for for you, I'm like, No, you work with me.

That was exactly what I was gonna say. I I always correct people on that. Oh yeah. You know I work for Sean. No, you don't work for Sean. You work with me. And I I never say I work for anybody. I work with them and it's a it's an arrangement. It's a partnership. Um, I do X and I get Y, and you do X and you get Y. And that's it. Um

Hold yourself to that. Okay, next one. Bullets before cannonballs. He goes, the first thing I learned, or one of the things I learned early on was to fire bullets before cannonballs. We're always firing lots of little bullets everywhere to see if those work. If they work, then we fire a cannonball behind it. Love it. That's a good analogy.

Um All right, break the rules. I went to university, I studied law and commerce, but I didn't like it to like it to be honest. And there was a big big hill I had to walk up every day to get to law school. I didn't like that hill either. I did it for a year and I thought Oh why not have a cr

Why don't I have a crack at just doing this work thing? So I moved to China. I didn't even make it to my second year of law. I missed out, which is probably a good thing, a blessing in disguise. Okay. Yeah, I don't really get the the jump really well to move to China, but did different strokes for different folks, but I appreciate it. All right, don't be shaken by competition. So he says In the early days we had this tiny production lab, we spent half our money on an injection motor machine. We started to produce our hot air balloon, which didn't sell many of because it didn't meet regulations globally.

So we went online and copied a couple of products. One was a Frisbee. We got sued after it. We went to a toy fair And we got through day one, but the companies we copied came to our booth and yelled at us. Then we started innovating and it was our journey that took us six or seven years to get successful at product. We lived off Very, very, very little. We scrapped Uh we scrapped and scraped to find something that would work.

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Let me skip these. Let me see if there's another good one. Um Okay. Don't lose sight. He says, I remember when we made our first million.

Okay. Fan of the show. Um we did we did a big deal with David Beckham. Where we made it David Beckham Tamagotchi at Walmart. I was twenty one at the time.

We got a twenty eight million dollar order from Walmart, but we couldn't finance it. Walmart ended up canceling the whole order. We were stuck with half of the Damagis. We were so excited because it was this. Because there's awful amount of money at the time. We had no money, but we got a little bit complacent. We were always checking how we were doing every month and we ended up losing, I think, uh two hundred thousand that month. We lost a bunch of money, we sat down and we thought, From this day forward, we are never ever gonna have a month where we lose money.

We took that approach and we were never lost money again. We were always profitable. This guy's awesome. What's his name? Nick M Mulbray? Yeah, Mo Mo Bray, I think. Hey, if anyone knows Nick or can do the introduction to him, this guy, I w would love to have him on the pod. This guy's awesome. This guy's not does not define the redhead jump. Love Redhead. My friend said something really funny, he goes, Yeah, my wife he uh

He goes, um We're I'm doing this deal and like Uh, we were dealing with some people that I was like, I just can't tell if this person's like all hype or they're just gonna go like a sh a charlatan or what. And um and I was like for some reason they're just not getting along with this other person and I don't know what to make of it. He goes, Oh he goes, I've seen this many times in business.

Two charlatans can't be in a room at the same time together. They just combust. They can't stand it. She's a redhead. She can't s she told me once, I can't stand being in the room with another redhead. And I was like, it's the same thing with charlatans. And he goes, He goes, How do you know if one is a charlatan one person's a charlatan? You put them in the room with another known charlatan, they'll hate each other. So funny. 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. Hotspot grow better. Our buddy Julian has this company called Demand Curve. He's like, Hey, will you speak at this like Demand Curve conference thing? And I'm like You know, you know the rule. The rule is

Hell no, we don't do nothing for nobody except if it's our friends that we do it for free, right? So it's either big money or a big friend. Julian's big friends, I did it for free. The um So we go on there and I'm like, um I don't know what the It's a

Conference talk about audience building or content or something like that. You get that all the time. I know. And so you go up there and you're like all right I'm gonna do my spiel. But something really interesting happened. So it was me and this other guy Sogar from The show called Breaking Points.

I bet you're familiar with it. Have you heard of this? Or Ben you have to know about breaking points. You know what this thing No, you guys don't know about this. Okay, this is basically like a like a TV show? Like a podcast. You know you know the Young Turks that that channel on YouTube that was like they didn't bring point of the show. So breaking points, which is like Sager and Crystal. They do their own version of like a political correspondence show or whatever, like a

I don't even know what you call it. Political talk show, basically. And they do it. They started off just doing it on YouTube or whatever. And um and it's kind of blown up. And so this he was the guy was on the panel with me. And there was a few things he said that I was like really taking notes on. I was like, Oh, that's really smart.

And also this what this guy's doing is actually pretty awesome and I think Could get huge. Like it looks on the surface. Sort of goofy. It looks like kids playing dress up'cause it's like They they made it look like a talk show. So they're like at a desk. He wears a suit and tie.

Um You know, so it's like But it's like you know. Is it like a lib a liberal news th it's like a liberal uh a young Turk thing or is it like conservative? Uh, I don't know how they would call it. I'm not very political, so I don't really even wanna say I don't wanna misclassify it, but it's m the uh their shtick is like

They um They cover the things they say the things that the mainstream media is not covering or is either under covering these stories. Or they're just like spinning it for their own agenda and they're like, We'll just try to say the truth, like what we think the truth is. And like we'll just call it like we see it. Um, which again everybody says, but the question is like, how close are you to actually doing that? It's like company values. Every company says.

Integrity is our core value as they like, you know, destroy the earth. And so um And and so that's what these guys do. And so they they have this set and it like looks like you you went to a you know when you go to like KFC In like China.

I d I don't know when I do that. Canada? Where where have you gone, Sam? You know like uh on Friday nights when you're like alright at Domino's in Tokyo? You're like you know that feeling? Sorry I had to big dog you there with my international experience, but uh But yeah, basically they had this like I lived in China and they had this phrase MQR. Like I'd be like, Yeah, I go to McDonald's here, but I don't I don't really like it. I don't know why they're like, Oh, it's N QR. Well thank you are.

Not quite right. And it's the perfect description, which is It's almost exactly right, but it's not quite right. And I'm seeing it. All my Asian friends say it's same, same, but different. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Same, same, but different. Like this this knock off Nike shoe. It's same, same, just different. Exactly. So anyways, that's like what these guys' show looks like. It looks almost like a knockoff.

