Lessons From Billion $ Founders, The Nelk Boys, & More

The uh hospital software guy. Here's what he said. Uh you'll like this. His was simpler. He's like he said, Yeah, like agree with all that stuff. Uh, here's how we thought about it. Um We need to have five hundred salespeople that can sell.

A million dollars worth of product a year. Um, or two hundred fifty uh oh sorry, five hundred that could sell half a million a year or two hundred fifty that could sell a million dollar as their sales quota per year. So we just work backwards from that. All right. What features, products, and like people do we need to like What?

A sales person that get five hundred salespeople that can sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota. Like first, is that even possible? Can the can this market support that? Yes. The market is very big, hospitals spent a lot of money in healthcare. And in our category they spend more than uh much more than that. All right. We're live. So look, um

I you said Sean that you didn't want to like do an event because you didn't want to travel. I decided to host one anyway. It's just like a meetup. But Do you see the you saw the link that I posted?

Like the event brand thing. It's no big deal, but you see it? Yeah, you posted like an event in New York with you, uh, and a bunch of our like kind of tech buddy friends. No, just Sahel. Just me and Sahel. I was just like I wanna get out of the I was like, I wanna get out of the house, I wanna do something. You said no. And Dude, a thousand people have RSVP'd and I have

No idea where we're gonna host it. I have no idea what we're gonna do. I don't have a plan. I know nothing. I don't know, it sounded like you had a plan. You were like, We're moving it to this other place and blah blah. It sounded like something's in the work. Some guy DMed me on Twitter and said, I'll help you find a video a venue and I said, Great, you're in charge. I don't know his name, but Cool. You're it No take facts. Yeah. Hope it works. And then I got Nick Gray, the uh the small party guy, to come and I was like, dude, just come and organize this and you can sell books there. But uh what I'm gonna do.

Would it be lame if we're just standing around and just say hi? Yeah, kinda. Well what the fuck? What am I supposed to do? Juggle? I don't know. Should have thought of that before you posted it, bro. Like we did the live pod thing. Uh In Austin, Miami.

And honestly, I don't think it was very good. I don't think listening to a podcast live is that entertaining and the energy like a a planned like comedy skit. Unless like we like planned like we had a bit. You know what I mean? Scripted Stage play. Yeah. Well no, just like uh that's what comedians do, right? You know, it's like scripted, but they also kinda flow a little bit. But yeah. Or you're just so big that people like simply the idea of seeing you live is that entertaining. Like I don't think we're there yet. Like I went to Tim Ferris did a live thing once and it was just him sitting on a chair as a fireside chat.

Uh, I've seen the guys who do um whatever that political thing is, like John Favreau or whatever, they have like a political podcast pod. Pod Saves America or something like that. They do live shows and people just like geek out about meeting them and Seeing them. I don't think we're there yet.

Um And also just in general, I'm a big energy guy and Basically my idea of a good time is where the energy is like steady up and rising to the right. And like, you know, my idea of any kind of bad time is a dip in energy. Like the same way people feel about awkward silences in a conversation. I feel about energy dips. Like if I sense the energy going low in any room. Or hang out. Because that's what happens you do

Hey, we're two dudes from Twitter or a podcast. Let's Talk in front of you or let's say hi. Like It's just kinda lame, isn't it? Well

Maybe the say h the say hi is helpful though. I don't know what to do. I gotta I have these people coming. I here's what I think is gonna happen. I think that they're not actually coming to see me. I'm just the excuse for all these Twitter dorks to see one another. So I got an idea that I think would be dope that you could use for this. Um Or we could use for something else, but uh

Basically I was like, okay, um Uh like I'll tell you, I went to this event in LA just now, uh that my buddy Romin threw. And it's like a whatever there's a conference, but the day before the conference there's like The dinner. And now this was like a baller dinner, it was like at

uh the home of an NBA team owner is like on his rooftop looking at the beach. It was like beautiful, right? But like even if it wasn't that baller of a s of a surroundings, like the the house wasn't that sick. This still would have been awesome because it's basically The table was full of like Basically there were two tables.

Each table had like one really famous person. And then like two kind of famous people and then The rest were interesting but not famous people. And just simple like there was a copy of the which one of those were you? I was the just interesting person. Got it. Okay. I just tried to understand like the level of fame we're we're talking about. No, no, I'm talking about like real fame, like professional athlete, actor, that's that level of fame.

Which actors were there? D I can't say the names of anybody that was there. It was more athletes. It was a a it was an athlete event, not not so much actors. But like A list people? Uh of of athl of the athletes it was like former A list. It's like Or from a B list, let's say. It's like uh I you know

I you're not on the cover of the video game, but like, you know, I remember your name, I've seen you play, I had too many cards or something. You know that gamer's attributes. Yeah, I I exactly I can tell you exactly. I I have memories of you playing the game, not like a bench warmer. So anyways, but the my point is these dinner table like basically just like a table. And whether that table is like you're playing poker or you're eating food or something like that, just like a round table of like eight people. Where the expectation is that hey, we're all here to get to know each other, like we're all here to talk, and then you kind of can rotate. I think we could do one of those for the MFM community where we take

The like 10 or 15 like most baller guests. So it's like Andrew Wilkinson has his table, and you have your table, I have my table, and then Steph Smith has her table, and Ben has his table, and like We just do this with like kind of like Well known business people. We take you know, w we get whoever you know our Rob Deerdack, are we get

Or whatever, we get some of these people to show up. And then we curate the rest of the guest list is you are interesting, but you're not necessarily famous. So maybe you got a really interesting business. Maybe you're really like knowledgeable about some science or domain or something like that. You're just like a nerd in your own right. Um

But they're all fans and we basically just set up these tables and it's like whatever, this room of ten tables. And whether it's food or poker or something, there's some activity to do while you're there, just Casually while you're talking. And uh and you get to hop. So you get to rotate between I don't know, three or four of these tables while you're there. random draws and uh and like that's the event. I think people have more fun with some something like that because they

Participate. than sitting in a and watching other people talk. That's my My personal guess. So I would do that. for an MFM event. Bro.

