Finding Profitable Business Ideas By Studying Trends, Hood Rat Stuff, and More

You're good at doing this, which is you identify these lifestyle trends. You like pick up pretty quickly on like There's a group of people That are deciding to like live under a different paradigm or different motto or creed. And actually that was like one of the best ways to build a business around that lifestyle.

Because you can speak to that audience and you can differentiate a product. super easily to that crowd. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day song on the road, let's travel, never looking back. One time I went to an amateur fight in uh you've been there, it was at the in Golden State Park or something. Remember that? And there was like a thousand people there and at the fight, you know how so basically when people before people get into a ring

The referee checks to make sure you don't have any weapons on you. It's just like a precaution, but that's like they rub they like rub your shorts to make sure you have a weapon. They check your gloves to make sure that there's not like cement in there. And then they also look at your fingers to make sure in in the May's case you don't have uh long nails. One time I went And they go, No, you gotta cut your nails. And so they made an announcement and they go, Does anyone have a nail trimmer? And someone and we waited for like three or five minutes and someone had to like w run to Walgreens or something and bring a nail and he had to cut the nail. And I was like, hey, like, how did you not figure this out?

Like You know, fifteen minutes ago, this nail thing is not new. Like you should have checked this out before they came out. And B, it was just crazy. That's so funny. That um Yeah, every time they do those checks, I'm like, what has anybody ever discovered like a razor that this guy's sneaking into the cage? Like no They never do it. It's like just a It's like a TSA pat down without ever ever finding anything. Except for that. That's the first time I've ever heard that they like actually found violation. One of the reasons they do it is in the eighties or nineties, there's this guy, he's a real fa it was a real famous fight.

And this guy basically put His hand in like a cast. So it was like and they like they cast it hitt yeah, they it was called uh Paris of Plaster or whatever that phrase is. It it's it's like it was like plaster and then they put his gloves on And they beat up and he beat up this guy so bad. that the guy eventually killed himself because he had so much brain damage it made him depressed and like it was like a really bad thing.

And so that's one of the reasons why they're like like check your gloves so much. It's such a big deal. Wow. The plaster caster. All right. Uh Well, I'm sorry that the guy died and now I I respect these checks. In fact

Uh I too got caught in TSA yesterday in a slow line. And missed my flight. So you know how I'm almost two minutes late for this podcast. I was two minutes late for my flight and missed my flight yesterday. Where were you going? I was going down to uh I went down to Mexico actually. So yesterday I went to Mexico and back. What why? For uh e commerce stuff? For business, yeah. We were visiting a supplier, uh, down there and I wanted to um You know, go check them out. And so

Uh yeah, one day trip, missed my flight. Uh did the thing where I was in the good line. Other line looked a little shorter, so I was like Let me optimize real quick. Took a mental note. I said, all right, that's my line buddy right there.

We'll see who makes it first. He was long gone. He made the flight. I didn't make the flight, so I I ended up and I have clear I got all the shit to skip the lines. Still Still didn't make it. So that was kind of a Yeah, well it's fine. You know, now it's like you know, whatever. The situation is just the price you pay.

Exactly, that's the price I pay. The splinter is the cost of the wood, as I say. And uh that was uh that was that was you know the start of my day. But dude, I crossed the border on foot yesterday. I was like, you know, Donald Trump's enemy. I I literally walked across the border from Mexico back into the United States yesterday. How? I don't understand. Like I drove down I got driven down to Mexico. They don't check you.

So they're like, Oh yeah, come on in and it's fine. Like, you know, they they don't they don't they don't really care. Um, but then to get back into the United States, they're like, Hey, hey, well, you can't just walk into the United States, you gotta show me some ID or whatever. And The guy who drove us down, he the guy we were meeting for business. He was like, Well, I have this like fast pass that's like the global entry thing, but it's only for me. I can't just like bring other people in my car using that.

So when we get up to the thing, you're gonna hop out, you're gonna get in this line with a bunch of other people trying to cross the border. And then I'll pick you up on the other side. And so that's what we did. I crossed the border on foot yesterday, which was kind of a stunning experience. And uh It was amazing, dude. It was like it was just so different than anything else that I've ever peers like? On the

On the peers. Yeah. So my peers and and uh my peers and friends online, they were You know, a lot of like single mothers with kids, there was like, you know, not a whole lot of English going on. People You know, uh there was a Amazing rapper. So this this guy was rapping. I got a video of him. But I'm he had no call to action, dude. He had the

Like his top of funnel was amazing. His like rap was great. He had a speaker. He was we were we had a captive audience, like we're just stuck in line. And he's just rapping all of us and he's freestyling about us in Spanish. And so I'm sure he was just talking mad shit about me. But then I was like wow this guy's like got the all the talent in the world.

And so I was literally like, dude, I'm gonna get this guy to like Make a song. Like he'll do our outro for the podcast or something,'cause this guy's so good. But he's got no no Instagram handle. Uh it was legal. Um, you know, it was a legal crossing and he was there and he was amazing. And but he had no sign, no name, no nothing, no English, so I couldn't Like, dude, he was th that was his Kanye Kanye moment, and I was his J Z. I was ready to take him to the top, but he didn't have he didn't have it there. So you know, lesson learned as always. Give people away.

To uh you know, to to to to take you forward, to give the call to action. Otherwise, you know, you might just be a rapper at the border for the rest of your life if you don't You don't have that with you.

Siempre me vamos a sito fuera de control, dando la vuelta como ese girasol, gira, girasol, soltando tiras, contigo. Well you should have told them that. I tried to, but you know, my Spanish stops at biblioteca, so I kept saying library, library. And he was like, What are you saying? I don't I don't understand. And so you know, that was that was the end of that. So let me tell you about something really quick. You have more ideas than I do. So let me let me go first and tell you about something big because all right, so South by South West is going on this weekend.

And I went to this dinner two nights ago that was pretty wild. So let me tell you about something uh Not entirely related or uh tangentially related at first. Have you ever heard of the overview effect? Probably not, right? The overview effect. No.

Okay. The overview effect is a cognitive shift that affects how some astronauts Uh that affects some astronauts when they see the earth from space. So basically when you take a person, there's only been about six, seven hundred, eight hundred, something like that. People in space.

And when you take someone away from Earth in space they basically start seeing themselves no longer as uh they don't like identify with a particular nationality, a particular culture, a parti particular race. And they just see the world as like this like Fragile thing floating around. And there's been tons of astronauts dude, they go up and they're like

Wow, the earth is so fragile. It's so beautiful. It's just floating around and it's protected by this thin atmosphere. And basically it makes like. Or a bad thing or a good thing to have the overview effect. Well it's Mo most likely a good thing, but really it's nothing. It's just like it's just a different perspective where it's like look this idea of like nationalities and borders, like that's fine if those exist, but that's not really important. We're all just floating on this rock. You know, trying to figure shit out.

And it's just like it it it changes how a lot of astronauts view the world and they say they're like I I'm different. It's almost like an L S D trip or something like that. And so it's this like really fascinating thing and this one astronaut was astronaut was like my life changed after that. Like I'm not stressed out about certain stuff. I see as floating around on this fragile ball uh throughout you know throughout space and and and just these little things don't bother me because I think that all the a lot of those problems are just made up. So It's kinda and and he said, I think everyone should should be I I wish that everyone can be able to experience this. So Because of that. Because of that idea, there's this one company that hosted a dinner that I went to.

It was awesome. And uh basically what they make is this like pod. It's like a it's like the size of a really small room that can fit ten people sitting down. It's like it looks like um Like a capsule, like a circle. And you sit down on this thing, and above it is basically a hot air balloon that's the size of a football field. A huge hot air balloon.

