My First Million: #123 - The Big Business of Buying Amazon Routes, and a COVID-proof Franchise

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right, back to the show.

I

Feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back

All right, we live Sean was that we have absolutely zero topics on the document today, so I am very curious

What's gonna happen? Oh, you've won. I have I have won. Okay

But I am confident. I think we will freestyle well

So we have this little Facebook group that I think you set up Sean where it asks or where like people of the podcast

Talk to one another and I have a feeling there's a lot of just like spam in there

But did you see I asked people what they hate and what they love. Did you read it?

I read a bunch of the comments. What did you would you take away from that?

Guess are not as favorited as I thought or as loved as I thought which sucks because that requires zero work from us

No, there's work you had a scheduled to guess and they want to say I find these to be less work than the than the guess

And then other takeaways. I think

Ripping everyone says we have good dynamic. I already knew that anything else though. So here's one thing

And this happens anytime you ask your die-hards

They're like we just want more of you guys the backstories and the real-life stuff

Which I don't think the casual listener which stop the casual is always the masses, right?

I don't the casual listener cares about us in that same way

They want like the ideas they want the information in and out and the people who are in this group who like answer questions like that

They're more hardcore fans

And so there's always this danger of asking hardcore fans what they want because it'll take you into a more hardcore place

I have two little

Ideas that I could steal from from our friend Chris that I think are worth talking about

So like I was saying we didn't have too much written on our document today

But I think he surfaced two really interesting little story stories about companies. So who did this is Chris Baki?

He was on the podcast, you know, maybe a month ago

Don't follow on Twitter. So if you want to go follow somebody Chris J. Backie be a KKE

So he tweeted two things out that I thought both were really interesting back to back

so the first one is a

side hustle that's booming during COVID called card my yard and I remember this because my neighbor right in front of me

just did this for their daughter's 16th birthday and basically it's a

It's these little like signs you put in your lawn like each letter is like

Like let's say s with two metal rods as you shove it into your grass and you're trying to spell like happy birthday Sam or like

You know, you did it you graduated and you like get these things so that it's like this little pop-up sign in your front

Up front lawn hard yard. So great great name card my yard founder started in 2014 began franchising a couple years ago

They have 200 franchisees and so the franchisees they make like a modest like one to two thousand dollars a month part-time doing this

And they said the first six months. He says the first six months of 2020

They did eight million in gross sales

Which is kind of amazing and I'm guys and their franchise model, which is awesome. I love this little like micro franchise

Which is great. So that was the first one

Thoughts on that and I have another one

No, all those in badass. Good job. That's that's fantastic

And I wonder what what other like sort of little micro franchises you could do here

The one that we had talked about way at the beginning of the podcast was the drone light shows one

I think that is still a amazing franchise if somebody can do it, which is basically

drones instead of fireworks drones can do some pretty dope stuff and

if you basically found just local franchisees at all the different cities to to service the like

They'll they'll be the go-to vendor for their their provider. You basically give them a business in a box

You give them the drones and the software of how to operate it

Can you buy hologram equipment? Like for example, if I wanted Tupac to appear at like your lawn

Yeah, or like at my party. Can I like is that like a thing? Can I buy a hologram machine? Can I rent one gram my lawn?

Okay

Yeah, so it's like get Michael Jackson to perform at my party and I'll pay a thousand dollars to rent this machine for an hour

Is that a thing hologram machine rental? I hope it's a thing because like some of these rental businesses are crazy good

Like a carpet cleaner rental business is really good because carpet cleaners can last like 10,000 hours

And you could charge like $50 an hour for it, right? And I'm like I'm like man is a is a is a

Cannot can we get that hologram game going or what?

There's a bunch of of hologram things that are for like conferences

It looks like like kind of like to make your booth really good. I don't know if there's like kind of like

For my birthday party have Michael Jackson there. That would be pretty great, but I like that idea

But another one's carpet cleaner by the way like a carpet cleaners

Sell for only $600, but they rent for like 50 bucks an hour and you get them from the grocery store, right?