Great. That's cool. But I have a thousand people coming on a can we have uh ten people and a hundred person tables? It's just a lot. A lot of a lot. You don't have to let all thousand th that was a g interest list. That wasn't a you're you're accepted in, right? I don't know. I d I made this was a toilet event. I made it on my phone and I was on toilet and I tweeted it out and it and it worked. Here's what I think you should do. I think you should uh whatever, you do something the same way, you're like all right, everybody, we're all meeting in this junkyard or we're gonna look for cool scraps and like that'll filter out people you want to hang out with.

It'll be a no headache event. And then separately I will host this cool event that's well planned. And you just have to show up to that. You don't have to do any work. Um Whatever. We'll see. Uh Can I talk to you about w one thing really quick and then I want to hear about your event? Dude, have you listened to the full send podcast? Uh, like not regularly, but I've definitely seen clips like when they had Dana White or Mark Cuban, I see a bunch of clips.

I don't exactly understand what full send is, but I know they're incredibly popular. Like I it's I don't know if it's like a boy band where it's like four guys doing something or if it's just the two main guys and the rest are co hosts. But it's basically a group of like Yeah, go ahead. Can I explain what what it is roughly?

So I'm also not an expert, but it's basically the group is the milk boys. That's like the main Name of the group. Full send is like w their brand and one of their podcasts and stuff like that. But these guys are basically the way I think about it is They are like what Jackass was when we were growing up.

That's what the Nelk boys are now. So the J so Jackass back in the day was basically guys doing You know, stunts pranks, you know, punching each other with balls. Basically a group of guys who are kind of like they're willing to go all out for your entertainment and for their own amusement. They kind of um

They they they live a certain lifestyle and it's kinda like the like If you take a boys like fantasy, you just like crank it up to twelve, it's like that's what these guys do. The Nelk Boys are a little bit like that. They make YouTube videos, they got big on YouTube. They also have a bunch of brands. So they have one brand that's basically an equivalent of Girls Gone Wild. It's like a paid membership club that's like

For photos or videos of something. I don't know. I didn't know about that. That's called I don't know, Ben find the name of that one. Um so that's one of their businesses that I think is really smart, probably prints money. They have merch that they drop and they've done merch drops. Uh they like show the live stream when they're like doing it. Obviously there's a little bit of hype, but like whatever. They're basically like

The Shopify Drop Shipper Bro on steroids, they'll do like two or three million dollars Worth of sales. in like five minutes when they do a drop. So the New York Times. Well, the New York Times said last year they did about eighty million in revenue.

Which is pretty good. But fifty million in merchandise, it says, I think. Yeah, and then it said they're on track to do eight or maybe at seventy the next year and this article's a year old and then uh they have this new shtick going on and NFT. They got all types of crap. But then if you go to that link that I sent you, each guy has like a video page. And one of these guys, his name is Steve, and I think this is like a point where I realize I'm out of touch.

He's just like giving away a million dollars in every video. Literally like Mr. Beast playbook. But he's like giving two mil he's like here, I just gave this guy a hundred thousand dollar watch. I just gave this family two million dollars. And in all these videos He goes

Yeah, I'm gonna go uh give this guy a car. And then he was with Dana and he goes, I'm gonna uh Dana, I just got this four hundred thousand dollar van made. It's yours. Um On one of the videos they gave a guy two hundred fifty thousand in cash for his birthday. On another thing they're giving away two hundred n thousand dollars just to her family in need. Like So whatever, find videos, but he's doing these multiple times a month. These guys are gonna run out of money.

Right? I have no idea how they give this much away or if they actually give it away. It's so if it's actually just like, you know You know, like uh Stage thing or if there's some like

Caveats or whatever. I have the apartment. They show the guy's apartment and he's got uh his watch collection, and I know a little bit of w watches. It's literally three million dollars worth of Rolexes. And then it's like in a Well I believe that I believe that they could have dope stuff, but g literally giving away millions of dollars is kinda crazy. And if I look at his YouTube channel, he does do that sometimes, but like He has other ones like Here's my three million dollar man cave. Here's you know, uh

Here's me, you know, whatever, buying this car, racing this car. So that that's a little different than giving it away. But um I know like m so did you watch when Mr. Beast was doing this when he would go and he would basically give away thirty thousand, fifty thousand dollars. Or he'd go into a Twitch stream. That has like two viewers.

He would just drop twenty grand in a donation and the person would freak out and that that clip would go viral. Like did you see those and do you know how he was doing those? I I know a I know they exist and I saw them. I don't know like w the anything about beh behind it. One of the things that he was doing. I don't know if this is the full story. Ben, maybe you know You're friends with Mr. B, so maybe you d you know, you know

He seems to consider you one of his top three closest friends. Uh um You may know better, but I remember meeting one guy who worked at this site called Quid Quib? Quid, I think it was.

And basically quid was like these like I don't know. Little collectible stickers and cards or something like that. Um, it was kinda like aimed at a teenage audience. And what they did was they would go to Mr. Beast and they would say, Hey We'll pay you fifty thousand dollars for a sponsor video. And the the genius of Mr. Beast was he was like Cool.

But here's what we're gonna do. The that's not you paying me for a shout out midway through one of my videos. Let's make the video about using fifty thousand dollars in an interesting way. How about that? And so he would do these videos where he would be like I'm gonna go to this coffee shop and I'm gonna tip the barista.

fifteen thousand dollars and let's see her reaction. And he would go and he would tip her. She would have this crazy reaction. He'd be like Thanks so much to our guys at C Quiv who made this possible. Um you know, go check them out. They do this thing, right? That video would get like five million or ten million views. And so for the for quib or whatever, they were like, dude, this is great. Like

We're getting way more bang for our buck than any other influencer shout out we're doing. So then they would up the ante. They would do 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, because each video he was getting like 10 million views. And it was this like perfectly Like I forgot what it's called in biology where like the parasite actually helps you. It like sucks out the toxins of the parasites getting food, but you're also getting healed. It was basically like a symbiotic relationship like that.

Where The the brand was basically putting up loads of cash and he was using that To create. Huge amounts of views and subscribers to make himself the biggest YouTuber in the world.

But that's cool. I don't think these guys have sponsors. Well they must have it somewhere, right? Like the the model must be that Either it's the same thing. The money comes in one one door. Then they reinvest it in stuff like this'cause they know that Seems to be a pretty good formula.