And y each person pays fifty thousand dollars. In over six to eight hours. Yeah. Brings you up. above like a hundred thousand feet to the point of you kinda you're not, I guess, technically in space, but it's a thing where you're like so high.

that you see like the black you know, above you and then you see like the dark above you, and you can kinda see earth from a distance and you can start seeing different countries. And they're doing this because they want you to Mm. Like the whole shick is like you know, once you see this, like your life changes.

And Their first flights are going it's called uh worldview. I think if you go to worldview dot space, I think that's their URL. I've got nothing to do with this company, although a friend just invited me to a free dinner. Um And It was

I have no idea if these guys are gonna be able to pull it off. But It was a really good story and this idea is crazy fascinating to me. Their first flights, I think, are going live like next year. Kind of interesting, right? So you

I thought the dinner was in the pot. I thought you went to space. That's kind of uh where I first of all, that's what I heard. I thought it was like, you know, the space needle restaurant. He's like, Uh huh, I got in this tower, I spun around, I saw the whole city. I thought that's what you were saying you did for dinner. No My friend John like does PR for this company and he's like, Hey I got some spots, do you wanna come hang out? And it I went and I actually met A few interesting people. So would you D dream would you D Drean Grenier was there, by the way, the guy entrage uh Vinny Chase. It was there. And it was it was just this thing.

Uh would I do it? Definitely maybe. Not a for sure no, not a for sure yes. I I'm really afraid I'm really cluster found. Possibly no. Probably yes. Is where you're at. I would say yeah. Like the fifty thousand dollar thing to me, that's not a deal breaker because

I think that's actually pretty a Like Fifty thousand dollars to like change your life and see the world. Like look at these pictures that's Ben showing. It's kind of interesting, right? Um We're you're rich. We get it.

Uh fifty thousand dollars, not a big deal to you. Uh we understand that part. I just mean like if you want to like buy like if you're gonna like have to buy a car or like experience this, like I don't know. It's kind of like a it's a compelling offer. Yeah.

Yeah, this is like you you described it as kinda like the uh go do ayahuasca Um, like change your perspective on life. You know, it's like seems like there's cheaper ways to change your perspective, but all right, that's a cool one. Do uh do I had a friend, Matt? uh Kelly who used to do a pod I think he did a podcast. It wasn't even that popular of a podcast, but one of his listeners Was this mega rich lady?

This old rich lady and she bought him and the other host. Two tickets on Virgin Galactic's first flight, like worth a quarter million dollars each or something like that. Why? So before there's there's like multiple years before they even had the space flight, but they like they did the pre sale. And this woman bought the two of the this listener bought the two of them quarter million dollar tickets or something like that to go to space. It was kind of insane.

And they did it? But I w at that time it was like it wasn't even possible yet. Like Branson had just announced it. Now I think those flights do run, or they're about to run or something like that. So I I don't know if he ever did it. Well Hey worldview. We're giving you guys free PR and we're giving you guys a shout out.

If they offered you Sean a free opportunity to do this Would you do it? Um No, I'm gonna say no. I

I mean, bro, you could drive across the cour uh across the border to Tijuana and walk back and walking across the border will change your perspective. That's pretty So you know I just did this for free. I changed my worldview. The cool thing about perspectives is you can have many of them. So we can go Tijuana and also we can go to space. The uh this is a good hypothetical, which was uh this w I remember at one one day at lunch at work, this was like the big debate. It was like If you could go and be a part of the first, I don't know, space colony or something like that.

Um Like you get to be one of the first people to actually live in outer space, like in either in the moon base or like uh Mars or something like that. I wouldn't even consider it, of course. Would you do it? And I was like hell no. And uh the you know it's like why the risk? It's like no the boredom. What what am I gonna do out there? Like I like my life here, I'm enjoying it so much. Like All I would do if I went out there to be honest with you, I would just think about how I'm gonna tell everybody about this when I get back. The only cool part about going there for me is like the momentary stunningness of how it looks.

And then the content I'm gonna get. To come back to Earth and talk about it. Dude, that's why I hate vacations. I feel like half the time it's just like I just gotta take a picture and send my parents. That's why I don't like vacations. So yeah, I'm not going to be able to do I don't post on Instagram. I I just refuse to post on Instagram because I'm like, once I start performing here, this is just gonna be another fucking place I perform.

Uh, so you know, choose wisely. I chose Twitter and my podcast and like, I don't know, my email list. Those are the only places I want to perform. I don't want to perform on like How cool my life is. I only want to perform on how cool my ideas are. And uh that's the that's the one I want to perform. Probably better off performing nowhere and ne never having to think about that stuff. Well

I I w I wasn't we don't have to talk about this, but Uh, I want us to I I have three goals for us that I need to run by you. The first goal, three million downloads in one month by the end of the year. There's nothing you need to do. You just show up. The second one. Yeah. Um I I think you we talked about those in person interviews.

And also get like Proper famous people. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger or uh you know, like a proper famous person that we could tell someone at the restaurant when so like When people are like

I went to the doctor yesterday and they're like, What do you do for a living? And I'm like I host a podcast And they're like anyone oh cool, anyone you heard of? I'm like No You don't know who any of these people are. So like like we need like a proper, like famous person. Like you know. Did you follow Steph Smith on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah. Oh you don't know what Twitter is? Oh. No, not Nevermind. Yeah. I I'm on a point.

Yeah, it doesn't work. Do you know who Ariel Holwani is? Do you like P U F it it just doesn't work out. So we need like a proper famous person so I can get cred when I talk to strangers. And then finally Uh an in person event. We need we need to have a M FM summit. And at that summit, I think you should do a ten minute comedy bit.

Oh, that's great, dude. Yeah. That would be the pressure I need. And also gonna be the best audience I could ever get. It's like if I ever had a warm a warm audience, like it's the motherfuckers that would pay to c the neck beards that would pay to come see us at the summit, you know, hang out with us, like They're that's the closest I'm gonna get to a laugh. Yeah, I'm gonna. I think you can do I think you could pull it off. I think All in summit. Why are we not doing this such a ranch?

It's not set up for like I what I think we should do is like three to four hundred people. And I think that we should have like maybe two days of events where it's just like one or two times of us talking in front of everyone, but then lots of smaller sessions of people hanging out. And I think we should only charge like five hundred dollars. So like Just enough money to make like a profit that's interesting. But not high enough to where it prohibits people.

Uh all in summit is seventy five hundred dollars for a ticket. Yeah. Let's Bit pricey. I'm not even getting the

go to space or the border. So fuck that. Yeah, you could get like one fifth of the way to space with that with the price of it all inside. Do you know how many tacos that gets you in Tijuana? Seventy five hundred dollars? I could have literally fed the town of Tijuana yesterday with seventy five hundred dollars. Um What was I gonna say? Oh, the um Yeah, we should do this summit thing. Uh why are we doing like but uh here's the trick, okay, so like Um If it's like a meetup for the conference and we then it's like oh shit, we gotta have like I don't know, speakers or like, you know, we have to do a good job.

We just need to make this like a vacation. So like we just need to make this what would already be a cool vacation. Plus we're there and there's stuff going on. So so I think this needs to be like a cruise. Um And it's just a cruise ship and people can hang out for three days.

And we're there and other people are there. There's some talks, but like fundamentally it's a cruise which is already Like dude, this worst case scenario, it's a cruise. Best case scenario. We are awesome on a cruise ship. I'm down. I I I would prefer not a cruise, but I get the idea and I'm down with that. And like we get you and me, Ben Uh we get like a like uh Wilkinson Staff. Maybe Rob, Deirdicle, Watercom, uh I don't know. Like the game. Name other non famous guests. Yeah, I'm like.

Yeah? Oh do you use all natural native? No. There is one. And he was on the podcast. Yeah, it's like uh

Oh, you you like Tom Cruise? Yeah. We had a guy on who looked just like He has a keto blog. But he looks a lot like Tom Cruise. Yeah, he looks just like Tom Cruise.