And I'm sure they like kind of like what are they called bouncy houses or like, you know

Moon houses, whatever whatever you call them. I'm sure those operate on this like same model. So basically can you take some that's something?

That's a party trick or a birthday trick and can you make sort of the local franchise model for these signs are great because this is like

Dirt cheap to create but for the buyer, they're not gonna want to make this on their own, right?

So it's way easier than the balance. Yes, it's viral like viral and it's probably pretty durable

These letters can't they don't probably take much wear and tear because they're just like in the lawn and then like out four days later

Okay, so the other one that he talked about was Amazon Amazon logistics

So he said Amazon has quietly created one of the most successful franchises of all time in two years and

He's talking about their Amazon logistics their delivery fleets

So, you know people be becoming a prime delivery driver and so it's a $10,000 startup cost

He said they have

1,300 franchisees now that do this that employs 85,000 people and a franchisee who's operating a 20 to 40 van fleet

We'll be making you know between a million and a half to four and a half million in revenue depending on their market

Which is kind of like amazing and so and you could sort of see how this would only grow and so

So I think this is cool. I talked to somebody else who was talking about buying routes. He was like, I'm gonna I'm looking into buying FedEx routes

What the hell is that?

Some guy at the Twitch and I was like, what do you what do you mean? And did you ever heard of this?

I had never heard of somebody buying a FedEx route and he goes well

What you do is there's certain like little areas of routes

Where you can buy to be the exclusive provider as long as you you know meet certain service requirements

And so you can become you can buy a monopoly basically you can say I'll be the service provider here

I'll pay this amount

And I'll operate this this fleet here and you can make X dollars above what you paid

Just for the like, you know the guarantee

You're all your customers come from FedEx. You just have to run the operations of driving the stuff around

I've never heard of this. That's fascinating. Okay, so if you go to route consult it calm

You can see different routes there for sale and there's a guy who built a course on it

No, I think he's just like literally route. You can find routes for sale. You can sell your route

it's like a marketplace to sell FedEx routes and so

He's basically FedEx and UPS don't have the ability to service all areas

So you set up as a service provider you buy the truck drivers and you buy the exclusive routes from them

Which you can do, you know in residential or you can do like warehouse to warehouse or whatever

You have you been to the country and seen like these disgusting minivans doing this? No

Like if you go like the like the country of Tennessee where I am like you'll see like these like

Minivans with the hubcap missing and you're like how on earth is like FedEx or letting this minivan on the road

Well, it's just like it's that must be what it is

It's like a it's a franchisee or like you'll see like an old like beat-up car and you're like what the heck

How is that a government car? Right? And that's what it is. So here's the number that he was walking me through

He goes so he's like here's a link to a guy who's selling a company with five routes that he has exclusive

He goes he's selling it for 1.9 million

You get paid on a per package delivered basis

So basically he's selling the business for two million the business makes two and a half million in revenue with operating income of about

550,000 a year, right? So he's saying if you bought it with for 20% down got an SBA loan for the rest

your cash positive

About $250,000 a year

Including your loan payback. So like you could basically buy this business be profitable in the first year

Sorry, you're basically you're making money

On top of the meeting or loan requirements each year and you pay back your entire down payment within two years

And that's if you did 20% down. Dude, that just seems like so much work. I don't want to do it

Yeah, you don't want to do it

But there's a lot of people out there who would want to be making you know

Half a million a quarter million dollars to half a million dollars a year

I hear that but I got a job if you're the type of person though who can

Afford that then you maybe who I have other options, but by the way actually I was thinking about this

I was like, man if I sell my company, what would I do? And you know what I would do? I would hundred percent

Would do Uber Eats for a little while? I?