I give away, you know, I'm I give my I'm gonna give this family in the hood a hundred thousand dollars uh, you know, let's see what happens. And it's him standing with like three, you know, three Becks of front of Home Depot. That's literally the the second most recent video. And it's got two point seven million views. So clearly that works. This video will monetize Um on top of that's that's that's their whole shtick is they got banned. They can't monetize their videos.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't I don't know how it's sustainable. Maybe it's not sustainable. But by the way, and it's also explicit. I don't think you could put ads on an an explicit channel. But Just like the economics behind what these guys are doing. It's

It's uh it's outrageous to me. Something is crazy. I I I I don't think I'm the I I think when I see this and I predict that they're gonna go broke, I don't think I'm the crazy one. Yeah, maybe. Uh I I could see that. I could also see these things being money printers. So like In the same way that I think the Jackass franchise ultimately was successful, right? You see like Oh, dude, there's like a a midget in a thong, you know, kicking this other guy in the balls. You're like, Well, this doesn't seem like good business. But in actuality, as long as they have a good man, as long as they have their Chris Jenner. In the background that's like yeah, go act the fool.

Like this is this is what drives ratings. Then this will work. And like the New York Times headline about them. Is What won't the Nelk Boys do? And it's just like how s like that's a brand, right? That's a really powerful, valuable brand to own is

The question isn't what do they do? It's what they what won't they do. It's like they do pranks, parties, crude humor. They get in trouble, but the backlash is the brand. That's literally the the headline. Now would they go for it I don't know. I I don't know enough about them, but you know, I'm a f I'm actually a fan of what they do. I think they're pretty cool. Uh We should get them on the pod. I wanna hear hear their business. I agree. I think one of the their manager asked to come on, maybe we can talk to them. I heard um A story about a friend, uh a person I know who made sixty million dollars a handful of years ago.

Living in living out of their car now. I learned that this weekend. So I know a person. Who made sixty million dollars. Like ten years ago.

And now they're homeless. Yeah. Dude, that's crazy. That's not even crazy. That's normal, bro. Like Uh Jack Dorsey is like, you know, starts two multi billion dollar companies and then like actively tries to dress like, you know, a homeless guy. Like, you know, the

Does it that's the thing you do when you get rich. You then go on some journey To like find the meaning of life. In fact I was telling somebody this the other day, we were reminiscing. It's like, dude, at the event, I was like, dude, I haven't seen you in so many years. Like, oh, when was the last time I saw you? It was like Remember we were advising that kid on his company. And we were both afterwards like

Yeah, but that's never gonna work. Like, you know Yeah, I ha yeah, good kid, but like you know. He'll be maybe he'll be successful in like five years. And then his company currently is like a multi billion dollar company and I was like Now that motherfucker's twenty five years old.

running around like with a huge beard trying to like figure out like basically trying to figure out the meaning of life. Like Oh shit, you're on a spiritual journey already? Damn it, you're like You are so far ahead of us now after we kind of were joking around about how you you know, y you you don't have this thing figured out. That is the part like the Classic tech.

cliche is to like Be like Uh, I made all this money so that I'm gonna live like somebody who has no money. That's like the the stereotype. I w I wanna get to your event, but really quick. One more thing, because this is U the new cliche. So I hate talking about these guys, but

Elon Um In the Wall Street Journal it came out yesterday that Elon Musk slept with Sergey Bryn, the guy who started Google, his wife. And Sergey Aren't friends at all.

Elon tweeted two things that were hilarious. The one he goes, This isn't true. I haven't had sex in forever. I mean it takes a month, yeah. And then the next parentheses P Yeah. Like a middle school girl. And then the next thing that he tweeted was Here's Me and Sergey hanging out right now on a boat and it's them like drinking wine together, like partying. Did he post a picture? Yes. Or yeah, either he did or someone did it. He repl he replied to it and said, Yeah, that was us literally yesterday.

That's so funny. Yeah so funny. Here's what I here's how I was feeling about this. I was like, all right. I saw the th saw the newsbreaker or whatever, it was like Scoop on the Wall Street Journal. Scoop exclusive scoop. Elon Musk sleeping with whatever blah blah blah. And uh

And I was like Okay, that's kinda interesting, I guess, like All right, got some TMZ shit. And um I was like well Pretty sad for like, you know, the Wall Street it was the Wall Street Journal. Uh f pretty sad that that's like the Wall Street Journal's thing, but of course I get it. If I had that story, I'd pro I'd publish it too. No no doubt. Then he tweets out like the like the thing like not true.

And haven't had sex in months. Sigh. And I was like, Ah, now another sad thing. Like first Wall Street Journal disappointed me. Then Elon Musk disappointed me. Like, dude, I want my billionaires like being cool, not like

Dude, that was like my MSN like away message, you know, just a a cry for attention back in middle school or high school. It's like oh man, wouldn't be nice to get a like I wonder what a kiss feels like, you know, some shit like that. It's like dude Lame. And then I was like well So did the Wall Street Journal just make that up? Because that's even lamer. So it was just like a lame sandwich that I was not into. Um I just thought it was hilarious how he he tweeted a picture of him and Sergey just hanging out. Uh I enjoy this drama. I'm here for it. I don't care about the cars. I don't care about the solar stuff. I just like this type of crap.

Yeah, somebody had this great tweet. They were like, uh Elon Musk is like, you know He's on some pirate shit. He's taking over companies like Twitter. He's trying to like conquer new lands like Mars. He's sleeping with his friends' girlfriends. Like he's he's on he's on that pirate shit. And I was like, Oh yeah, it's true. That's cool if true, but it sounds like you know, maybe this one's not actually true. All right. What's this what's this event? Oh, by the way, I we forgot to say on the Noys, they have like their beer, which I think is also like a big thing. Their happy dad like seltzer or beer, whatever the heck that is.

Um Happy Dad is like everywhere on Instagram. Like it's like The main brand. I've seen a lot of people drink it. Yeah.

I wanna tell you some things about this event. And these are gonna be kind of rapid fire little nuggets. You can choose to say the following. You can either say That's stupid, and I'll simply move on. I won't defend it. You'll say

That's cool. I have nothing to add. And I'll simply move on. Or we could talk about any of these things. Alright. I go to this event in LA.