That's kinda the n the you know, my initial judgment. Then I started watching it. And they got on Joe Rogan and I was like, Wow, this for and Joe loves the show. Joe's like Joe basically He was telling me just now, he goes. I go, how'd you get on Rogan? And he's like,

Rogan was just a fan of the show and he just reached out, was like, Hey, I love the show, guys. And they're like, Wow. Uh we kinda didn't think we were like, you know. We had like most people like early on you kind of feel like am I doing the right thing? I quit my job to do this. It's not big, huge, on YouTube?

It was on YouTube and How many views? An episode. Uh they'll have like I don't know, they have like eight hundred thousand subscribers or something like that. So they're doing a good job now. But this was like before that. Joe got on it. Well uh Joe was like into it when it was pretty early and he was like They're like wow, Joe Rogan, amazing. If the number one podcaster in the world thinks this is like awesome. Maybe we're on to something. So they just kept going.

And then um Joe invited them on the show and then they're they they've launched like a paid subscription because they're like, Hey, look. Like if you go to their website, it just says Help us uh what is it? So breaking point. I can't what what does the the title say? Goes Like

Help us be uh mainstream media or something like that, like help us defeat mainstream media or like cover the stories that they don't cover. S some like it it painted them as an enemy, which is great. Uh like just a smart smart like marketing tactic, basically. Um But but basically the so

So Joe uh their first show, the first paid show, Joe Rogan came on. And so, you know, they like had this like amazing way to like kinda kick off. But that's because they had put in a few years of like hard work before that. It's like four years old now. And um And so he said a couple of things that I thought were really smart. I'm gonna share them here.

In fact, I actually think we should just run the whole uh interview we just did with him, like as a My First Million episode, if they're those guys are down with it, because I thought there's a bunch of interesting things. One thing he go they go. How'd you get started? Like how what's how'd you get your first thousand customers and and or or like subscribers or whatever. And I we all get asked this a bunch. I rarely do you hear something that interesting.

But he said a pretty interesting answer. He goes, Well, here's what I did. I saw that in my niche. There were these people that were already like popular accounts. And so it's like I just went and looked at who are the top one percent of of like popular accounts already. And then I just decided, okay, the first content I create is just gonna be

Content that they love. Because if they love it. They'll share it. They'll kind of endorse it. And that'll drive a bunch of growth right away of the right audience. And so what he did was he's like, Okay, these they have this, they need data, they need visualizations, they need charts. Cool, so I'm just gonna do or they need transcripts, like quick transcripts of like what Trump just said.

They need to have like the edited Well formatted transcript. So he's like, we weren't doing our own opinions and analysis. No. I would just sit there and I would live when Trump was talking. I'm transcribing it. I clean it up. I format it. I'm the first to post.

Trump said this. And then those guys would retweet it. He's like and that's how I got my first like ten thousand subscribers. He's like and after you get ten thousand There's psychologically the thing where you'll just start growing faster because people want to follow popular accounts. What is your advice though to these people on growing an audience? Um, my advice was pretty simple. I go

I don't think you should grow an audience for the sake of growing an audience. Like um the audience is basically a byproduct of You doing something else you really want to do. Like if you just got that itch you wanna scratch, like oh I wanna create content. Like I I I've seen YouTubers. I think I could do it. That's actually a better reason to go do it than

If I can get to a million subscribers, then I'll upsell my merch to this percentage of them and I can make this much money. It's like Don't do the calculating way to do it. Just be like I'm doing this'cause either like in my case, it was I'm super curious about these topics. And like

How am I gonna justify spending nine hours reading about this bullshit topic that like I had I have no agenda for. Well, if I had a podcast or a YouTube channel, then I could just like Make the content out of that. Then it has like a kind of like a purpose to my curiosity. I have like an end point to it. I have a justification for my curiosity. I get to be professionally curious.

Or like lately when I when I originally started the pod, I literally wrote this in a doc. I've shared this before. I wrote Most likely nobody's gonna listen to this. But There's a hack.

Really smart and interesting successful people are willing to go on a podcast even if it has they don't know how many listeners it has. And so At the very like my main goal is to just have an excuse To meet with fifty Awesome people that live in San Francisco. Like I'm in the tech hub of the unit of the world, San Francisco.

And I don't drink coffee, so I don't want to just invite these guys to coffee. I'll invite'em on my podcast instead. That was my whole Like Number one success criteria and like number one agenda with like starting this podcast was, oh, it's a great excuse to hang out with these people that are like. They're nearby. They're in my orbit. And don't do it. And like I don't I don't know. It's better than saying, Let me just get lunch with you, please, please, please. And so that was why I started the pod.

Dude, I have uh Like people ask me all the time as well, how to build an audience and I used to have like an somewhat academic answer where I'm like, Well, you just gotta like find content that like ranks well other places and you repurpose do the all this, this, this. And lately I've just like quit saying that and I just go, Well Just like Be an interesting person, live an interesting life, and just be at least kind of okay at talking about it publicly.

Right. The thing you just said, like If you're interesting If you lead an interesting life then all you have to do is share 10% of it.

And you only have to be okay at talking about it. G give people a s a peek into ten percent of your life. Yeah. And you don't even need to be that great. And so people like over optimized for like this, like the like you know, it's kinda like when people talk about search. They're like, Well, you need all those keywords and do this, do this. And I'm like Or I just do dope shit and write about it and people just gotta go straight to the website and look it up. And that's harder. And uh I still think you need that other stuff, but like I s I still think that it's mostly a game of just be interesting, learn interesting stuff, and be kinda good at talking about it so everyone else can consume.

And like there are people that do it other ways, like Trung, who used to work for you at the Hustle, you kind of discovered him, you set up, I think, his Twitter account. Now he's got like whatever. I don't know, a million Twitter followers, something crazy. And I don't think Trung took that advice. Like I don't think Trung lives a interesting life or has this interesting business experience that that's what he's sharing. Well, he's he he learns about interesting he but yes, that is true. And so he did exha I you could make a remix. Right. You could make the argument, yeah. But you could also make the argument that he's leaving leading an interesting life in that he's learning and discovering cool stuff. Uh so that's like you you could make the argument both ways. But I remember

I'm not I I hate saying this because I'm definitely not like a ladies man, but I've come a long way from being like a Napoleon dynamite look alike. Yeah, I'm more of a malesman. I'm a guy's guy, but not the way that you think it not the way that it's usually meant. Like I'm many guys' guy. And uh but I've come a long way from looking like Napoleon Dynamite and I remember like I had some like eighteen year old ask me about like meeting girls and I was like shocked. I was like your your your bar for advice is quite low here, but let me give you some advice if I could give anything Which was basically I'm like, you'll meet more women if you just focus on yourself and have cool badass hobbies and just invite people to come and do those hobbies with you. And I was like that's the that's the coolest hack ever for a young man. You just do dope shit and then you just bring along people. That's kinda like that with content.