Love driving. I just I love driving. I love seeing all types of stuff

I think like these there's these guys in New York and they all have these electric bikes and they're just riding around

Oh, and it's hard work. I mean, I think they're having fun

But like just to kill time that would be a fun way just to see the city and have like a mission

I would totally do that

I would 100% be one of those electric bicycle messengers for like a few months, right

I would not the thing I would do before that would be you know

What would you call the little like chariot thing where you bike and there's like two people in a wagon on a date behind you

I'd rather do that

I'd never felt more fun and more alive than when I had a hot dog stand

These are just lies you're telling no, I mean you never felt more alive really I felt great

I was because like there's a little bit of an there's not really much of an adrenaline rush with the internet

But I felt I don't know. I felt special, but I think I also think that everything in the past always

Yeah, I was what's the thing I was thinking about with the nostalgia stuff

Oh, I was telling you about the trading card thing that I was looking at

As I talked to a bunch of people in the space

It's crazy to me how much of this is just driven by

People who used to collect cards baseball cards when they were kid and now they're just like, you know

Some rich investment banker or like hedge fund guy and it's like, okay

I have like all this money and I like oh baseball cards are worth something now. They're like a collectible now

I remember how fun this was and there's like this nostalgia. That's driving this insane industry same thing with Pokemon cards

Like it's a franchise. That's really relevant to kids

But adults who have money still remember how it felt when they were a kid and they're like 30 years old now

It's happening with it's happening with cars from the 1989 era to like the early 2000s like people are like

Like people with money now from cars like for example, they're a new Bronco. There's a new Bronco. There's a new Wagoneer

Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, there's a new Wagoneer. There's a new Hummer. Just like it always is that right?

There's a lecture Hummer. That's out now, which by the way, it looks looks freaking awesome

I saw it because LeBron was posting about it because LeBron

When he was I think 15 or 16 famously showed up to high school one day with a Hummer and everyone's like, okay

Like, you know LeBron comes from like he's like dirt pour like his mom a single mom

No, like electricity in the house type of thing. It's like, where'd you get this $70,000 Hummer from?

It's like, oh LeBron's not going to college. He's he has no amateur status anymore

He's definitely taking money because he's gonna go pro and so it's funny that now he's like, you know, some old man of the NBA

And he's like excited about the electric Hummer. That's it. I love that ass. It goes zero to 16 three seconds

Which is if you're not a car enthusiast, that's like crazy fast

Do you want to hear? Um, let me tell you a personal story and people said they wanted to hear the story in the podcast

And I don't know if we should have her on but can I tell you a story real quick? Yeah, please

So last year

My mother-in-law my mother-in-law is she was a Haitian immigrant. She came from Haiti at like 17 or 18 didn't speak English

She's pretty badass

Her and her husband my father-in-law started business great moving company yada yada yada last year

She started listening to the podcast and she was like, I want to create an online store

and I was like, all right, I

Like I don't think you're gonna do any of this but I'll I'll I'll spend time talking with you

And so she wanted to drive me to the airport because about it was it would probably be a two-hour driver the airport

She goes, let me drive you to the airport and you tell me how to do it and I told her how to do it

And I go so there's this thing called the CPM

And that's like where you like do advertising and then you have a click-through rate

And you want your click-through rate to be this and the next thing you're gonna do is click-through rate

To be this and then that's how you get people to your website and then you want to sell them something

And you want to sell them by doing this this and this and and it's all it's called a sales funnel

And that's how you got to think about this

So you got to think of a product that you could sell that cost a certain amount of money

So you can make a profit and you could sell to a certain amount of people whatever and I explained her this whole thing

And I was like, all right. Good luck thinking that she wasn't gonna do shit with it right

She has a store now that's doing like 15 grand 20 grand a month

And I'm pretty proud of her because I'm so used to people like I'm like, I'm not even gonna waste my time talking to you

I know you're not gonna do any of this

But so this woman her name's smithy. She's my mother-in-law. I love her to death

She started a pillow like a throw pillow business, which neither you and I probably care about but it's like fancy