Uh my buddy Romin, who Uh we run our fund together. He Host this event. Um And it's basically like athletes and big shot investors. So at this event, we're like

Three or four owners of like sports teams. So these are basically like billionaires or billionaire families, like legacy families. How did he get these people? They just wanted to come, I guess. I don't know. He just called reach out. He's not paying anybody and it's a free event. So there's not there's like no money to be made, but this is just like in network. Then there's pro athletes, mostly retired athletes, but some active players like Kind of like Some guys from the Lakers, some guys from other other teams that are younger guys, but then

some older guys that are retired and they're like on to the next phase of their their business life. And they maybe are doing content now. They got like a media brand or they are doing real estate or whatever. And so the idea was let's get together like fifty Peace people from the world of sports and fifty people from the world of like tech and business. And let's see what happens.

So I went last year, I went this year again. And I have a couple of like little stories. So the first is um I'm gonna tell you the the there was one talk that was good. There was that it was like a bunch of talks on the day of the conference. Um

There was only one talk that I thought was good. And th by the way, that's shitting on myself too. I I was I hosted a panel too I didn't think was very good. Um, but the one was really good. It was basic lessons from billion dollar founders. So on stage was the CEO of Carta. So uh Carta, they do cap table management, they're a multi billion dollar company.

Um something called um Oh shoot, what was it? It's like a a therapy app and the name will come to me. It's basically like mental health. It's like a better hope, but it's not them. It's like some other components. Uh another one. But basically they they basically do like therapy and mental health, um uh tel through telemedicine, like online.

And uh and then there's another one that was like some hospital software, Athelos, and then there was uh this most interesting one just then they called relativity space. And by the way, You can basically tell You know. I wouldn't say that The most interesting person at a conference is always the one who dresses differently.

But somebody who's dressed very differently is almost always very interesting at these conferences. Uh last year when I was there. I told you I saw this kid who looked like a break dancer wearing this like tie-dye shirt with like a black stud earring. It looked different than every other You know, suit in the room. And it was the founder of Bolt, who now has become a lot more famous because he like, you know, went on these Twitter tirades and Bolt is a multi-billion dollar company and all this stuff. But I met him there and invested in his company because I was like, This dude's just really interesting.

So that happened again. This guy's the founder of Relativity Space. He's competing with Elon. His two competitors are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Uh like you know, no big deal. I'm I'm competing with the world's richest man and like second richest man, basically. Tim Ellis? Tim Ellis, yeah. And so

I'm just gonna share with you two things. One is th this dude's company is insane. So relativity space, what they do is they 3D print rockets. And then they send them into space. So basically there's a huge am huge demand. For rocketry. So but the ability to take satellites up to space to do, you know, some scientific missions, whatever. And right now SpaceX is like the number one, Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos' company, is number two, and Relativity Space is number three. Uh, but they kind of have a a a differentiator, which is All those other companies like to build a rocket, they need like whatever, hundreds of parts, like specialty parts.

And they might three D print individual parts, but like The whole thing is like a very expensive complex structure that where a million things can go wrong. Whereas these guys basically three D print the entire rocket. Um With only a couple extra parts. And uh and so because of that, they're like, you know

Cheaper and whatever. He said this line, this throw away line, he's like So he's explaining, he's like you know, our mission is to make human h like humanity multiplanetary. Uh through three D printing rockets. We're one of only two companies on on earth that has a mission of c making the human race like multi multiplanetary. The other is SpaceX. He goes. The launch bar market today is eight billion a year. So eight billion gets spent launching things into space.

And it's growing to thirty billion. Uh, there's really only three companies that possibly can serve this right now. Um, and he's like, you know, um we in the last three months we have We've sold over one point two billion in uh launch uh in launch sales. I was like what? Dude, he started and he started he started the company when he was twenty five. He's thirty two now. So he used to work at

Jeff Bezos company blew. As an intern. And he was trying to do three D printing there. He was like, Hey, I think this is like one of the ways we can dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of rockets. And it was like, Yeah, nice R and D, but like it wasn't the main way they were doing things. So he left and he starts his thing. He goes, we have eight hundred fifty employees, five hundred are ex SpaceX. And I thought that was literally the funniest shit anybody could say. I was like, what kind of absurd statement is that? That's so amazing to me. Um And he's like, you know.

We have a launch site now. That was like the big progress of last year. We have a launch site. So we're gonna be doing our first big like uh ne I don't know if our first big or next big launch there. Uh, there are only four launch sites in the country. None have been built since 1960, and we now have exclusive rights to one for the next twenty five years. It's like, you know, he's basically 'Cause in this talk he's like what makes a company worth so much'cause people will see me, okay, I'm a young guy. I'm a young guy

Companies not that old. And it's worth how many billions of dollars? Like that's crazy. And he's like, Well Here's what we did. He's like We hopped into an emerging wave. So we basically like there's surging demand. For um

for going in for missions into space for satellites and more. Um There's not enough supply. No there's basically like not much competition. Everybody's sort of scared away. So in actuality, like just going into the space, we're not competing with most companies. Um, the next one is

Yeah, we Um Basically w like defensibility, we have a launch site. There's only four of these. None have been built in like you know sixty years. And um and we have we have one of them. And so like you know we just have to do we wanted to do it.

Lessons. Well, these are lessons. What does it take to build a billion dollar company? These are the core elements, like Defensibility, that's you know, that's one of their motes. The next one is like this like this com extreme imbalance in supply and demand. Dude, how lame must you feel if you're like a a software guy like Carta, like Following this guy.

You know what I mean? Well they each had to say their thing. So I'll tell you what each of'em said. So this is what this guy was saying. Alright, the next guy, the the telehealth guy. Hospital software guy? Here's what he said. Uh you'll like this. His was simpler. He's like he said, Yeah, like agree with all that stuff.

Uh here's how we thought about it. Um We need to have five hundred sales people that can sell. A million dollars worth of product a year. Um, or two hundred fifty uh oh sorry, five hundred that could sell half a million a year or two hundred fifty that could sell a million dollar as their sales quota per year.

So we just work backwards from that. All right. What features, products, and like people do we need to like What? A sales person that get five hundred salespeople that can sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota. Like first, is that even possible? Can the can this market support that? Yes. The market is very big, hospitals spent a lot of money in healthcare.

And in our category they spend more than you know, much more than that. Okay, cool. So it's possible. Then He's like all of our product team, they know they work for sales.