All right, what do you got? Can I tell you Okay, so on this trip to Mexico, I saw three or four things that I was like Huh. Tell me more. Okay, so I'm just gonna go through them in rapid rapid success. And by the way, I just got back like at midnight last night, so Um

You know, I haven't had time to like research a whole bunch of these things. Is that your first time in Mexico? No, but I like um I got shit on bad for the the guy who's hosting me there. He's like, You guys ever so is this your first time in Mexico? I think'cause I was like, Are we in Mexico right now? He's like, Yes. And I was he's like, Is this your first time? I was like, no no no, I've been to um He's like, Don't say like Cancun or Cabo or like Acapulco and I was like

Yeah, those are the three that I've been doing. It's like okay, this is your first time to Mexico then. Dude, I I hang out I I've I've hung out for like collectively a month or so in Mexico City. Mexico City's dope. Mexico City's awesome. I would live there for sure. That's what I heard. And then I so again, so first I uh you know, like here's my my my conversation with this guy. So first I dig myself in the hole with the are we in Mexico and it's a yes. Then it's have you been to Mexico? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, try to build rapport with my Cancun trip. He's like, Nah And then the third one is like, but I heard Mexico City is awesome. I got a couple of friends who swear by it. Like they say it's like the one of the best cities. He goes, Yeah, I don't go there super dangerous.

Everything I said, this guy like an extreme counterpunch to me. And I was like, All right, cool, I'm gonna roll down the window and just take my head out like a dog. Is that cool? So I go there and I'm looking at like, dude, have you ever been inside factories? You probably have, but I think most people have you been inside like a any kind of factory. Why do you think that I've been in a factory? You're gonna be like I don't know, like my fucking cousin Bubba has like a bubblegum factory and you're gonna be like I went fishing for I went fishing recently with my father in law and he's like, Hey, so how do I set this hook up? What do I do? I'm like Dude, I don't know. I've never gone fishing. He's like why why didn't you just assume that I know how to taste this fish?

You just seem for sure like a guy who's goes for I I've watched documentaries on it. Like, Do you or do you not have a favorite place to fish? No. Of course not. I don't have a fishing hole that I go to. Um but no, I've I've I don't think I've been to a factory. Not really. Like what type of factory? Doesn't matter. Any factory. Whatever factory you go into, it's fucking mind blowing how like even to go to a warehouse. Like go to a

You've been inside like an Amazon warehouse or like a food warehouse, like the how the food gets to restaurants. Um it's insane. In the same way that like going to a farm is like slightly crazy and you're like whoa. I eat these? These I eat these animals? I go wow. Uh, you know, that doesn't seem right. But like Basically a factory.

This is kinda stunning. Like if you take any object on like okay, I I'm holding this microphone. This is sitting on my this is the foam. Cover of a microphone. There's some like huge factory that like is churning them out. If you just go back, t trace the process of how this got to my desk. So okay, I just go on Amazon, I just microphone, uh, I don't know, maybe this one.

I click that, I buy it, right? So it goes from an Amazon warehouse onto a Uh like Amazon Warehouse packs it into a carrier, carrier brings it to my house, puts the package on my doorstep. Okay, great. W how did it get to the Amazon warehouse? Well, first it was in probably like another warehouse before it even got sent to Amazon. Before that warehouse it was in a factory being made by human beings.

Oh no, so actually before that. Before it got to the warehouse, it was on a boat in a container. Ch like sailing from fucking China. On a boat with human beings just living on the boat. As it sails for months, you know, two months to to the coast.

And then it gets like unlike docked and separated out of a container ship and like humans beings are there. In the factory, there's human beings, you know, I don't know how how many, you know, small children died making this foam cover, but it's like The amount of work that goes into Everything that's sitting in our house Just arriving there is insane to me. Like just the materials. So where did the material for this foam come from? Right? There's like a

You know, if you have cotton, right? That starts in a field somewhere. gets puck it gets plucked and it gets pulled and it gets processed and it gets shipped and then it gets Then it gets manufactured, then it gets printed, then it gets manufactured again. It's like That is insane. Yeah.

To the point where I'm kinda like, We're kind of ruining the earth and also people's lives. Like you know, like To get t shirt. Well, I I canceled my Amazon Prime membership. I was like man, I feel guilty. I order something and it's like so much energy behind the scenes went to ship this. Of course I only see they ship a dongle to a computer, a small ass thing with bubble wrap in a huge box. And I'm like, oh, this is horrible. It's and then I have to pay money to pay a truck to come pick it up because I it's too much

You know, boxes for my Oh. Yeah, then the c the truck, you know, burns gas and then takes it somewhere else and fucking dumps it somewhere and then it's someone else's problem, right? Like so it's just kind of for like on one hand, I'm amazed that the system even works. Like the fact that the package Gets from the factory in Vietnam to the warehouse and then you go to the warehouse and there's like an unbelievable number of boxes.

And then they get sort you know, picked and p packed into packaged and that gets shipped and you if you ever go to the post office, like if you go to the post office and you you should just ask them, be like, Hey, can I see what it's like behind the the Door there? They'd be like, What why I'd be like, I've just never seen a post office. They'll open the door It is like Santa's like, you know, elves factory basically it's like

The most unbelievable number of packages and you're like, Where's the system? Like aren't there conveyor belts? And they're like, No, we just got these like trolleys and then we just kinda keep'em like, you know The ones going over there, they stay over in this area, and then we we hope we don't lose'em. It's like Wow, this is insane that this system even works. It is pretty crazy that you've got to be a very good thing.

It's crazy you can mail something from California to New York for like forty five cents. And it gets there in like four days. That's what I'm saying. Pretty reliably. So I'm like it it is on one hand amazing and on the other hand it's horrifying. The amount of like Forget the environmental side, right? I'm not even that environmentally conscious. It's not like something that I think about all the time or feel super guilty about.

I actually feel more like the human Energy and labor. And just the amount of effort and resources it took to get this thing to me. It makes me think like, you know, we had that guy uh David Freeber come on the pod. You you weren't there for that one. But the thing he's doing, which is basically like hey

He's doing the same thing in the drink industry, which is like Instead of You know Putting f twenty liters of water to grow grapes, then crush the grapes, turn it into wine, add sugar, add alcohol, pack it up. put her to a you know uh send it to a uh bottling factory, then send it to a warehouse, then

put it on a shelf in a store and then drive it home and then put it on a shelf in your home, like He's like, Why don't you just like manufacture it in your home Using this little pr printer that'll print a drink for you. And um And it's like, Oh yeah, that cuts out like ninety percent of like the the you know, this like energy and like kind of resources and and time and effort that goes into to bringing this drink to my, you know.

You know, to be able to drink this drink. So I just feel like s more than ever that was like the that was the big wake up call. That was my going into space moment. was realizing for every single product, every shirt, every pair of boxers, every sock that I own. How much goddamn like

Effort, labor, travel. resources goes into it. And realizing that that's not gonna be the way. Um that's not gonna be the way forever. And like This kind of like three D printing

You know, like sort of Basically Manufacturing just in time at the end point and cutting out a whole bunch of these like factories and warehouses and all that other stuff. That needs to happen was my big wake up call. I wanna ask you about then what else is there that you can do that for, but before that

Have you ever gotten into the buy it for life movement? You have I told you about that? Um no, but I think I understand it from that. What is it? It's like a eco friendly way of like Yeah. It doesn't have to be rooted and eco friendly. Uh it's not for me, but it's a perk. There's a subreddit that I subscribe to. It's called Buy It for Life.

And What you do is the the idea is just how do you just consume less stuff? And how do you just buy the best of something that hopefully can last forever? So an example. Uh, do you remember as a kid, did your mom ever have a kitchen aid mixer? Yes.