Th yeah, that's exactly right. I think there are a bunch of different ways to win. You could be uh Like Ben for how to take over the world, I would say He's curious about these you know, great men in history or like these, you know, the h these sort of like Biographies or whatever.

And then what he does is he does a service. He says I'll save you time. So I call him. A time saver. Because he packages it down into something concise.

The Hustles newsletter and Milk Road's newsletter is exactly that. It's a time saver. Uh so what do you do? You curate, you package, you deliver. Then you have like you know, sort of like a remixer. A remixer basically takes Maybe one or two unrelated things. Spins them together, puts them together and and and puts that out there.

You have an original content creator. That's like a Naval or Abology. They're coming up with like independent theses about the world and opinions and analyses that that really just originate from them and they put that out in the world. Um And then you have what I'll call like a lifestyle influencer. That's what you're talking about, which was

Lead an interesting life, share ten percent of it. So there's all these different play styles. that you can use. It's like in a video game it's like you want to play tank. You wanna play PS, you wanna play healer, you could play all these different roles and they'll all they're all winning. You just have to know which play style you're trying to play. Um so I see that with with content.

Um But the one you s you recommended, which is live an interesting life and then share 10% of it. I think that that is the most fun play style to play. And the most valuable and the most unique. Because anybody

Honestly, no offense to Trump, but like many people do and anybody can Go read. Fucking Reddit and Wiki Wikipedia and like create a thread of, you know. Here's the story of how, whatever, the dude created Starbucks and it's like The guy the the one that's repeatedly done is is the hot sauce guy. What's the hot sauce guy? Yeah. Everyone talks about that guy. That guy is the king of the threadboys.

Yeah. Every threadboy at home has like a small bottle of sriracha on a shrine. And they're like, I'll always remember the day I could tell people that Sriracha started in Thailand. Or the peppers were so bad that the neighbors at the factory hated him. And they don't even advertise that it's the same bottle since day one. Yeah. But uh the one you said was the most I think the most rewarding play style. And um

My trainer had a great phrase for this'cause I was like, um I was asking about his business. I was like I was trying to help him with his business and he ended up dropping like Like I thought I'm I'm the business guy. I'm gonna share with him this great knowledge. And I was like, You got to think about your niche, your audience, who's your idea you know, who's your customer persona. And I was like Just looking back, you know, just cringe city about like trying to help him with these things. And he just said I was like, You don't have a website, you don't have a business card, blah, blah, blah.

And he just go and I was like, So who's your you know, you gotta know who's your customer? He goes My customers are people that love what I do. And I was like I was like okay, that sounds like some Smooth ass R and B lyric, but What does that mean? What are you gonna do with that? He's like

And and I didn't understand at that time, but he just l he's like, That's it. He's like My customers are gonna be the people that love what I do. What and he's it's like, Okay, well what do you do? He's like I'll train you on your fitness and during that during that session. I'll train your mind as much as your body, right? It's mindset. And because the mindset's totally aligned with this stuff, and that's what I'm into. And I'll just share with you stuff that I'm doing with my own training, with my own mindset training or my personal training.

I'll work out with you together sometimes and I'll come to your house and we'll just kick it for hours. I don't I don't watch the clock, right? Like That's how I wanna live. And people uh my customers are gonna be people who want that. And I'm not gonna try to go backwards and say, What does the market want? I'm gonna conform myself to it. And so there was this real artist streak to it. I thought, All right, well, that sounds cool, but like

That shit don't work in the real world. Sure enough. How does it work? I was his only client, I think, at the time. And

He and we work out like in my garage, but we just leave the garage open. And then people walk by and they walk by and he never he never he just super friendly with him, but never says, like, hey, by the way, you know, if you're ever interested in my services, here's my card. Never. Like They would walk by, he would joke around with them, sort of like just uh flirt with people, and then he would just like, you know Go back and keep doing our thing. He's just a happy guy.

By like the seventh day, people are like, Man, it looks like y'all are having fun. The music looks fun, the home gym. They saw us like setting it up each day would get better. And they saw us joking around, they would see my you know, I'm breaking a sweat. They would see how we're using like we'd use our tree and we'd use all the stuff that was just around us'cause I didn't have all this equipment. And it just looked like two people having a lot of fun, and so my neighbor signed up. Just a bunch of just a bunch of sweaty, shirtless guys hugging. Yeah.

Guess what? People wanted some of that. And so my neighbor signs up. Then her husband signs up. Then the other neighbor signs up. Then my sister's visiting. She does a workout. She signs up. My mom signs up, my brother in law signs up. She their niece my niece and nephew sign up. Everybody starts signing up. This guy now is a full roster, still never had a website. Never had a business card. Uh, never went and knocked on a door or try to do a sales pitch.

All these people are conformed their schedules to him. He's not even a trainer. He's just a guy who just comes in and hangs out talk. The best part is he's me. I don't even know what to call. Who just hang out with you. I got a guy. Long story short, this phrase of who are my customers, the people that love what I do. That is like playing in my opinion business at the highest level.

Because it is The most freeing. Imagine if that was true. That's the most freeing thing you could do. Right. Same thing with content creation. Who reminds who how am I gonna get subscribers? How am I gonna grow my audience? I'm just gonna do the most interesting things. I'm gonna share it as I go and the people who follow be gonna be gonna be the people who love what I do.

And like that is just I think a much better way to go than like this. frankly, a sort of desperate approach that I think most people take to building a business, getting customers, getting subscribers, all that stuff. Dude, let me show you an example of I think might be the exact opposite of what we're talking about. So I've been researching and I think someone's DMed me on this on Twitter, but I found this thing called strong land, like the the word strong and then the word land, strong land. Publishing. His main thing is called

Uh life, math, money. All right. Check this out. So this guy He owns maybe half a dozen to a dozen. I've I've found like four or five so far. uh different twitter handles. One is is called the Forty Eight Laws of Power. But

Or quote bot, I believe. Another one is called The book of Pook, P O O K and the Forty Eight Laws of Power. But Quote. Or quote bot. It's just like he's got a ton of quotes loaded into this.