And I thought that was very different than what most people say. He's like Well uh Silicon Valley loves to preach that like product is king, product is the god, you just need a great product. He was like We build great product if it's gonna help us sell better. And like we build great customer support so that it helps us sell better. Everything is in service of sales. So I really like that guy's kind of like one liner approach.

The Carter guy basically w was like Um, you know, we uh he's like, Here's how I think about it. He's like You need uh you need a He basically is like you wanna find a multi billion dollar wave if you're gonna be a billion dollar company. He's like so find an emerging wave. So for example, the the telehealth guy

His is that. His was that uh mental health coverage was now required. So like a bunch of I don't know if it's Like insurance companies or companies They were ca now requiring that like uh mental health is part of a healthcare package.

He's like that changed. He goes second thing that changed was Mental health is getting destigmatized. You're seeing all kinds of famous people talking about mental health. It's not like this taboo subject like it was ten years ago. It's only Inflections. So there's like regulatory inflections, which is like all right, now you could do telemedicine. That's a new thing. There's uh cultural inflections, which is wow, it's not weird to talk in front of your camera anymore and like make a video. There's technology, technology technological inflections, which is like oh wow, our phones all have GPSs. So you want to like look for different inflections. Right. Exact that's exactly what he was saying. And the last one he mentioned was like

The pandemic was another inflection because it forced everybody, if they needed a doctor visit, to do a t avert video one. So it's like a everybody had to try it. For this two year period. And so video visits and telemedicine not now the hospitals know they need to have it. Uh, doctors know they need to be willing to do this and patients have like tried it once.

Uh all right, the next thing he goes, he goes team, he goes Billion dollar companies are almost never bootstrapped. So you kinda have to know that going in. Like a if you're gonna build a billion dollar company, you almost certainly are gonna raise money. Because you're gonna hire A plus players They need to have an A plus mission and secondly, you need to have a high velocity customer acquisition model.

And I just thought that phrase is very good. High velocity customer acquisition model. It's something you could just kinda ask yourself, do I or don't I have a high velocity customer acquisition model? Every business wants one, pretty much. Um And you gotta say, like, okay, what's our current velocity? So at what rate are we currently adding customers? How high would it need to be for us to get there and like what are we gonna do to make this this little wheel spin faster?

Um those four guys. It was four people, right? Four guys. Yeah. Yeah. D were they a

Tired and exhausted looking. And B, do you think they are happy? Alright, we'll give you the scale. The mental health guy honestly looked not tired and happy. Um he was like fit. He didn't have like crazy bags under his eyes. He like spoke with energy and he was like sitting upright. That makes sense. Checks out.

Carter guy? He looked calm, like he didn't look like he was facing death, but he looked like he like had been facing death for some extended period of time. He only has five months. Kind of hunched over. Yeah, like you know, I could tell he wasn't in bad shape at all, but uh, you know, like didn't look like you know He was springing around with energy necessarily. Right. Uh Space Guy.

That guy looked like he just walk in he looked like he just walked out of a room You know like those scenes in Game of Thrones where like Oh shoot, we're going to war and the guy like gets up and out of his bed scramble like four nude women and he's like oh okay yeah let me just go do my next thing That's how this guy lived. He had the swagger of a guy in Game of Thrones who was just sleeping with four women, four beautiful women. He had the Turin Lannister energy. Um he and that that's when he was like, Yeah

billion dollars in sales in the last three months. And like, you know, we have five hundred X space employees. Yeah, they leave Elon to come looking at the that's the energy he was carrying. He looked happy. Damn. Well fuck these guys, right?

I I was sitting with him at lunch and he was Asking questions to everybody else. And like that was one of the real most that was one of the coolest parts of this event. I don't know how they did it. But Nobody had an ego. Like

Everybody who was there, I don't know if they just filter people out who had egos. Or they're just like everybody got the vibe, which is like Everybody here is equally valuable. Be curious about others. You're not just like the star. And all these people are used to being the star. It's like yeah, you're You own that N that that NBA team. You own that football team.

Or like You're like this superstar, like you know, the guy on my panel with me, I think he had like You know, ninety million dollar he had a ninety he just signed like a ninety million dollar contract. He's like one of the highest paid NFL players. And uh The guy was like, dude, I'm just here to learn, man. I would love to s you know, subscribe to your newsletter and blah, blah, blah. I'm like

Wow, this is incredible. You are gonna go so far in life because You are obviously skilled and successful, but you're so humble. It was crazy. Damn, how many people were there? About a hundred. One hundred maybe. Romine organized this?

Yeah, so basically Romine and then Tribe, which is like a V C fund. Um Uh, Tribe was one of the hosts and then T P G, which is like one of the biggest private equity companies in the world. Like they why is this guy working on the hundred twenty billion dollar. What's this guy working with you? Bro, I always have that Tyrion Linners Lannister energy, regardless of what what my situation is. Holy crap, this guy's amazing. Well, that's badass. That was in LA.

I'm gonna give you a couple other things that I I took away from this. Ben. So Ben Levy, who's not producer Ben. My business partner, Ben. He has a superpower that we talk about. Now have I told you about his superpower? His superpower

To me is Um people just tell him shit and he just smiles and laughs and then he uses it against them. If if he needs to. Yeah. I don't know what he does. Everybody trusts him. Like me and you, I've known you for I don't know how long, I've known like eight years.

We spent time together, we've gone through ups and downs of adversity, we've I've seen each other, whatever. We know each other very well. You may have met Ben twice in your life. But even he will be like If you if there's something interesting or something going on, you like text Ben like Do my new business doing off stuff or something like that. And he just has that pull with people. Everybody wants to talk to Ben. Everybody wants to tell him something.

I don't know what it is, but I saw his super honor blast. So I'm gonna tell you a little story here. And I don't even know how much we can take away from this. I'm just gonna kind of explain that it happened just so that Just because I think it was amazing and because I think the If there is a way to learn this skill, everybody should learn it. I'm trying to learn it myself. So I'm gonna talk out loud about it. So we go to this event. At the event I get a text from Ben. Ben sitting across the room. We

We split up at the events. We don't always just sit together and just only talk to each other'cause that's kinda defeats the purpose. And he's like, Yo, the dude next to you Uh is awesome. And I go, Who? He goes.