Okay, so a Kitchen Aid mixer. Kitchen Aid's a brand. The mixer, like it's the thing with the bowl underneath it and like the arm that goes above it and spends Those are like six hundred dollars. They're really expensive. But they're famous for lasting like a lifetime. Like you can use an antique one and it works just as good. And an another example is if you're gonna buy like um a coat, like there's like Um You can maybe buy a really fancy leather coat.

And you're willing to spend two thousand dollars as opposed to buying a three hundred dollar one because it could like last forever as long as you fit in it. Or Patagonia actually does that too. They'll fix your stuff forever. Or um there's like a bunch of furniture, there's a bunch of shoes. Like different types of of shoes you can buy it and instead of them whenever they wear down, instead of throwing throwing them away, you can just get'em fixed.

And so it's the idea of like how do you buy one thing forever and it hopefully can last forever. Or buy one thing one time and it'll last forever. I feel like you do stuff like this, Ben. Do you do you have like objects that you uh Stuff that you buy that's like meant to to sort of last. I don't know why, my hunch just tells me you do.

The funny thing is my dad does this, but not out of like um Like environmental justice ideas, but just like Because he's crazy that way. of like he drove the same car for twenty two years and just like couldn't bring himself to buy a new car.

And always shines his shoes because he's owned the same shoes for like forty years. And so that like kinda got ingrained in me as like a good way to live. And so I do do this a little bit. That's awesome. It's fun. And also Like some of your shit as you wear it and put it patinas, it actually looks cooler.

Right. You're good at doing this, which is you identify these like Lifestyle trends. It's like do you know there's some people that are like, you know, not eating food anymore? They're just drinking whatever uh soylenter, you know, like Yeah, you know those people that just microdose LSD every day? And like these are kind of famous examples now, but I feel like you've told me about like

Thirty of these in the time that we've been friends. And they're like Dude, have you seen this like, you know, subreddit called, you know, Fatfire or whatever? You always have these like You like pick up pretty quickly on like there's this weird Uh not even weird, it's just like There's a group of people

That are deciding to like live Under a different sort of like Paradigm or different motto or creed. And actually that I think you just like it because it's interesting, but that also is like one of the best ways to build a business around that lifestyle.

Because you can speak to that audience and you could differentiate pr differentiate a product. Super easily to that crowd. And I I seek the I seek those things out. So there's a bunch of things that I I don't agree with or I don't I don't wanna live my life that way. But I love just like seeing it. I like seeing how

Basically I love freaks. I like weirdos. I consider myself a weirdo and I and I I love a good freak show. I just love how see it like I remember I w the first time like three years ago I went to my friend's house and he didn't have a microwave. I'm like, What? You don't have a microwave? He's like well It's bad for this reasons. And I was like, You're a freak. Like we all have microwave, so you're the weirdo. And then I start thinking about it, I'm like, Well, okay, tell me, why why do you think you might be right? And I'm like, okay, there maybe there's a point there. Or like

Uh, my friends a lot of my friends now refuse to use plastic Tupperware or plastic anything that you eat with. And I'm like, Well, why? I just put my thing in microwave, who cares? And so like there's a bunch of little things like that that I love learning about. Yeah, I remember when Justin Mears came on, you you were like Let me guess you don't have a microwave in your house. He's like, Yep. And I was like, that's a

Fucking weird spot on question to ask. Somebody that I don't think you knew the answer to ahead of time. And then that got me thinking about That li this this exact lifestyle you're talking about. In fact Moise Um

So Moys started de native deodorant, which was around one of these trends, which was People wanted an all natural, paraben free, aluminum free deodorant. And he saw that on Etsy That was like a really high selling item, but it was like in the Etsy kind of handmade artis artisan goods like bubble. And his bet was that People once you kinda speak to that value system of like not having X

They might be willing to pay more and be become a like switch deodorant brands if you like built a brand around it. He recently tweeted something out, he goes billion dollar idea. Water that has not touched plastic. So it's a water brand that has only been like in glass containers or like you know, basically like from the Whatever. The mountain that this was uh was gotten, it hasn't touched plastic until it's reached your lips.

And um And I thought that was funny. It's like this this plastic thing is is uh real. A lot of people are anti Plastics. Uh but so that that means like

For every product where plastic is core. There's gonna be a alter ult product. Where plastic is not not like not used. So whether it's Tupperware or like for me I drink water.

out of you know we get those big five gallon jugs or whatever delivered the house out of a dispenser. That that's a plastic container. It's sitting in the whole time until I drink it. Right. So it's just a giant water bottle. And so there's like There there's these trends where you can just look at okay

Where is there like if there's anti plastic trend, where is there plastic? And can I create an alternative? If there's a plant based Vegan trend. How do I make Alt milks, alt meat, alt whatever, right? That becomes like a a a blueprint to building a great business. So there's a few companies out right now, you might know their names. I'm gonna try and look'em up.

But basically Uh there's this trend amongst Products that you use daily that you run out of So like toothpaste. Laundry detergent.

Uh Uh Advil bottles. Things where The bottle isn't is just like a way to get it to you, but it's kinda bullshit that you have to throw it away. And so they're making all these products where

They send you one package. And then they send you like whenever you need it, just a ref something to refill it. Like l or like like literally something you pour into it. Um do you know what they're called? You don't know but I've seen this for toothpaste. Um And I think it's a great idea. I think this is a great business idea.

Um And I at first I thought it was small. I think Moys was the one who told me. I'm pretty sure he said it's like killing it. Um, you don't know what I'm talking about? I forget what it is. Uh No, I don't know the name uh look up what it is, but It it they're crushing it.

I know there's like um For cleaners, I think there's one called Blue Land. I think doesn't Blue Land do this? Is it Blue? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it it's like chemical free c containers and then they send you one container and then they f You You order something and they uh I I I don't know exactly how they send it to you, but you just like pour it into the thing. Right. Send you a plastic pouch that you throw away. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like less.

Less bad. Um By the way, speaking of these kind of like niche crazy people. I got two for you. So one Is

We talked I think about Um anti work the R slash anti work. Did we talk about that on the podcast? I don't know. I don't think we talked about it, but it pisses me off. So there's R slash anti work. Which you should explain that. And then I have another one that's the the counter to it. So first explain R slash anti work.

I don't even entirely know how to explain it, but i it it was I'll tell you the background from what if I remember correctly. It was started eight years ago, but Uh like in the last three years since the pandemic is when it really got popular. It was made up of a lot of people who were waiters and waitresses and they were pissed off at how they're being treated. And it started out as like a labor move movement thing, like we need higher wages, we need this. Now it's like got eight million, ten million subscribers on su on the subreddit, and it's people complaining about like, you know My manager said that like they fired me because I told them I was busy when I needed to come in and they just basically shit on anything where it's like demanding of of workers.

And so I think So so here's their here's I think their stated thing. Ben, you tell me if if I'm being too harsh on it, if you find a more generous explanation. But here's what it says. It is a subreddit for those who want to end work. Are curious about ending work and want to get the most out of a work free life.

The subreddit has cracked over one point four million members by the end of twenty nineteen, which has gotta be a lot more than that by now. It's eight million now. And it went. Oh my god. I think one point. Viral after A warehouse worker post a screenshot of a text that they sent their boss. And then that basically made other workers the other workers like kind of like saw that, were inspired, did the same.

And it was part of this like, you know, the great resignation that people were talking about. And there was like this funny clip where they put they took a mod from R slash anti work and They went on Fox News. I don't know if have you seen this? Yeah, and the the person got destroyed. It was embarrassing. It's like anti work person gets destroyed by, you know, Fox anchor is like the video. Which I didn't like. I didn't like the I hate when they do that. This person clearly like is Not that smart, I think. And like they it's very easy to set them up to look silly in that in those cases.