And it has maybe two or three hundred thousand followers. Another one is called the Book of Pook. I think that's how you pronounce Pook. P O O K. And he's just like quoting like this pickup artist from the early 2000 that no longer writes. And then he owns a handful or more of these like just Twitter handles that are just like generic. And they're all basically focused for men. And it's about getting laid, meeting girls, making money, getting fit. And he owns like six or twelve of these handles, which is obviously like Not the hardest thing to grow because it's like these cool taboo topics. So like it's one of those things where you don't talk about your friends, but everyone wants to be better at all those things. So you follow these these guys. And he Like has like a circular thing where he like retweets each one.

And each handle links off to a gumroad page that sells a document related to that. So like The Forty Eight Laws of Power One. It's like here's how you get more powerful and power here's how you get more power and influence at your job. Which like who doesn't want to learn that? And he sells it for eighty nine dollars. And then it's another one's like here's a bunch of lines to Pick up girls. Here's like

a workout plan to get abs in eight weeks, or here's like the perfect way to eat healthy and feel good. And If I had to guess, I would say that he's doing between five hundred and a million dollars a year in sales just off these gumroad things. Because you can see the sales. So basically um not the sales, the reviews, I think. No, no, it's a sale. So like for example. Live intentionally ninety day self improvement program. It's

I think it costs eighty nine dollars and it says nine thousand five hundred and six sales. How much is that? Is that nine hundred dollars? That's half a million bucks. Uh I don't know how long, right? So maybe this has been out for years. I'm not sure. I think he's only been doing it for two years. And then there's like, you know, his crypto one, there's his like uh tw Uh yeah, build your Twitter audience and How much is that? How many how many did that sell?

That has five thousand four hundred uh sales. So Oh how much hours? Uh, let's see. I want how much is it? Hundred seventy nine dollars. So Golly. So his Twitter one has generated a million dollars. His next one has generated five hundred thousand dollars.

I think pretty safe to say he's doing at least half a million a year, probably closer to a million. Is that funny? Is this is this hilarious? This little guy and his name is Harsh Strongman, I believe his name is. So it's like an anonymous name. And his blog is called life mathmoney.com. And if you go to and look up who is harsh strongman, and he says I'm a financi Certified Financial Planner in India. And I guess he he just has this blog and he talks about this stuff and I and I think it's cool. I think there's this anonymous blogger who only uses a f some type of like free ish looking website builder and uh gumroad is just killing it.

And I think it's awesome. That's amazing. That is This is hilarious. That's awesome, right? Horse strongman.

A man who just w embodies life, math, and money. Think of a mid twenties independent Indian Certified financial planner Vikram. This is my cousin Vikram. I just found out what Vikram does for a living. There's a reason alpha and accountant both start with A. This guy's as alpha as they can get. The alpha accountant is gonna be his new thing and he's gonna have a he's gonna have a Twitter and all on like Excel courses. The Andrew Tate of Excel. Ha ha ha.

All right. Dude, I uh on air, I need you to help me make a decision. All right. So I am in the process of I'm I stopped in Saint Louis. So I'm recording this from Saint Louis, but I'm driving from New York to Austin. I always stop in Saint Louis for five days to see family and I'm gonna drive back to Austin. I miss New York. I miss Brooklyn. Already.

I absolutely you missed the energy. Yeah. There's something about the city. The city. You have to go romantic when you're talking about New York for some reason. That's why I refuse to go there. I love it. I love it. I like I'm in grind mode. I love being there. But there's one thing that I'm currently doing. That is it it's it is something that I told myself I'm not gonna do it. And that is bitch about taxes and let taxes decide where I live. I'm one hundred percent doing that right now. So I wanna tell you some numbers.

So Uh I currently live in Texas, which has no state income. I think the federal What what's the the federal uh tax uh tax rate for the highest income is what's it, thirty six percent or thirty seven? Thirty six ish, yeah. All right. So I think it's a little above up thirty thirty six percent. So

Hypothetically. On a million dollars of income, I'm spending three hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year on taxes or around thirty thirty one thous yeah, federal because Texas doesn't have income. So thirty one thousand dollars a month in tech uh sorry, uh thirty one thousand a month, yeah. Which adds up to about thirty, uh three hundred and seventy a year. In New York If I move there. I would be

basically be giving away fifty one to fifty two percent of my income. because uh the city of New York has like a three point eight percent tax rate and then the state of New York has a nine point seven percent tax rate. And so that means I'm I would have to be spending an additional Eleven thousand five hundred dollars a month. in income taxes.

Plus if I were to listen to the New York rent. That's the New York State rent. That's not even the actual rent of your place, yeah. Yes. Plus the to rent of a place, my current mortgage right now in Austin is around four thousand to five thousand dollars a month. I would not want to purchase a place in Brooklyn. I would want to rent a place. And my budget to renting to have a family there would be around

Nine thousand to fourteen thousand dollars a month in rent. Probably thirteen. Probably 11 to 12, I could probably get a a place that I would want. And that's what I would spend. So I'd be spending just and then let's say my income, this is all hypothetical, I'm not saying what I do or don't make. If my income is two million, I'm gonna be spending around$280,000 a year in extra income taxes plus an additional$150,000 a year. And Uh

R Meaning m my costs are gonna be like four hundred to five hundred thousand dollars a year. an additional costs just to live there. Not including the fact that like I'm in St. Louis right now, I just went out to eat for three people is fifty one dollars. If I'm in New York for three people for breakfast, it's gonna be, you know, like yeah uh a hundred bucks, two times the cost. So

How would you justify Making the move or not move. Well, I kinda did myself, right?'Cause I live in California. And California has the same problems that New York has.

Uh high cost of living. High state tax, that sort of deal. And now and and I you know I work remote. I can live anywhere at this point. Um And so you know

It is very tempting, especially when you hear like you meet people who who live in Texas, then you meet people who live in Puerto Rico, they're like You pay federal thirty seven percent, I pay four percent. I pay zero percent on capital gains. It's like wow. Um, all right, I guess that's also an option. So there's sort of like no end to it. And I you know I used to live in Indonesia. And um, you know, for two grand a month or three grand a month, like, you know, you're living large um out there. So like You know, you could have a I ha I had a cook and a maid that lived in my house. I had a driver that drove me everywhere and like, you know, didn't have to think about anything. So

There really is no end to this idea of like Optimizing cost of living. Uh versus, you know, like what you want to do. There is no end to it, but maybe there are thresholds.

Yeah, there's there's more rungs to the latter than even what you presented, is I guess what I'm trying to say. You could you can take it even further. Um I think. That I've always thought of like goes back to that.