He goes, that's Chris Johnson or th that's this guy who he trains like some of the best NBA players on the planet. Um, and I was like, Oh, really? Like I I'm a big NBA fan. I was like I I don't know this guy. Like he he must follow him on Instagram, like Ben's is like even deeper down the rabbit hole. So I was like, okay, cool, but I was like, I don't know what to do with that information. Like I guess like if the opportunity kinda presents itself, I'll I'll go introduce myself. Like you know, I have nothing to Yeah, I I don't know how to force my way in. He seems busy right now, but okay.

Ben does something where he I don't know w I don't know what he did, but he approached this guy. Banner versus Guy. And he starts talking to him. And I I think two things happen. I think number one In a room full of the guys who are usually on screen Um

This guy who himself is obviously like a heavy hitter in his space. P a lot the average Joe did not know who he was, right? Like every tech nerd who was in there doesn't know who this guy is. Even People who like sports probably didn't know that this guy's like the tr you know, the skills trainer for all these top guys. I'm talking about like this guy will train with Dwayne Wade and LeBron James and like other guys like that, like the top of the top.

And um Ben goes up to him, he's like, dude, I follow you, man. I love your videos. It gives him a compliment. They start chatting a little bit. I don't know what Ben said next, but I think uh I'm gonna skip to the end, and we'll fill in the middle. The end is The event's over, everybody's leaving, people go into the airport.

This guy comes up to me and he he's I'm talking to Ben, we're just figuring out we're gonna get our Uber. He goes. I knew I was coming to this event for a reason, but I didn't know why. This man was the reason. He pointed me. And I go

What? And I was like, What do you mean? Like what did he do? He's like I don't even know, man. He goes, This I am so happy I've met this guy. Ben, I will always remember our conversation. He goes, He said something he goes like

He goes he he's like he's like he's like bro brother Anything you need. Anything you need. I got you. And I was like, and he w this is not the type of guy he's not schmoozing. This is not This is a guy where when words come out of his mouth, they mean something.

And I'm just I'm just sitting there I'm not even laughing. I'm not even asking questions. I'm speechless. I get this look on my face like What the fuck did you do, Ben? How did you do this again? And and Ben, still he's just smiling. He doesn't even say anything back to this guy. He's just smiling. And I go I go what? I go, what did he

I go, what happened, man? Why? He goes. I goes, I don't even he goes, I don't even know. He doesn't even know the spell he's under. He goes, I don't even know but he goes You know I'm a trainer, man. I work with athletes.

When they need something, they call me. When they're when they're a slump, they call me. When they're trying to get better, they call me. When they want their next contract, they call me. I help these guys get paid. I'm always helping. I drive to this guy's house. I drive here, I fly there, I do this, I do that. I'm always pouring into other people. He goes, Ben. You filled me up. You poured into me today. And I was like, what just happened? I was so amazed.

And the guy goes the guy goes, When are you flying out? And Ben's like tomorrow he goes Come train with us tomorrow. Ben goes with him the next morning to his facility and does a session. The guy spends two hours correcting Ben's form. There's other NBA players there. He's locked into Ben. Van send me this video. He's wearing like a fucking weighted vest. He's got a glove on his hand because this guy like invented a shooting glove. He made a experience out of it for Ben and I I really appreciate like this guy didn't have to do that. That was incredibly nice of this guy.

He was just a very f like I don't know, he was very like You could see why this guy works with so many people because there's something magnetic about this guy's personality. What's his name? But Two magnets met, dude, and I don't I don't know how I don't know what Ben's superpower is. I don't know how he does this consistently. These sorts of things happen where people are just very Um, attracted to him in this way. I don't know what it is, but it he's amazing. It's g you know who else is really good at that?

Me. Yeah. I'm fucking good at that. I'm good at that. You are good at that. Can I tell you that you're not going to be able to do that? I'm not that good, but I'm good, yeah. This data is wrong every freaking time.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the clients whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and Here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Spot. Grow better. So yesterday we'll talk about it in a second, but yesterday I did a interview with Martin Shrely.

And um And I wanted it to go well. I was like, Yeah, okay, you know, I think people can be interested in this, let me do a good job and I'm Five minutes into the interview. And I find myself doing the like Bullshit socialized I'm like

Ha ha ha yeah. I'm like smiling, I'm laughing, I'm like So that must have been hard for you to blah blah blah. And what would you say I'm just like falling into some fucking like Script. Like I don't know what I like became some character this like generic

Podcast character. And literally the thought in my head was Sam would never do this. Sammy. He he said something he was like he was talking about like yeah, how he like He's like, Yeah, dude, I I I got a contraband cellphone. I was on the internet the whole time I was in prison.

And I was like And I was like, uh I started to and I was like, dude, if Sam I would ask great. What. What websites were you using? Like where were you where were we going? You would have been like, Wait, what? How do you get it in there? Do you like get it like do you have to put it between your butt cheeks? Like you would have said something like that to kinda disarm him. To get him to share an interesting nuggets, you would have just genuinely been like, Wait, what the hell? Like

Hold on, no. And you would have Just reacted like a normal person rather than like That's fascinating. You know, um I'm curious to hear your thoughts on bla bla bla it's like dude that's podcaster. versus real person.

And so I'm I like literally switched into Sam mode and I started being like I was like, what do you know? And then he shares this in hilarious thing. He's he goes, Yeah, dude, and you you you would have been like, How much was it? I was like How much you get the phone for? He's like. Dude, he's crazy. He's like, You have to buy these things for like thousands of dollars. I paid fifteen thousand for one phone. And I thought, shit, this phone must be made out of gold because he's like, but you have to do it because to get the phone in, they gotta grease, you know, one guy to get one guy to get another guy. You gotta bribe five guys to get this in.

And so like, you know, we gotta pay that Vig and he's like Most guys I was like, So what do you use it for? Exactly your question. He goes He goes, Yeah, most guys just get used for porn. He's like he's like, but me, I'm in I'm on GitHub and like con Academy and porn. I did that too, but like Yeah, I was only guys using this for like advanced math also, you know, under the covers, listening to this. And that little magic moment that came out. Yeah, it was great. It's like that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen unless You kind of act the way that you act that Ben acts, where it's like yours is a little different. Yours is like

You get to like real talk really fast. Then just kind of like seems so curious and earnest, I think, that people really like They like how genuinely interested he is in their life and how he how helpful he tries to be. Without like

Seeking anything or talking about himself. Have you read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People? I read like the first chapter where it was like The people's favorite word in the English language is their name. And I was like oh this is great. And I never did.