The subreddit also didn't like it'cause they were like, dude. Horrible representation of us. On TV. Um did not articulate our points. And

Um, you know, why did you go on there? Like this movement is not about you getting your personal fame, you know, to like do this. Um We kinda I think they had some rules around like we're not gonna do appearances or speak to the media unless we kind of agree on what the message is. Um and so this person went rogue, I guess, and and did that. But it but they basically embarrassed themselves where they were like Yeah, I just don't want to work. And then guys like, Okay, cool. So like, you know, do you you don't want to work at all? Or like no like I wanna be able to do what I want to do. It's like all right what do you want? It's like

I wanna teach people I think wanna be I wanna be a teacher. And he's like, You wanna be a you wanna be a teacher? Yeah, you know, should should we let you teach, basically was kinda like the the end point that they were kinda making. But anyway, so this there's anti work, which went viral. Then there's have you seen R slash overworked? No, what's that? It's the exact opposite.

It's people who are Using the pandemic, the kind of remote work lifestyle to be like They call it having the multiple jobs at once. So um like though their lingo is like oh yeah my J one, which is like my job one. It's like J one has great benefits, and so I'm just picking up my J two and J two, I'm just gonna do 10 hours a week with this, this, and this, and I'm gonna use that to invest in these things, right? And so it's people scheming together about how to work multiple jobs at once.

And as remote workers. Oftentimes it seems like Without the employers knowing that there are other jobs. So they're like being simultaneously employed without being super overt about. I think that's the message. I could be wrong on that. And um It's it's people who are trying to get to financial freedom faster.

By saying like yeah, like actually I have the capacity to do Like multiple jobs. Um, you know, instead of sort of spending forty hours a week on one job, it's like I can actually do a good job in twenty hours a week on two jobs and get paid double.

Th that's the optimistic way to look at it. The probably realistic way. Like I'm looking at the top title and it says J my J three job. Forgot about me today. And they say I started my J three yesterday, and by started I mean I was giving an orientation on Zoom and no one showed up. So now I'm just sitting here on the payroll. Right. Yeah, yeah. There's people who are like, Yeah, let's beat the system. Um

And so there's like a basic like a counter movement. But that kind of always happens. There's like a There's like the movement and then there's the counter movement that comes shortly after and like It kind of polarizes and then there's a mainstream which just does things the way they've been doing them and they don't really pay too much attention to this stuff. And so um, you know, that that's kinda common for For many, many um

Many many of these movements, I think subreddits are a great place to look for that. That's so interesting. So there's this book that I've been meaning to read. It's on my uh r uh to read list and it's called Bullshit Jobs. And so it's this premise that like I I I think it was a professor or some guy from school of economics of London or something like that. And this whole like I I I'm again this from memory, I didn't research this much.

Uh the his whole idea here is that most jobs out there in the world, like at least in white collar world Like it's it's just kind of unnecessary. Like and And to summarize it is like take a company like HubSpot, Amazon, Twitter, like What would happen if you like laid off Two thirds of the people. Like would it would anything do we do we think anything would change other than the company would just make more profit?

And this guy says in in most cases, yeah, it would actually it would it would run just fine and most of the jobs that you have are just worthless. And I I kind of agree with him. I I I agree with you. I kind of agree.

I don't have knowledge of of it other than just personal experience, but I don't It does sound like it's And it's hard because there's no counterfactuals. So you don't get to run the test and actually you know run you can't split test and and run run both versions and see which one ends up better. Um But I I've had this inkling for a while. When we were getting acquired

And I w we were getting acquired by Twitch and and as part of it, they're like, Hey, you gotta like you know, basically like Your whole team is gonna come in for a day of interviews. And that's gonna decide kinda like if we take your whole team or not. And I had to do my interview as well. And so I'm going in there and they're like, you know, the classic job interview question, uh job interview structure is like I ask you A bunch of questions for ninety five percent of it and then the last five percent of it, I'm like

So do you have any questions for us? And then you're supposed to say something that's also just you showing off. To like, you know. Show some other strength of yours, you know, in in a different way. And um And I had one genuine question. I asked it to every single person and they were kind of like

Taken aback. Slash They thought I was kind of a jerk. Um Some people thought it they reacted kinda well, like Oh, that's refreshing. I don't know.

Um but I could tell other people were slightly offended by my question. I would say how many people work at Twitch? And they would be like, uh I think we're at eighteen hundred or two thousand people now. I said um How many people do you think

I forgot how I phrased it, but it was something like How many people do you think Twitch needs? to uh hit its goals. And I was like, How many people do you think should work here? All right, that's how many people do work here. How many people do you think should work here?

And people were like so I asked the CEO this question too. And he was he he I give him credit because He's someone who like prioritizes the truth over being right. Like getting it right is way better than being right. But he's also like a kind of a fierce debater. So he's not just gonna like lay down and be like, Oh, you know, yeah, you're right, I changed my opinion about things. So he like

He took the question. He didn't like m I would say nine out of ten CEOs would get quite offended by this question'cause it's basically implies you've mismanaged the company by bloating. It's a great qu it's a great question. I would not be offended. He was not offended either, and he was like That's a good question. He's like I think like twenty two hundred. So he's like, Yeah, I think we're a little short of what we need to hit his goal and he's like He's and then he his take was basically like

You know, I'm not saying we have all the right people or the most talented people or that like there's not people here who are underutilised or just kind of, you know The fat. That wasn't really his point. It was like I think we can be this much, this ambitious, and to do that we would need Yeah, like twenty two hundred awesome people like working in unison.

Um I still think he was wrong. I think we I think you know the company could have operated on a third of the people. I I would have followed up on it with a few questions. The first one would be Okay, but do you think that you need to hire twenty two hundred people because you know that only ten percent of them are going to be actually value add and you just have to hire the the rest in order to find that 10%.

And then I would say. And also, is it possible that you only that you think you need twenty two hundred Because you really only need like twenty percent effort from all those people and that's what your expectation is. And then finally. How much does redundancy come into play here? How much do people are you just paying them and you just don't want to mention to them, but you're paying them to sit on the bench and when the person next to them quits.

They just are ready to roll. Right. Uh yeah, I didn't I didn't follow up that hardcore about it. Uh, but I think those are, you know, very like valid valid points. And also, you know, one thing I I kind of learned from him was like Let's take that redundancy one, right? Sounds bad, right? Sounds like oh man, you're paying a bunch of people to kinda do nothing, just sit around. No, it's insurance. And he's like that was exactly his take, which was like

I f I think it was on speed. I was complaining how slow we were going. He's like speed, he's like going slow is sometimes a feature, not a bug here. And he's like, um or like innovation. I was like, Oh man, we're not really innovating everybody else's Didn't say this outright, but I th I yeah, I gathered this through our conversations, which is like There are some things we're gonna innovate on.

But actually the optimal strategy here is to let a bunch of startups go out and try to innovate. And then if anything works, either buy them or or clone them. Like That is actually the best way for us to innovate. It's like the It's free.

We get way more experiments done by Super caliber you know super hungry motivated people like startup founders and their teams who are laser focused on just that one thing. And they'll try radical experiments that we would never otherwise do, and we don't have to fund it. But we can sit back and watch it. And then when we're ready.

We can either go try to acquire them, partner with them, or if they don't want to do any either of those, we could build our own and just use our distribution and our brand. Which you know, we have a if we have a you know, X millions of users then we should be able out compete them from there. And my issue with I think that's actually the optimal strategy. I agree with Emmett, I think, on most things. I I imagine I would by the way, I should I should say I'm not putting words in his mouth. There's like

M what I gathered from a bunch of Bunch of different conversations. I'm sure he would disagree with like, you know. Forty or fifty percent of what I just said, uh some are paraphrasing him poorly. Yeah. And it's just like your opinion on your takeaway. My take of his takes. And I uh

I think I would agree with uh I bet I I would agree with a lot of of what he thinks. My issue is when you're like A small company like under fifty people. You're all in it. A lot of times they're in it for a mission. You're in it to achieve something. I think that you can get away with just being in it because you people just like being in the thick of it with their friends.