What would you know, what advice would my eighteen year old self give me? My eighteen year old self, which was like a more simple minded version of myself, would say this. Doesn't mean they're right, but they would say this. Wait, I thought you're rich. Like Oh you wait, you're Wait, so you're moving to where you don't want to live to save money? That sounds not very rich. Right. So if it's all the same if you if it's all the same in terms of where you enjoy living

Cool, then obviously pick the pick the difference. If you enjoy one more. I would go to it. Now it's the hard part is how do you price that enjoyment? How do you price that energy of New York? How do you put a dollar on it? We're gonna put a dollar. We're gonna say it's around four or five hundred thousand. But dude, for the same price, I can live in Texas six months and in New York six months and fly private back and forth. Twice actually.

Like two round trips and it'd still be cheaper. Uh but that's Yeah, but it would also add hassle to your life, right? So there's there's some situations where the variety adds what you want, right? It's like a win win. It's like, Oh yeah, I don't want to be in one place all year anyways. Or I like the weather this time of year in one place and this time in another place. So I'm just gonna move around the weather and that happens to coincide well with my tax situation.

But basically my thought my my simple thought process is this. If you're rich. You can do tax optimizations. But Mm.

make sure it's not driving the car, right? So it gets to be in the car, but it doesn't drive the car. So I would do Some things that that are no sweat that are gonna save you tax money. Oh great, I'll do that. I would not move, which is like one of the biggest things that changes your like day to day quality of life. I would not move to a different place just like based on

Taxes as the primary reason. I would have to have another primary reason. So for example, my reason for being in California is that Me and my wife's family is all here. And I just want to see them more often and have that be like I prefer that lifestyle. I don't know how many years we all have left where we're all healthy.

Or my kids are little and they get to have this experience with their grandparents around, but that matters more to me than Than anything on the tax side. So that's my decisive reason. I made that one reason the priority and then I'll live with the rest. So I think that's what you should do. You should come up with your one decisive reason about where you're gonna live. And I would guess if you're rich, that reason should not be taxes.

I gotta do it unfortunately, but golly, it sucks. In the back of my head it's that famous Michael Jordan quote. That's not the great quote. The great quote from Jordan is Republicans buy shoes too. That is a my first million worthy quote. But also, you know, the you also got to factor in how much more are you gonna make. How much more is maybe the connections you'll make in in New York, one investment you make. Um you can make more. Uh, it's easier to make more uh for a guy like uh uh guys like us than it is to um adjust your lifestyle to try to save more. I th I find it

I would rather work harder to make more money than change my lifestyle in a in a way that I feel like I'm I'm Making some compromise. In order to save money. Well I think I'm gonna do it.

For some reason, I think Miami is just like hell on earth. Uh it's not for some reason. I can name about fifty reasons why I think that. I think Miami's horrible. But at the same time, if I could do it again, I almost wish I would have done so right now I live in Austin, Texas. It's'cause I got a bunch of friends there. My best friends are there. And we had an office there. If I could have done it again, I would have done Florida, though, and New York because Texas doesn't have nice enough weather that I'm just going just for the weather during wintertime. Whereas Florida, like, you know, you could I feel like I'm in the Caribbean sometimes in certain parts of it. I wish I would have done Florida and New York. If I could do it again, that's what I wish I would have done.

I'm surprised the best friends being an Austin thing is not a bigger pull for you. I feel like that's huge. It is. And that's why I'm I'm I don't actually mean if I could do it again. I wish the stars would have aligned so that could have happened is kind of what I mean. What a slap in the face. I'm just glad I'm not y your friend. I'm not Neville who lives right next door to you at Austin. It's like oh The energy in New York, that's what's gonna get you gonna move away from me for the

The energy? Come on, bro. Dude, New York's happening, man. It is quite fun. It is fun. Whenever I walk around there, I get pumped. I do get pumped. Uh but I also like also I also want to kill. Like I I wanna kill someone half the time. Dude, like every time I'm in line at Whole Foods or some grocery store. There I see a fight.

It's just there's always a commo there's always commotions. It's always something's always happening. It always raises my blood pressure and I wanna like I get in like protector mode. That's hilarious. Um all right, what else we got? Wanna do some more? Yeah. Uh I have one thing.

Yeah. So I think we've talked about this and we've just you and I have hired this guy. But go to dreamstudio course dot com. His name's Kevin Shen and I went and looked at his landing page.

This guy's landing page for a course. A is awesome, and B he's selling a course. That I never in a million years would have thought would work. But then I look at it and I think one hundred percent you've nailed it and I understand how you could potentially make a million dollars a year. So it's called Dream Studio Course, and it's a fifteen hundred dollar course. I don't know why he didn't just go two thousand, but it's a fifteen hundred dollar course all on setting up your your Zoom setup, basically. Cause I don't even think it's for a podcaster. But Crazy cool looking landing page. And whenever I s when I saw his landing page, I thought, wow, I really want this.

Uh but how sick is that landing page? It's a great landing it's a great landing page for a bunch of different reasons. Like first just start with headline, so Headline is not A course about uh setting up your Zoom. It says make your home video setup look like Hollywood. Right.

Dream outcome. So sells the dream outcome right away. Then there's A picture of him. That's you know, that shows a really awesome video setup.

So You know, show, don't tell. And then he basically says, Build your studio with expert help. It's a six week course, that'll do whatever. Um, okay, and roll here, so good call to action. And then it's got a bunch of before and afters, right? Here's Tiago Forte. Look, he looked like shit before, now he looks great, right?

Um, you know, look, here's this person, now they look great. And he just keeps showing, you know, basically success stories. Because Fundamentally, when people buy a course, they're buying transformation of some kind. They want to walk in one way and walk out another. And uh most courses, I I've struggled with this myself.

Most courses struggle. Two even understand that you're selling change, you're selling a transformation, not content, not information. And secondly They don't know how to

Show that I can actually provide this for you. And with something that like visual like this, you're gonna get a before and after, which is like Before and after is my favorite sales pitch. Of all time. Um

I think a before and after is the most compelling sales pitch. Do you have like a file or something that has all your your your Saying this as if you have like a like categories of headlines. Of headlines or of Well, you're like uh you're like oh, he's doing the before and after t style headline. I love that style.

Yeah, I have the the in so in my course I teach these. I'm like, here's a bunch of frames you can use. to like sell your product. If you can do it, to individual like this. Yeah, yeah, well. If a visual less uh you use before and after. If it's not visual, there's another one I call Stop the Struggle. So stop the struggle. You sent me this landing page actually. Abstract ops used to have this landing page.