$80 throw pillows which are decoration this the stuff we have to take off the thing

We want to sit on and put on the floor for some reason

So we've had a bunch of podcast success stories of people listening to us

We had we've had a few people reach out to us and say hey, I've done this this and this thanks for some inspiration or an idea

I have to say this is my most proud one because

She doesn't fit. She's not like a 21 year old right broke, you know, she and anyway pretty cool

Yeah, I think that's amazing and uh, so is it profitable or is it like, you know, well, yeah, there's she started with it with, uh,

Uh

I think $5,000. Right. Um, so yeah, it's it's profitable. It's called. How do you spell it?

She so she only started it with an etsy store at first. So if you look up wait smithy

It's called smithy couture. How do you spell couture though c o u t you are you?

All right, I found it

So her store is is if you just do a smithy for she smells her name s m i t h y

smithy s right. So her name's smithy sodyne. But smithy couture is the name of the business and you could see like her pillows

Uh on there and then she just now has a new website. I think it's called like smithy couture.com or something. She's home couture.com. Yeah, that's it

I see her instagram. Yeah, this looks great

High quality photos dude. She's uh, she's doing a good job. She did all of it. She did all of it

She rented an office for like $500 a month and went and bought a camera and bought lighting

She flew to north carolina to like look at samples. I think she started maybe she started boss

Yeah, she started with 10 grand to do this and um

I think she's probably make I think her first year maybe quarter of a million in sales

um

Like in december when we were coming home from wherever we were coming like, you know, I traveled there for december

And she was like, let me or was it december? It was some holiday. Maybe thanksgiving. I forget but

In the two hour drive. I just explained to her how to do this

Well, what's funny is the stuff you were describing like a cpm sounds totally unrelated to this pillow store, but uh,

nonetheless, I think this is amazing and uh, okay, cool

My point was I was like here's how you have to grow you have to like get eyeballs

And then you want to convert like two percent of them. Yeah

Yeah, and one of the ways that you get eyeballs is through advertising

Which means that your cpm is going to be this number and your click through rates going to be this number

Which means your cost to there's this thing called the cac which is cost to acquire a customer

That needs to be below the profit you make per pillow, right?

And that's like how I explained it to her and anyway, she and so now she's advertising and she that's how she got her sales

Oh, that's great. I love it

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Anyway, I

I can let me lead you to this the next one. This one's a little bit more related to what we typically talk about

Have you heard of visualize value? I have heard of this. This is what's the name jack butcher?

Yeah, so I went to jack's house this week me and my wife sarah

Uh, I met jack on twitter. Um

I went to his house on like tuesday and we got along so well that I went back to his house on friday and we hung out all day

And so I have to tell you this guy's story and then I want to ask you your opinion of which lifestyle you'd rather have

so

The way that his life has worked out was he's 32 his wife is my age about 30

And he's a british immigrant

Came here at 21 and worked a bunch of agency jobs and wasn't poor by any means

But like was just like a normal just kind of get scraping by ad agency type of guy and then 18 months ago

He started a twitter handle called visualize value where he would write create one. It's almost like an infographic

Where he would explain different things with one infographic and that got quite popular to the point of in 18 months

He got 100,000 followers on twitter

Then he created a course that teaches people how to make these things

And in his 18th month or in the trailing 12 months 18 months into his journey

They'll do close to a million dollars a year or close to a million dollars this year in

advert or in uh revenue from yeah

Pretty amazing and I went to his house and he like we were we had family time where we like just talked about

You know

Podcasts and life and dogs and whatever but inevitably we did talk a little bit a little business

And he like showed me his setup and how he was doing it. What a fascinating lifestyle this guy built

It's crazy cool. And so what I want to know is what do you think of that?

and also

Would you rather have that lifestyle where you have like a very steady not passive but

25 to 30 hour work week which I have no idea actually how much he works

But it could be low or would you rather have like a different lifestyle where you work harder and swing for the fences?