Uh like they just like the action. When you get a little bit bigger, I think it's less mission oriented and you're in and it's just a job. But you still have to put on this face like this to inspire people and It kinda sucks because the truth is is like well, you know I I know that, you know, a lot of you are only working forty percent. And that's okay. I'm okay with that. I baked that into this. I know that a lot of you aren't working at all, but you're really just here in case the guy next to you quits, and then hopefully you're gonna train the next person. And I know that a lot of you wanna innovate and try these new things, but that's not really what we're gonna do. We're gonna keep doing the same shit, just a little bit better, and then maybe every once in a while I'm gonna have a team

That makes something totally new. And I know all this, but just tough. And Figuring out how to navigate and But have that like

to say what I just said, but in a really inspiring way or Unfortunately just lie. You gotta lie or say it is actually the best way. Yeah. Just act. You gotta just act and pretend. Um And be a politician a little bit.

I find that to be incredibly challenging, but I think it's incredibly necessary. Yes. Uh you you're you're spot on. Um You're spot on with that. You are spot on with w with what you just said. Do you think you could do it? Um

You know, the I think the thing you said, so you have you ever heard of Dunbar's number? Yeah. What's it mean again? So Dunbar's number is basically it's uh hundred fifty, that's the number. And it's meant to represent the number of different like how many people do people know. How many people do you are familiar you you like know their name, their face? How many people can one person know, actually, right? Like somebody who's like, I got six thousand friends like no well

You don't really know six thousand people. And so Dunbar's number was was used to be 150. It's like in a tribe, you could know 150 up to up to 150, you could know everybody in the tribe. Past 150, you don't know everybody in the tribe. And then tools like social media. And stuff came out that kinda like It's like a

tool for the human body to like do more. So like you might be able to know and keep up with more than a hundred fifty p people now. Because Facebook makes it easy with a newsfeed and photos and their name is l listed there and whatever. You get to see it all the time. I think what you're saying is like your version of Dunbar's number. Which is fifty.

And it's like below f this is Dumpar's Dump Pars number. Oh call it. It's below fifty below fifty. Um The people who are there are like, you know, down for the cause. Like y' the the the j the larger prior obviously they care about themselves, but like A bigger like one of the top factors, either number one or number two, can be like the cause.

And then like Just like You know, like that kid who said he wants to do hood rat stuff with his friends. Like that that could be the cause. Like I just wanna I just it's just Uh there's a viral video uh like

uh years ago and it they interviewed this like nine year old who um stole his grandmother's car. And crashed it. And the guy was like, Why did you why did you steal her car? That's that was really bad of you. And he goes He goes, I try to be good, but sometimes I just like doing hood rat stuff at my friends, like smoking cigarettes and driving cars. Play the video play the video, Bad. You gotta play that really quick. Can you play it?

Along the way he ran over two mailboxes, hit two parked cars in a Costco parking lot, and struck two moving cars near Walmart. I wanna do it cause it's fun. Fun to do bad things. Yes, but I wanted to do ho rash stuff for my friend. That's how I feel about startups. The YouTube feature for this podcast. Just took us to a whole new level already. First one is great. Second, we need to pull the clip of

Yeah, just sometimes I want to do that shit with my friends. And that needs to be a sound clip then that you can just play when me and Sam are talking about something dumb that we're doing. Uh so just just go ahead and cut that one out. That's the best part about startups. Like I don't care if it's ad tech, I don't care if I'm throwing clothing, I don't care. Like You get to do it like shit. When you're when you're like pulling shit off and you're like kind of fibbing to people and like, Yeah, you know, we've been we're you know, we really care about our customers, our team is it's like just three of you and you know, it's like you're just like trying to pretend that you're a big deal. Like that's hood rep shit. And I love doing that with my friends. But I wanted to do her stuff for my friend. By the way, have you struggled to do that? Uh now they're trying a big enterprise, you know, SaaS company that's like worth billions of dollars and Hood Ratchet is now frown upon.

And you're like I just yeah, yanked it. I yanked it. Um you can't and they're like you just yanked it, Sam? Why did you do that? We have a process for that. Because I definitely can think of like two or three examples where I was bragging about something I did that was like the startup scrappy thing at Twitch. Well I would just be like, Yeah, like, you know. Uh like for for example, there was like a competitor And

I like went met the I like talked to the founder and I was like yeah like you know I basically found out a bunch of their numbers and I was like oh yeah, you know, they're growing this fast, this other doing blah blah. And they're like, Well, how do you know that? And I was like, Well I talked to him, I t I told him I was interested in blah, blah, blah. And they're like Mm.

Uh I was like, What? And they're like Well, you know, we just Usually we don't We don't do hood rat shasually was like, Well, we're gonna need to talk to legal and also Corpdev is gonna have to, you know, we have a guy whose job is to have those conversations and we

We typically sign a letter of engagement before you know like whatever. It was like not the exact example, but like Things that in the start of when I was doing my startup, I would be so proud of my hack about like whatever. Or like I remember once I was negotiating A partnership deal. And like Basically I was just like really negotiating for like every like every inch, which as a startup I used to love.

Winning a deal. Like doing it we're getting a good deal for ourselves. And um And they were just like, you know, they're like, you know what? Like we'd rather just use our standard deal. And it's more favorable for him, so he'll be happy and uh we don't have to like, you know

let you like negotiate deal by deal on these things. And like, you know, in general, we don't really want you negotiating directly with the person. We have like partnerships people who do that. Yeah, but they were not negotiating. Yeah. You're like the big Lebowski guy. It's like, dude, you need a toe? I'll get you a toe. Uh I can I I'll get you a toe if you need a toe.

Um Can I let me ask you a quick question before we wrap up. Um Do you think okay, it th this question isn't a good question because it is in fact possible and I I have many of ex many examples. But

Getting wealthy. Like we're talking nine figures liquid net worth wealth. Getting wealthy. Do you think it is Inc um

I wanna say impossible but it's not. So I gotta have to change my change my question, but I'm gonna say it with the possible anyway. Is it is it really hard to do it just from cash flow, or do you think you have to sell up sell something? Sell a business, sell real estate, sell something, capital gains versus income. You're saying liquid. So not paper. Not not not your paper net worth. Um

liquid which includes Thing things that could be traded in thirty days. Um very hard. Very hard to do. Just off cash flow, I I believe.

Um, I think you know It's just much slower, right? Because you can s I mean just the look at the basics, right? Like When you sell something, you're gonna sell it for some multiple of the free cash flow that it's gonna generate for you, right? And

So So just by definition, right? Ten or twenty years. Sometimes it's five X, sometimes it's ten X, sometimes it's twenty X, sometimes it's three X, whatever. There's different multiples for different industries, but like Fundamentally it's a multiple. Which is a multiplier on how fast you're gonna get the money, the value. Out.

So let's say to get to a hundred million Uh whatever number of years that would take. You then have to divide that by five and that's like how fast at minimum you could have got there just selling the the asset. Um and get it and taking the five X multiple. Right. So so you know, of course you can get there, but

Do I know ways you can get there with the same speed? I don't think so. 'Ca even those are like I take the cash flow, I invest it in a thing. And then that thing grows faster and like I can sell my stake in that. So you know,

You you have a choice. So you could spend your time, you know, you could spend uh your time building a service or some type of business where you can make significant cash flow, two, three million dollars a year. Not work that much. But it's not necessarily an asset that could be sold. So there's a a few businesses like this, or it could just be like Um Like w the way the this podcast gets paid, like it's not like a particularly maybe, but maybe the podcast isn't a good example, but it's not you know what I mean. Not necessarily an asset. Like your Maven course. Your Maven course is not an asset that could be sold. Yeah. But it could potentially make many millions of dollars a year.