Uh I think you invest in those guys. They it was like a stick figure running away from a tornado. And it just said Stop putting off your back office tack your back back office tasks. Or like stop running away from your your your your to-do list or whatever. And

That's what I call a stop the struggle pitch. Which is basically saying Instead of saying what we do for you, we'll say we can put you out of your pain. Is that pain hurting you? I can stop the pain for you. I can stop the struggle that you're having.

Right. He could do the same thing. So he does dream outcome before and after, right? Like make your home video setup look like Hollywood. He could also have a stop the struggle, which is like Um You know, uh You know, basically a a stop showing up to work looking like this.

And it's like the up the nose camera shot, blah blah blah. And it's like instead you could look like this. after and so you know so basically I have these different frames that I'm like This is a way that you can present your product, your information. And so I because I have a one of my sessions in my course is a landing page one. And so that's where I'm like you this is where you need to use this is on your landing page because your landing page is your twenty four seven salesman.

that will always deliver the pitch exactly as they were trained to do. Twenty four seven. Anywhere in the world, never gonna have a sick day and take no commission on sales. And so like A landing page is the greatest salesman ever, and so I think you should train your salesman to like

Be able to sell your product effectively, essentially. I uh I'm writing a a new landing page now. Um for my thing and it is daunting. Like it No matter how many landing pages I've written.

It is always hard. Well because your keeps going up.'Cause you're like, oh I know what great looks like. I know I want it To be great. And so what would have otherwise been sufficient five years ago, now you look at that and you're like, No, I'm sure it could be better. I know it can be better. Right. Because you're already really you're really good at if I was gonna get somebody on my landing page, I would hire you. And so

You're already very good at it. Um, so the fact that you're feeling daunted is like I don't know, like a musician going back into the studio to record their new album and it's like They know that they're good, but it's like I gotta do it again. I gotta I gotta make magic again. I gotta make a hit again. That's exactly how I feel. I'm staring at this landing page and I'm like, no, this is lame. This isn't up to my standard. This sucks. This sucks. And I'm just like looking for You know what I what I usually do is I what I like to do is find the way that I've been getting inspiration now is I find

uh competitors that exist now or that used to offer a similar service. And I go to uh newspapers.com and I find old articles written about them and I see how reporters used to explain this. And if I see a catchy sentence, I go boom, got it. Um I'm still in that angle. And so that's what I that's how I've been using uh that's how I've been getting inspiration is I just f use newspapers dot com to find old just articles in New York Times written about a certain company that's in the same space. There was this guy we hired once. And I actually don't think it was a smart hire.

I've made a bunch of mistakes now that I think about and about looking back at my business career, I'm like, man. We hired a firm to do that. Like yeah, we hired this person to do this. We paid this Like I remember I don't know, the indie five hundreds like was doing their race or whatever and it was like, Hey, you there's free billboard space. We can give it to you for your app. And then

I was like, Oh wow, that's cool. Indy five hundred, I've heard of that. They're giving us free space. And I we spent the next forty eight hours like filming this fucking video that was gonna go on this billboard, uh this like video billboard. And I was like looking back, I'm like, oh my God, I how cheap was my attention that I let this random cold email Divert me and my marketing teams like Focus for forty eight hours to do what? Like

Did we really think this billboard was going to like Indy five hundred? It was a beer app. So yeah, it was it was on point, but like they're just not trying to download apps in that moment and like we there was no way to track it. It was it was awful. And so like and that's happened to me a thousand times. I've made a thousand dumb decisions like that. I'm like, wow, we really like Spent time and energy doing that? That's like kind of embarrassing now that I know what I know now. Um

So similarly, we had hired a naming agency. Like I hired an agency. I don't think that's a horrible idea. I don't think that's the worst idea. I think it was

Fifteen or twenty five grand. It was a lot of money. And um It took like six weeks, which was also more expensive like If we just had the name, we would have just moved faster.

Um what was the name that they came up with? I don't even remember. It was like the dating app that we were going on. They just came back with like Jersey Shore characters. Your app is called The Situation. So we were thinking what sophisticated but also fun. Party in the front. Yeah. Polly D. Say it with me. Polly D. The latest and greatest data. And so anyways, it wasn't even that they did a bad job. They actually did a good job with their thing, but it was just unnecessary. It was an unnecessary thing to do. But I I do respect the craft because I remember I went to this To the to the meeting room.

It's got Eli was sitting there. Uh I think Eli Altman is his name, I think. Um, and he Was like, Okay, so tell me about it and I was like, So here's the screen and he's like No no just like Tell me about it. I'm like, so it's an app that lets you do this, it has these features. He's like No

Why'd you make the app? And it's like, Oh, because I'm at the time I was single. I was like, so I'm single, I've used dating apps and And he's like, um, I was like, they just they all sucked. And so that's why we want to make this great one. And I like I was kept rushing into the Here's my s answer, here's my solution. He's like But like you said, it sucked. What sucked? Like

Uh, what sucked about them? I was like, Well, they're just like too hard to use. Again, generic. And he's like So like what did you like r do you remember just getting really frustrated about it one time? So he's asking me these good questions to like actually unfold the unpack. The customer stories, the words, the phrases that actually mean something. He got beyond the jargon. And Then I was like, Okay, so what happens now? Now you guys you have this crazy brainstorming exercise where you come up with a name, he's like

No, just like give me some time. And he just took a whiteboard marker and he just sat down cross legged like you know like Indian style in front of a whiteboard on the floor. And I was like a child at play. Yeah. He was literally like a child at play. And he like He just like put his phone out silent and put it outside and I was like whoa Scott me know there's no bigger sign of seriousness than somebody who P turns their phone off and like leaves it outside of the room.

And he's like He just started writing and he started writing long form. Like not I was like, Oh, he's got some names and I went there to go look for names and he's no. He was like You know, dating is Like

Hard. Actually it's not hard. It's just kind of It's it's frustrating. The thing that's frustrating about it is like I know that I'm g I could catch But I'm sitting here trying to perform and he's just like writing out like the feelings that go through the mind of the person that's the the way the story needs to end is it's the most like weirdest horrible thing. Like it's this thoughtful thing and it comes up with like dick butt. Like that's basically it. Um So he you know, so he he did this long process.

And I actually think that there's a um There's some military f phrase which is like um Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Yeah. And I've always tried to go fast when it comes to business stuff. How do I go faster? How do we speed this up?