That book like changed my life and in one of the chapters he talks about how uh there was a story of a man like sitting with the with a young guy and the young guy like wanted something like a job or something from the from the older guy. But the young guy, you know, used Dale Carnegie's practices and basically like He just listened to him the entire time and you know, the older guy did all the talking and at the end of the uh the end of the conversation, the older guy goes, Wow, this was the best conversation I've ever had with anyone ever and the younger guy was like, Well I didn't say a word, so But like that that's funny how that works. And the older guy goes like You know, you should we're friends now. You should come and like apply at our company, you know, like things like that.

And that like changed my life when I learned when I learned that strategy. And so when I want to get stuff from people I usually amp'em up. So I'll do one of two things. One, I'll either insult them a little bit. Like if I know that their business is doing above a hundred million in revenue, I'll be like That's a that's a nice little business. What do you guys like fifty million? Like and and then they're gonna like tell me the exact so I'll like make'em a little, or the thing that I do more often than not is I just encourage them like crazy. Like

Wow, you did that? You are so amazing. You're my hero, dude. How did you do that? You know, and they'll like start like And I'll just make'em feel really good about themselves. This sounds manipulative, which I guess it is, but I don't think it's a bad manipulative, but yeah, it works. Yeah, the way I put it is like you go to these events to make connections with new people, right? That's the point. Well, we wouldn't go to an event if it wasn't for that. But it's kinda hard to do that. I find myself like feeling uncomfortable in a lot of those situations, you know, like

Okay, I need to introduce myself to this person. I how do I quickly, you know, like are they interested in me? Am I interested in them? There's very much like a like a dating component to that, to this, like a speed dating component to these events. And you sort of see their eyes start to wander. It's like, oh they're clearly like looking for the next conversation or like you know the the bathroom or some excuse to get out of this sort of thing, or You're like Or you find yourself tuning out'cause you're like, Oh shoot, I'm just kinda judging them like really quickly like Everybody's got something to offer. I just wanna I I should be in the mode of like finding out what that is rather than like

Looking at their badge and trying to figure out like, are you, you know, valuable at this conference or not? That's sort of a stupid way to do it. But like I am fascinated with Ben and this guy, Chris, their their ability to connect was so strong, like The way Chris talked to me, too, I felt Like a friend of his within two minutes.

And it's not'cause he was manipulating me. No, he's just like That's his energy he carries around. So if I think about why has he been able to connect with these athletes who everybody wants to connect with them. Everybody wants to connect with LeBron James. Everybody wants to connect with Kevin Durant. Everybody wants to connect with Dwayne Wade. How does this guy do it? Well, obviously he's gotta be good at his job, but that's not enough. You also have to have The people's skills. He told me a story.

I think I could share this on here. By the way, he w he wants to come on the pot. I'll I'll tell I'll tell him to come on. So I don't know if you pay you probably don't pay attention to this, but Did any of the people who you met listen? Oh yeah, there were some people who listen to the pod. I've got'em.

Yeah, not a not not a ton, I would say, but like definitely a few. Um Franchise owners listens, which is kinda great. Um And so or like he had listen, I don't know if he's super regular.

But um Uh so so okay, so he was so basically this guy was talking about the the trainer he was talking about like uh Uh fear. And so he So he was like he is he somehow we got on the topic of fear.

He's like, Yeah, man, I wish I work with these guys in the gym. They can hit like, you know, whatever, eighty, ninety sh ninety three pointers in a row, like eighty, ninety percent. But in the game it's obviously lower. And sure it's the speed is h there, the defense is a little tighter, but like Take free throws. There's no defense. There's no speed. Still, the guys in the gym perform one way and in the game they perform another. And it's because there's a huge mental component to this. He's like, So I train their mental just as much as their physical. And he's like,

You know, um LeBron recently went to play at this thing called the Drew League. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's basically like It's in downtown LA. It's like in the hood, basically, truly. LeBron, I don't think has ever played, and it's usually like kind of like former players or like j fringe guys, journeyman guys who want to make his league.

Very good at basketball, but they're not like stars. And um LeBron was like, I'm thinking about going and dropping in and just playing. And and this trainer was like that would be awesome, and that would like mean a lot. Like I think it would mean a lot to the people. I think you would

You would have fun, it's a legacy thing. Like J'ai like One time Kevin Durant went to Rucker Park and he played in Rucker Park. He dropped like fifty points or something like that. And the crowd like mobbed him. They just like ended the game because the crow just rushed him because he was being so awesome. And he just like hit a three from from half court, basically, and like he just gets mobbed by people. It was like this very memorable thing. And so the guy was like, you should do it. But like LeBron has a lot to lose at something like this, right? LeBron's already one of the best players in the world, already one of the richest, most famous athletes in the world. So he doesn't need the fame. He's not gonna get any money. He's already not gonna get better like just by playing in this one game with people who are worse than him.

Like um And there's plenty of things that could go wrong. Like he could get hurt. He could get dunked on or embarrassed in some way crossed over in some way, like, you know, that sort of thing. Or he could just like miss shots and like Oh man, he went and it was like Dude, you couldn't even like you weren't you ain't all that like you know, it wasn't like hype.

So you had something to lose. And um well he decided to go and then the the trainer was she like pulls up his cell phone. It's like the NBA all star game is his iMessage, like just one star after another. He's like He clicks the text message with me he's like he told he's like I told him. Your victory is in your vulnerability.

Like this you felt you were vulnerable. That's why this was a win for you. Cause he went. It was amazing. Everybody loved it. He played Superworld, dropped forty points and like It was awesome. Uh and the clips go viral on Instagram and people really respect him for it. He goes, You've remember that your victory is an innovability. He looked around the circle, he was just psyched.

Remember that. And all of us were like nodding like yes, sir. I was like, I will I what do I need to be vul I will take my clothes off right now and people are vulnerable if it helps me be like the brown and baby. You know, like but he was really inspiring telling these stories. And so I love meeting people like this. I love hearing stories like this, and I love getting these golden nuggets These little things you can take away. That like you can use in your own little your own life. You know what my takeaway when I hear this shit is is

Damn, these guys are cool. I wanna be fucking cool. Like I like I wanna shtick. How the fuck do you have to be cool? I just Google at Amazon how to be cool. Where's this book? I need one of these books. I don't want I want men to want me. Like. Yeah. How do you be cool, dude? Where's that book on how to be cool? I want that. This guy read it. I want to read it too. That's crazy.