Versus You just say, You know what? Screw it. I'm not doing that because I have to build a business that could sell. So w do you prefer, do you think, cash flow or or Or Or

An entity that An asset that is independent of you and can be sold. Um I don't know. I don't think do I prefer is really the right way to think about it. It's like you need both, right? Like for example Um

I you need both for two reasons. One is Maybe you're gonna use the cash flow to invest, right? Maybe what you're gonna do is you're gonna buy great assets and let them compound over time. Well, where are you gonna get the cash flow to begin with, right? When we had Andrew on it last week, he's like I I took the cash flow from the design agency of Meta Lab. I used it. to buy m majority stakes and all these other businesses.

And then th let those compound over ten years and like boom. You know, so he reached, you know, that goal and more. Uh doing that. And so you you know, m maybe you need the cash flow to make those investments, right? Like if you if you don't have no cash flow, how are you gonna invest in anything? And secondly

Um, I like to live a good lifestyle. So sometimes cash flow businesses are great because it's like Yeah I Sure, compounding is awesome. But so is you know, like Fucking I don't know, Gucci shoes or whatever. Choose your choose your thing you're into. Like yeah, Gucci shoes like

Sometimes those are better than like this twenty year buy old asset. Whenever I hear Buffett talk about the long term and like pay sits, I'm like Bitch, you're like ninety five. Like there is no long terms anymore. You should have like you should immediately spend whatever you want to spend. There is no such thing as a long term deal for you. Sampar see like the headline. Sam Par Colin. Warren Buffett.

Bitch, you're 95! There is no long term. You're right. I think he needs to pivot his strategy. Well, I'm just like You know, like if you wanna do it with the mistake you have to be fine, but like And Bezos talks about those too. It's like a long time I'm like I mean, you don't really who cares?

Like, you know, just live life how you want to live. You got it. Yeah, and so I've always it's like why are you delaying it always it always pissed me off. I'm like Why are you delaying to have the best time of your of your life? when you're like old and don't even want to do shit. Right, you don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh and you know

S some people are happy along the way. That's that's fine, but like Uh, but yeah, uh I feel like you had an I feel like you asked me this question because you had an opinion or a story. So let's just skip to that part'cause I think you have a good opinion or story on this. I don't have a no, I don't have an opinion yet, but I'm like With my life now, it's like I can b I I think that it Mm.

I think in six to And uh I think in a matter of six months I could probably create a business from scratch. That does a million dollars a year in profit. It would be based off of like my image. I'm not saying I have that. I'm just saying like I I I'm sure I could do that. Plus with like a couple other side projects, I think I could very realistically have two or three million dollars a year in cash flow.

Easily. But yeah, easy. And maybe I do already have I'm not I don't even want to say I do or do not but I But like if you did, that would have been a weird way to say it. Would have been a weird hypothetical, but okay, let's continue on I got some cool shit going on, I'll say. But

And I'm thinking about where do I spend my time. And I'm like Is it actually worth it? Like or should you just Not care about cash flow and build something that's like much bigger that you could sell. Uh I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out like where do you actually spend time? The real answer is what gives you most joy. Yeah, exactly. And and like

Uh, whether uh you don't work backwards from do I want cash flow or do I want long term, you know, capital gains. That's not like the starting point of a decision. Um You kinda just need to make sure you're winning in one way or the other. Uh don't be weak in either area or like don't be weak in both, basically, is like the way to do it. Like, for example, you could buy a home in San Francisco. You're gonna have terrible

income from that property. It's not a good income property because In most places in San Francisco, your rent The rent you could charge somebody is not gonna outpay the mortgage plus taxes and cap. But you can go buy, you know, some h home in whatever, you know, Houston or something like that. It can cash flow. thousand dollars, two thousand dollars a month.

And good income property. But it's you know, gonna appreciate super fucking slow. Whereas the the San Francisco home You know, in ten years is gonna have, you know Whatever, more than doubled in in value.

And so, you know, it's a there's appreciation properties and income properties, same thing. Like I think you just do whatever gives you the kind of whatever's whatever gives you juice today and you think might give you juice going forward, and then you gotta say, all right. Before I do this, I gotta make sure it's gonna be strong in either one of these. Either it's gotta be awesome for cash flow. Or it's gotta be awesome for for uh appreciation. And if it's awesome for cash flow, basically I'm just gonna use the cash flow to

buy assets that are gonna appreciate with somebody else doing the work instead of me doing the work. It's kind you kinda end up at the same point either way. Yeah. I don't know, I've just been thinking about like how to spend time You know who's killing it? And has done a really good job of like putting off making cash is

Our friend Nick Huber. I am an investor and so I get to see some of the numbers of his storage deals. And I don't think he crushed it. Like in terms of personal cash flow for a long time.

But like the way that things have compounded. I'm like, oh holy moly, if you just eat shit for like six, seven years to pick the right asset, things look really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's done great and also I think he has like a

I think he personally has great terms. for with his investors, meaning like I think it's f quite favorable to him. Yeah, incredible. Not in a bad way, but like He makes sure he gets to eat. Right. Whereas at the beginning, if you have no capital, you're like You know, you sort of make a deal with the devil in a way where you're like, All right, I'm gonna take no management fees, no acquisition fees, and a low carry.

And now he's like, look, I'm good and I know it. So I'm gonna take a higher fee, higher c higher acquisition fee, and I'm gonna uh Take you know, my my healthy carry. Um So you know, I th you know, good on him. I think a lot of people in real estate are able to do that pretty well. Uh I know somebody's crushing it in real estate and they

They do just that. They they have like a you know f fifty percent carry on the deal or something, something crazy. And they're like Yeah, because My deals are awesome. I make hits and I win. So like it it doesn't make sense for me to do this at any less than that. And I'm like that. That's like

Next level winning. There's just awesome you know who Fo Fighters are? You know, Dave Grohl Dave Grohl's the lead singer of Foo Fighters. Yeah, and they've been writing hits forever. And before that he was the drummer in Nirvana. So he's like just wrote hit after hit for a long time. And someone asked him about uh he's like

Um You know, you write hits and and what's your process and like Uh a a fan was asking about old music and he and but and he stopped and goes, Wait a minute, let me cut you off here. He goes, I don't write deep cuts. I write hits.

And he would just like he's like everything I write I read it to be a hit. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but it is it's all meant to be. And that's like your real estate friends. He's like I write hits. That's why he gets that fifty percent carry.

Exactly. Exactly. And respect. I I respect somebody who's like I'm playing the game. And I play to win the game. You know, I'm not playing something else. I'm not gonna or tell you I'm not playing the game. I am playing the game and playing to win. It's actually like Uh, I really respect people who just clearly play the game and they're like open about it and like, Yeah, I play the game, I'm playing to win and here's you know, like Good. If you d if you dislike the game or dislike me, that is Your your choice.

And I actually dislike people that are the like Uh virtue signal types where it's like They are playing the game. But they'll do anything in their power to like make it look like they're not playing the game. And there's a lot of that. Like in Silicon Valley there's a lot of that.

Here's how that plays out that I see. There's Person starts the company. Bullshits about like why they're doing the company or why this problem is the problem they decided to spend their life on. Like no way you like You're you know.

Y you're doing this because It's g good business, not because you really wanted to help you know, small to medium sized enterprise businesses save money on whatever, right? Like that wasn't your actual intention. Uh you probably like that that you have happy customers and that they're good, you know, you're helping them. But like let's be real. Uh if I took away the money, you'd stop.