And I paid the price many times where like if I had just slowed down at the pro on the appropriate step. The whole thing would have gone faster, even though that step would have gone slower. For example Figuring out What is the actual problem I'm solving? What are the what is the pain that the person is feeling here?

What are the words that they would use to describe it that they would that would resonate with them and get them to nod their head and be like, Yeah, I've had that. Um And then how would I explain it in a way that's simple to them? Like that's what he was ultimately trying to do. He was trying to figure out what's the problem. What are the words that somebody would actually use that would resonate with them where they'd nod and be like, you know, amen, preach. Like I I I feel that. You wow, you just

You put it in words better than I even could how I was feeling about this situation. And then Oh, you describe the solution, but instead of describing it in terms of like the features and the the widgets and the gadgets around it. Like You tell me kinda like how my life's gonna be different because I'm using this and this works this different way. And it kinda makes sense that it would work that way, right?

Cause You know, let's use an analogy. Imagine you ran a lemonade stand and blah blah blah. And so that's what he did. And I remember just walking out of that being like wow. That was like an impressive thing this guy did and it looked so unimpressive. He asked me some questions. He kept slowing me down, didn't want to jump to an answer, then he just sat with a marker alone in a room and wrote for a long time on this whiteboard like paragraphs of stuff.

And then through that He came out with like, you know A deep a better understanding about my product than I had to begin with. And I think that that like there's something cool about that process. And like going, when you when you go make this landing page, it's like that's the thing you actually want to do because Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

Well did you um did I show you that I hired a branding agency? I saw that. Yeah, you sent me the like markups. I think I spent fifteen grand on it and they're based they're in Hong Kong. So like I think there was a a s like a I think normally this would cost thirty grand in America. And I was actually happy with the work and this is normally something I would never do and it took'em thirty days. And it's like you just get this deck that like outlines and like I never would have done that. And I think it was totally worth it.

This is not something I ever would have done and I think it was totally'cause whenever you like build shit and you make a website, you slowly iterate and then like you hire new people and you're and they like come up with ideas and you're like, No, we already tried that or like no, that doesn't work because this page looks like this. Like it's I'm like, Let's just get it all uh do it all the right way the first time and that's something I never in a million years would have done and it was worth it. Yeah, we did that for the Milk Road too. We hired uh this guy Jeremy Um Who did our Initial branding and I never hired a branding agency like that for for a startup that I was doing, but I was like, All right.

I told Ben, I said, We're not gonna do it off the bat. Like you're saying you're doing it up front? Um, I think that's okay. I don't think that's necessarily bad, but I also don't think it's necessary. And so Usually for a start, you just kinda wanna do what's necessary. Off the bat, I already had a quarter of a million in revenue. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I had told Ben I said He's like, uh he made a logo like in five minutes on Canva and I was like

All right, I like this. I like the name Milk Road. Sounds fun. Goofy. Easy to say. Easy to we I can get the domain for two thousand dollars. Let's do it. And he made this logo in like Fiverr or Canva or something like that. And I was like, All right. Um Let's run with it. He's like, You know, don't you think we should uh blah blah blah and I was like all right, here's the deal. Um

It seems like you want to spend more cycles on it because you think the brand is important and I agree, the brand will be important. I just don't think it's important for us to get our first Ten thousand subscribers. Or even a hundred thousand subscribers. So let's make a deal. If we can get to a hundred thousand subscribers through our jenky

That will we'll reward ourselves by investing in the brand because I think ultimately the brand uh the this whole exercise of like having a cool brand, it's really for our own pride. More so than it's gonna improve the like conversion of this right now or like it's unproven how that's gonna do. So let's let's reward ourselves. So we got to a hundred thousand.

And then we hire this guy. And then he took us through these like cycles and you know, like Yeah, review after review of these like decks. I thought both were good. I have this guy in India who's like my designer for all my projects.

And uh to create that milkman character who I think is actually the best part of the brand. Um He actually made it. This guy in India made it in like one day. And well I was like, Wow, perfect. Thank you.

Uh that's exactly what I wanted. Uh thank you so much. And so we just like ran with that. Dude, I think uh I think the outcome was actually quite good. I loved your brand. Um Uh no, I thought it was good. I thought it was a win. I told you the story, right? When I w I went on vacation to Hawaii and the

Bright. uh guy Jeremy, he lives there. He lives in in Hawaii and he's like Oh, you're here. Like let's hang out. I was like, Oh yeah, great. And so he comes to the hotel. He walks out barefoot.

And I was like, uh Something happened like we're okay. And he's like, um He said, What do you mean? I was like, you're not wearing shoes, dude. And he's like, Oh, I don't wear shoes. I was like, you don't wear shoes? And I was like, most fucking Branding agency thing I've ever heard. The most creative guy?

Respect for taking the I'm a creative. Should have. The the the peak? Like you thought the beanbags in the office was it? You thought that You know, having these like Is he like a a white guy who moved to Hawaii or is he born in the guy who made guy moved to Hawaii.

When they moved there, they were like, Oh, we don't need shoes on the island. Like we we just live we're part of the island. And so they put their shoes in storage. And so he's like, Yeah, we had to go travel to Australia to go visit our family. He's like, I had to go get my shoes out of storage. You don't need shoes that much that you didn't even just chuck it in the garage. Like just in case, like you you put them far away. Like That's the equivalent of the guy, the branding agency guy putting his phone on uh turning it off and leaving it outside the door. Dude, just so just so for the record, I'm on board with that. I think shoes are stupid. I walk around barefoot all the time. When it gets above it if it's eighty f above eighty five No shirt, no shoes.

Just that's that's just the rule. I'm always outside shirt. I'm wearing talks right now. No. These pieces are packaged. No, man. I you gotta get the calluses on there. Then you then you it's like you're g wearing shoes anyway. I dig it. Um But I'm happy you're back. We went I went a we I had Ryan Holliday on and uh we'll do a recap about that and then Yeah, I believe for one day you guys do a podcast about how great Hitler is. I was like, Wow, all right.