So I think about this a lot and I don't view that I don't view the distinction about the number of hours worked right?

So I don't have too much of an opinion on that

I found that when I work 20 hours on my job

I just start to work 20 hours on my side hustle right like you know

I just I just fill in the hours with other stuff that I want to do which tends to be business projects

Or projects of some kind

So I don't think that's the distinction

But I love the model of

I know this one thing really well

I can become a sort of authority in that niche

Because I'm an authority I can get followers and because I have followers

2% of them are going to want to be me and learn my shit and I can charge the those you know that 2% of my 100,000

Which is 2,000 people I can charge them, you know 500 dollars for this course and I can make a million dollars a year

off of my audience. I'm not spending to advertise

um

And that's money. That's almost pure profit that I can you know live on and and I could be a solopreneur

And so I am very into this

solopreneurship path to the point where

Right now, you know, I've been thinking about okay. What you know, what do I want to do for 10 the next 10 years of my life and

um

I got offered like

Some pretty sick jobs

But I'm like I can't imagine working at a big company like that as like, you know the path for me going forward

What type of jobs like at fortune 500 companies at like a startup that's going to like IPO next year in a space that I really care about

Um at like a C level role. So it's like exactly what I would have wanted. Um, what would the pay be?

So I asked him because I was like, hey look, um

I need to I know, you know, usually you take some steps before you get to this like kind of job offer part

but um

Just frankly where I'm at I'm making a lot of money and if this may make no sense

and I don't want to waste either of our time if it's just like financially, this is not in the ballpark. So give me give me a

sense

and

They were like well the the salary part can't match where you're at but like, you know

If the salaries let's call it between 250 and 350 thousand dollars a year and then the

Stock options would be worth. Let's call it 2 million bucks

But we're growing and if we IPO where we think we're gonna IPO that could be 10 million bucks if you uh, you know

It's over the next two or three years and a lot of money

It's a lot of money. And so it's like financially. It's great

Prestige is great because it's a company a whole bunch of people

I've heard of and think it's cool and stuff like that, right?

um

So I thought about it. I said, okay, that's one path you could take a career

Another path is the the traditional startup path we hear about a lot. Well, let's let's

Dumb that down. I don't think a lot of people can have that path

But I do think a lot of people can make very cushy

Six figure that's the top of the mountain of the corporate track, right?

Yeah, that's like as far or higher. You can't really go higher than that and the corporate track

Maybe, you know, there's some crazy exceptions, but like that to me already sounds like an exception

um

So it's like well

But if the if the top of the mountain is not that appealing it's like well

That's just not the mountain for me the top of the mountain for me is something else

Uh, so that's kind of the question you have to ask yourself

So one path is you know the corporate track the other track is like I'm gonna start my own company

You know what you're doing with the hustle right traditional media is messed up for reason a b and c

I'm a startup

I could flip it on its head and I can come in and you know be disruptive and if I do it right

I can make a big prize. I can get a big prize, you know, which ranges from

You know, let's say in the in the success case

You most likely will fail

But if you succeed you might walk away with 50 million 100 million bucks for your company or

Up to 50 billion if you build the next slack or the next Airbnb or whatever it is, right?

But it's gonna be long hard super intense

Um

And you know, it's a lottery type of type of game most people will never ever have that type of success

Would you raise funding?

That's in that path. Yes, I would raise funding right so then there's

Okay, so that's another option

Then the third one is bootstrapped kind of indie maker

Which I actually don't consider what he's doing out of that like that would be like literally we're gonna build a maybe a sass app

That's gonna be profitable and we can we can grow it, you know based off our profits

And it'll be a small team and then you have the jack butcher visualized value path, which a bunch of other people are doing, right?

so like

Um, like I tiago forte is doing this. He's got a course and then there's you know, ben thompson

My best friend neville madora. Neville's been doing this for years now, right?