Have you ever seen on Silicon Valley they go we're saving the world one Cloud. Processor at a time. Or some bullshit. It's like And then they're like they're like the they're like uh the uh someone calls them out, they're like, dude, this is all rich guy. Like Kid Rock just was the the singer for the for the uh for the show and he's the poorest guy here. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And so So I think in Silicon Valley you see that a lot. You'll also see that with the origin story about like You know, why they decided to do this. You're like, Oh, are you sure you decided to do this because you know your cousin got diagnosed with this, you know, rare thing, and that's why? Or Or was it that you ran paid ads at five different products and this was the one with the highest click through rate?'Cause I'm pretty sure when I was talking to you, it was this one's the highest click through rate. All right, cool, that's my company, right? Like There's a lot of that. Um

Okay. The guy who started Dollar Shave Club. Um I saw an interview with him and Some of the times he's like I started Dollars Shave Club because I was just sick of going to Walgreens and I had to ask them to like open up the razors. And then another interview he was like He's like, Man, my father in law is like crazy and he likes just to buy random stuff. And one time he bought a shipping container full of cheap razors.

And we just had to figure out a way how to sell'em all. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you know, I'm in the two percent of the population, I think you are too, where we're like Oh, sweet. Respect for trying to flip the storage container and then realizing there's a business there. Versus like, you know, uh you know, the the the kind of like

The shark tank version of the story, which was like We were just so fed up with our options, right? And like I get again. I get it. I've done that. I might do that again.

But I am I a little bit disgusted by it? Yes. Uh same thing with same thing with I'll do that usually when I have business partners, not when it's my own business. Um like when when when I'm when I'm the only when I get to just be a cowboy on my own, I'll just do what I want and be like, Yeah, I don't care if this is bad for the business. It's fine. The other day I ate a I ate an entire jar in one sitting of peanut butter from it was the Jeffy cheap shit. And I just felt so bad about myself, but I didn't regret it, and that's kinda like how you feel. Mission statements are like a a pint of Ben and Jerry's. But you feel guilty about yourself.

The the other version of this is like people who on Twitter are like Uh they call them stuff like shit posters, or they're like, you know, they basically They basically try to signal like you know I'm not gonna just I'm not one of those

investors who blogs about content and tries to Yeah, I'm a cool I'll tell you the real deal and I'll m I'll make jokes and blah blah. It's like They're the ones trying to carefully curate their brand more than anyone. If you actually meet these people, they're like so conscious about their brand. Uh and like, you know, how how how many followers they're getting and like how viral their stuff is going and like They are you know like uh they're Th they are so meticulous about that stuff while trying to give off their appearance. It's like Bedhead, right? It's like Oh no, I just woke up like this. It's like, oh you sure you don't use a product called Bedhead that like, you know, like makes it look slightly messy, but like, you know, you're actually caring where every strand of hair goes.

And so, you know, I have more respect for like um People were like, Yeah, like You know, like Pomp or Sa Hill or they're like, Yeah, like people really like to hear about Bitcoin. So I just tweet Bitcoin shit all the time. It's great. Like I like Bitcoin and they like Bitcoin. So I'll just tweet like I'll just set up a calendar. I'll be like, Yeah, I'm gonna tweet Bitcoin stuff because I figured if I get a big Bitcoin following, that'll be really like really good for me. Or like you know, Sa's like, Yeah, I put it I put out these threads

Uh about these like finance topics'cause I think I'm good at it and they go viral and then it gives me all these dope connections. versus like, you know, I just want like I feel that knowledge is um You know, knowledge needs to be accessible for all and free and that's why knowledge. Yeah, I wanna democratize financial knowledge. Like I used to work on Wall Street and the insiders know things that the the rest of us don't. So I quit my job and started writing Twitter threads about finance. To democratize finance. It's like no.

No no no no you you didn't do any of that. You wanted followers. And so you did what it took to get followers. Have you noticed how the word democratize is the new disrupt? D democratized is like you know, what is democratized? Uh It's the new thing.

Um No offense? But Democratized Democratized is like About to fool you?

This is good for me and not good for you, but I'm gonna fool you by saying I'm democratizing something for you. By my service, buy my product. Yeah. By the way, I I do all the I do all this myself. I I again I know it. I spot it'cause I got it. I've done all this before. With my e commerce brand, I've done the origin story thing. With uh my fund, I do this too. Like my fund is called the All Access Fund because I wanted to give access to every to access to all to be able to invest in the deals I do. Do I feel good that other people get access to

Good Silicon Valley deals? Yeah, sure. Is that why I did the fun? Fuck no, that's not why I did the fund, right? I did the fund because I was writing checks and I wanted to write bigger checks and more checks into more companies and had more and that was more than my personal bankroll would allow. So I raised money from other people to do that. And I get you know, like

And so now I get to write more checks into more awesome companies. That's why I raised the fund, not because I wanted to democratize access to like you know s angel investing for like, you know, a A a a a middle school teacher in in uh Tennessee. I can't stand democratized it. We're gonna democrat Democratize this by only charging you fifty thousand dollars for this piece of clothing instead of

Then like I I've seen people like we're gonna democratize knowledge and it's like A five thousand dollar course. Like Not really, dude. Um you could democratize these nuts.

It's like Uh What do you think then? Was today uh Were we with it or what? I thought today was a hit. I thought today was a huge hit. This is uh

Yeah, other than like the Steph Smith episodes or Rob Deerdick, this is uh this is a plus territory. Did I not say at the beginning that this was gonna be a fire episode and I had the juice? You did say although I actually the the beginning was a little bit slower. Um, but it was once you guys started getting into those trends and you were just hitting people there was like If you capitalize on one of those trends, you guys like there are like twenty, thirty good businesses you could start with ideas that were thrown out today.

Oh, great. Are we gonna have to cut out my uh democratized D's nuts? No no tal. And then we'll so we we have to plan the M FM summit.

So uh I agree that making it destination is cool. I have a thing that I Oh you're gonna have to bleep uh bleep out what I'm about to say, but I know the thing. I know the thing. Yeah. Yeah, I got the guy, I got a really like famous house. That person might be interested in hosting us. I don't know. That's just gonna be a dinner, right? Like That's gonna be like No. We w we we might be able to do a proper thing there, but I don't know if the logistics are gonna work out. So I think but but I think that we could do like something outrageous. You know, I we have to think about what outrageous means. But I do think we can have something outrageous. I think a cruise ship

I like it that that's a that's not a bad idea, a cruise ship or like some type of famous venue or fuck We could just go to Hawaii. Do like on the beach in Hawaii. We can figure something out. But we do need to do, I guess, something.

Like if people are gonna have to travel for it, I think To get the value, again, the the easiest hack is First make it a couple of days where people get to hang and meet each other. So do it make it like a two day thing and then and then secondly Um Just make it already fun if it was just a vac vacation if there was no content on top. But it's like then you combine

Some content. uh getting to meet us and getting to meet other people in the community Plus already it was a good like kind of vacation type experience. Then that's cool. Right. And like, I don't know, let's do like Bring a fitness component. Bring a like less bring all the components of the stuff we talk about where there's like, you know, experiences beyond sitting down and listening to people talk.

It's like why not do a group workout or like let's get an MMA guy to like, you know, take us through a set like Pick people through a session or something. I don't know, like something like that. Down. All right, let's schedule it. I I do do you like that five hundred dollar price mark?

Price point. This I mean, we should do this as an N F T, no doubt. We should make this an N F T and then only NFT holders can attend and then they could flip their NFT to somebody else if They want to, but make it a limited number of NFTs. Uh for this. Damn all right, that's it.

Alright, that's the episode. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel, never looking back

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