Yeah. Yeah. We had to switch some things up. Basically we did this pot on hit on Hitler and I was talking about how sad it was. And then Our freaking YouTube guy, I he like put up this stupid thumbnail and it said like Um Things or no, uh Uh, things from call things something about like it was about like

Like, you know, things you could learn from Hitler on business building. And I was like, Whoa, no, not a chance. And I texted Ben, I go, Ben, you gotta get rid of this. This is that's not at all what we talked about. This is uh you know, I And it had my face on it. It would have my face next to it. And I was like, dude, that's not even remotely what we talked about. We talked about how horrible he was. Um and so yeah, we talked about Hitler and had Ryan Holiday on just when right when you left Yeah so I decided to come back I cut my emergency short to come back. I can't let you totally throw our YouTube guy under the bus because he did contact me. He do he was like, Hey, I think I'm gonna do the Hitler angle. I think it'll get tons of clicks, but obviously it'll be controversial. Do you think that's cool? And I was like, Yeah, man, go for it. Anything for clicks. More YouTube videos. And you're like and you're like, Yeah, put Sam's face on it while you're at it. Not my face, only things. Can you brighten the image? Can you brighten his face up a little bit? Can you turn down the color balance? Can you get Sam doing like a heart shape with his hands? That was the worst, man. I saw that picture and I was like Baron, I can't have this, man. You've got to delete it immediately. Please delete that.

The the reason I thought it was okay is because In the first thirty seconds of the video. You say Hitler's obviously a bad person, but I don't think it's wrong to like study his life and learn lessons from it. And so I was like, Well he says he's a bad person in the first

Eight seconds of the video. I think it's okay. Uh You ever heard that phrase? If you're explaining you're losing. Yeah, if you're if you're explaining your losing, that is ac that is totally right. It didn't work. That that that was a that was a I understand. People like that episode, but multiple people were like my favorite episode uh you know, I've sh I just shared it. I don't know if you saw those tweets. There was a bunch of people who really liked that episode. Yeah, and they also like the Ryan Holiday one. So basically, uh

You're welcome. You're welcome for uh for carrying the load for a while. I'm gonna take a Uh, this November, I'm thinking about doing a motorcycle trip and I'll be gone for uh five days. So you're gonna have to see if you can uh Uh I got you. Yeah, you're gonna have to see if you'll can carry the weight during that time.

Yeah. Why um You know why uh why Stalin is so misunderstood. We can talk about this another time, but do you know that YouTube channel Ghost Town Living? Yeah. That's um Those guys who bought that to that abandoned town and they they kind of

vlog about yeah, as it as they've been building it out or whatever. So I invested in it and um it's like me and Ryan, Nathan Barry and like three or four other guys and I wrote a I think I I gave him twenty five grand, so I think I own like Less than one percent of it. But uh Uh I'm wanna I wanna ride a motorcycle there and and check it out. It's like four hours outside of LA. I think it'd be fun. That's interesting. Why do you invest in that? Well, you can ride your motorcycle there anyways, right? So what what

Do you think like this is gonna become a valuable investment or or No, it was an emotional thing. No, it's it's the it was an emotional thing. My justification was it was like me, Ryan, Brent, the guy on there, my friend Brendan, uh and like Three and Nathan Barry and like and then only three other entrepreneurs. So it's seven of us. And I figure, well, if I can like somehow like get invited to like a thing there or get to talk to them and I've invested twenty five grand, I bet I can make that money back. just off these relationships or just like a cool story. Like so that's kinda how I thought about it. And I thought and I asked Nathan Well and so I did it for that reason. And I also

I did the whole deal without seeing any documents and just talking to Nathan. Nathan Barry wrote me a text. He goes, just so you know, there's a little bit of room if you want to join this, here's the pros and here's the cons. Here's why I did it. And uh he and I go, Okay, cool, I'm in then because you just said you're in, I'm in because you're you know, I trust him. So that's it was that simple. That's great. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Um Okay, cool. And I have by the way, I have a couple uh banger topics. I'm in a uh like I have a a lot of research going on right now and uh

I'm excited. There's some that I'm like I'm like they're almost so good. It might need to be its own episode. Like I wanna do one that's basically breaking down Like What's actually going on with VR? Like is VR kinda like Dead in the water. Is it Loki killing it? Like you know, that sort of thing. And so we've been doing a bunch of research on that. Um

And we'll do a whole episode on it on Monday and I'll be the straight man and I'll ask two questions like I don't know anything. Okay. Basically it's good as is. But I think it can be a lot better. I actually want to go talk to a bunch of like the VR app developers. To be like, Yo, give me the real deal. Like what are you like here's what the data tells me.

But like w yeah, you do you de agree or disagree. So I wanna talk to a few other experts, which normally I don't do that. Normally it's like either That happened already accidentally, spontaneously. Yeah, you're not doing it. It's a capital J journalism. Yeah, so this time I'm kinda like, I don't know. Going further for some reason, but I I it's I think it's'cause I actually want the answer because I want to know if I should be investing more in this space or not. And um

Uh and also dude, a couple of my investments have taken off. Like the first a f some of the early deals with with the fund is now two years old. And we now have two or three companies that are like Forty X to eighty X returns. Um not liquid yet, so you know, anything can happen, but That's like a crazy multiple and it's like

It's such a g it's like so. In my brain I knew intellectually this is how it's supposed to go. Supposed to do this angel investing thing, you get this basket of companies, and then you're looking for these breakouts that are going to return this huge, you know, multiple. uh twenty x, thirty x, fifty x, hundred x, a thousand x returns. And then when you start to see it actually happen, you take out the calculator app and you're like, wow.

This is incredible.$100,000 can turn into 10 million just like that. And$100,000 can turn into Five million if it does one more like leap here. Um and that's like pretty exciting. So so that that's just been a like I don't know, for some reason that's been a Um

I don't know, like a second wind in terms of like Once things I I I guess in general, when things become real Um Things always ratchet up. I've always felt this way. Like the first time I took a dividend out of my business

I was like oh okay, I was I thought I was already like, you know, all in, but like this made it even more real and exciting and I'm ratchet it up when I thought I was already ratchet it all the way. And the same thing's happening with the startup investing stuff where now as these startups actually break out. It's like you ratchet it up even more, even though you thought you already were. But that that tangible hit of success. Same thing happened with content creation. I thought I was already trying and then oh now we're getting a hundred thousand plus per episode. Okay.

I'm start doing research. I'm start doing more like that. I was like I thought I was already doing research, but but no, now I want to push the envelope further. All right, well let's do a whole thing on VR on Monday, uh and we'll talk about your investments. We should actually do it. A thing where we have to Yeah. And we can balance it. We can be like okay, I lost this much money in the stock market and we can do a more wholesome like uh

A more holistic thing, so it's not just Hey, here's some wins. It's like I have to log in and look, though. Yeah, fuck that, never mind.

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