Yeah. I'm so envious when I hear people like this, I'm like damn they got a good shtick. L I tell you one other little nugget here. Do memorable things. I wrote this down. All right, what does that mean? I went to the conference last year, I went this year.

In between I've like launched a business, I've you know the podcast has grown, blah blah blah. Guess what the number one thing people remembered me for at the conference this year? Like E Kamer stuff. Oh, last year this year? This year. Whether when they when they're like, Oh, I remember you talked about X.

Probably investing. The Michael Jordan house thing that we talked about on the podcast. Wait, really? The idea of buying MJ's house. So Two things happened. That went kind of semi viral in the sports and sports media and sports agent world.

Um people shared that clip. Like remember the Twitter clip has like hundred thousand plus views? Uh people share that with important people. I think like the TikTok thing was like millions. Maybe. It got share with a lot of people. They were like, Oh

I remember. You were gonna buy Michael Jordan's house. What happened with that? And they were like It's like, dude, you remember that from over a year ago? And like I've done a bunch of other things way more seriously. That was just one brainstorm with Sam about this idea. Like that's crazy. So that was the first thing.

Uh people remembering me for that. Then we um While we were there, Ben took a call to potentially invest in this company. And uh And I'm like, Cool, what's this guy's background? And he the guy's done many things. Bangers.

You remember the uh Taco Bell Mexican pizza dish? I was like, uh kind of, I guess. Like, yeah, I know it exists. He goes, they took it away off the menu. And people like like were outraged on social media and this guy got like

a million people to sign the petition to bring it back and they brought it back. And I was like, what he was known for? And it well, that's what Ben remembered. Like this guy's done a bunch of interesting things. And he had like three this guy had three stories like that. And once you have like three stories like that, It's like All right, I need to know this guy. And I feel you do that really well too, where you have these little things

Where it's like, uh the hot dog stand like calls, you know, Sam's wiener's as big as baby's arm. Um, or it's like, you know, the pawn star pawn stars guy, the pawn shop thing, or like I feel you have these things that are like that, these little nuggets of stories that are like They're memorable, but not for the thing you actually spent years of your life building. Yeah, but dude, the problem is is that I'm like trading on old stories. I need to do some cooler shit now. I'm like

You know, we gotta like do some stuff. I gotta do something. Well I I I think that's the thing is like Do more memorable shit. Because these punch above their weight. Yeah, they don't take that long. The other day I thought maybe I'll like

Spent three weeks running around on a motorcycle. I was like that's Lame, I already did that. I gotta I gotta think of something I gotta do something cool. You know? Right. I think uh maybe I'll have kids next year. I gotta do something I gotta go out with a bang. I don't think you understand what I'm talking about, but

Let's do cool shit. Yeah. I think There's a bunch of things that would be cool to do, but they don't make any sense. And what I'm learning is that Those things do make sense just on a different time scale. And uh you gotta like in a in a different weird way. And th having though having that little

collateral of like cool shit that you could talk about is worth it. I thought about walking across the country. And I was like that'd be that'd be pretty sick. And then I kinda like Thought about like playing it out and I'm like Huh.

pretty far. It might take like six months. Like I don't know, like you just listen to m audiobooks all day? Like I don't know. Like I you know what I mean? I gotta think of some something like It's gotta be authentic, right? Like extreme for extreme sake doesn't work because again, you don't know if these are gonna pay off or when they're gonna pay off. So you gotta do it where the the the the act of doing it or talking about it or like That has to be i itself enough.

For you. I was like maybe I'll just like use Twitter and like see if I can hitchhike from like New York to California. I don't know, I gotta figure out something. I I'll I'm gonna figure something out. But the stupid podcast I gotta be here all twice a week to record it. It holds me back. I thought about walking across the country but I gotta have like gotta carry on this lame ass mic for the stupid podcast. But I gotta figure something out That's hilarious. Uh Yeah, let's do another topic um.

You remember how I tweeted out that thing about Hassan. How do you sp pronounce his last name? Minhash? A comedian. Yeah. I treated out this thing that basically I like saw him walk by me and I went and grabbed him, goes, What's up, man? And it wasn't him and it was really embarrassing. Uh you know, I've never like really talked with him. Did you give him my number?

Yeah. He texted me. He w he was like, This is funny. Uh he's like, Give me Sam's number. Uh and I I'll text him and then I I send him your number. So I'm getting dinner with him um and uh it's gonna be the first time I I didn't get to meet him when you do that podcast. But I thought that was also a cool example of just like These cool things just happen when you when you take a lot of chances. Your victory was in your vulnerability here. By sharing this embarrassing story. By sharing this embarrassing story where I look like a racist. Yeah. Victory was in your vulnerability, baby. And it was you hooked it up, so I appreciate that. Yeah, it was uh I'm gonna I'm gonna go hang out with him. You you guys are like homies, right? Uh yeah, I I really like him. We uh you better be funny, dude.

I'm not. It's like you gotta go one way or the other. If you're gonna hang out with a comedian, you either gotta be like Funny. Or just be like blatantly unfunny. Is he funny when you're like just hanging out with him? Yeah, he's a funny dude. Shit.

I'm not prepared at all. I gotta go read a book. This is why I need that cool book. Fucking try to be hot instead. No, I can't do that either. You're closer to hot than funny. That still ain't far. I'm average at b I'm I'm I'm average at best. Like it's it's try to be rich instead. Dude, I'm still a six out of ten on that too. The panic of meeting uh Famous people is so funny to me.

Uh like I just think it's like a hilarious thing that happens when people people be funny we people people meet famous people, their instinct is like To just like throw all all good common sense out the window and start behaving like an idiot. Dude, it just sucks being a seven at everything, you know what I mean? I'm just a seven at everything. So Always the bridesmaid, never never the bride. Always the seven. A jack of all trades, a master of none. I'm just a fucking seven. And either like it it just doesn't work out. Um Yeah, but you're a har y you're a hard seven though, you're not. Yeah, I'm I'm a hard seven. All right. That's the pod. We'll talk to y'all later.

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