15 years 15 years exactly

Where you become a niche authority you blog about it you get free followers and you get some paid followers, right?

That's a that's a model and I

Think that that path is really appealing now

More appealing than it used to be like when neville first started. I would bet that the like

The the success case the top of the mountain there was not as big as these other paths

But now I think that the way that the tools work and how big this sort of the this market is getting on the internet and for paid education

and stuff like that

I think these guys can clear

Somewhere between, you know, half a million bucks to to four million dollars a year

Um, just being themselves just like talking about the thing they're they're into

That they're known for and then sharing their their wisdom with the world and they don't have to deal with employees

They don't have to deal with investors. They can work 10 hours a week. They can work 100 hours a week. It's kind of up to them

um

They are a little bit of a dancing monkey on the stage, right because you are the product in many ways, but uh,

I think that path is pretty dope. What do you what do you think? So that was a long way of answering your question of saying

I think it's so I think it's definitely awesome. Um, obviously

but I actually think that we need to break it down a little bit differently, which is

Regardless if you raise funding or not

So like there's this mentality of I want to grow two or three times a year

I'm willing to work

A shit ton which but all parties actually of all these examples definitely could do if you want to have outsized

The success you're going to end up working pretty hard

But like I'm going to hire employees

So like so like I don't actually think that it's fair. I don't like doing this like vc not vc thing

I would say like are do you are you going to high are you going to have a go?

Are you going to have a fair bit of headcount? Right?

Are you going to not optimize at first for a profit and you're going to try and 50 percent to 200 percent grow every single year?

um

versus are you going to just coast a little bit and just uh,

Make potentially a substantial amount of money

Uh, but you're going to operate like a small business that doesn't exactly want to grow

Revenue significantly and you're not going to optimize for that

I don't know. Are those the two categories? Yeah, well if you just think about like

There's a bunch of different ways to break down the business side. Let's just break it down from a lifestyle perspective, right?

So it's like do you want to be managing a bunch of people or not? Do you want to be like going for the absolute grand slam?

do you want to be

Being profitable and trying to make payroll every every month because you didn't raise money because you bootstrapped it

or do you want to be like in the what jack's doing where it's like you have very low burn and

You may have a low profits

You may have a low revenue at first, but it's very very profitable because you have no headcount and you have no fixed costs and you have no

Uh, you have no, you know cost of goods sold because you're selling a digital product

Do you know how actually and this is going to sound super disrespectful?

But I don't that's not my intention because I actually tend to side with the side

I'm going to disrespect but I would actually kind of say that it's almost like do you want to be significant or not

Do you want to be because in order to be significant?

You have to build something very large

Like I'm talking significant on a grand level like either it's business that impacts millions or hundreds of thousands of customers

Or that makes you so wealthy that you can

Donate money to a hospital or something like that. Well, it's like significant in what way for example

I have friends a way bigger success way bigger successes than me

But because of this rinky dink podcast, I have a large audience of people who think I'm

You know cool and and I'm able to influence them and I'm and uh, they they know my name and they don't know his name

Right. Yeah, but they can you much bigger company, right? But they can use their money to do things that

someone who doesn't have money can't they can

They can do a significant but here's here's the other argument, right? I was talking to to my manager at twitch one time and

I had always thought like, you know big company

My mental model was big company. You're a cog in the machine

Small company startup. You're like kind of a key player that you know

Putting the team on your back putting the company on your back and you're making shit happen

Uh, and he had the exact opposite point of view. He's like, well, I thought about this, you know

15 years ago when I was deciding which path I wanted to go down

And I wanted to optimize where I can make the biggest impact. So I thought that meant startups and what he meant was

Look, this is a company that you know, the company I'm working at at that time was google

He's like I can if I just make this one product work. It's going to affect hundreds of millions of people

and

So so that's that's the highest impact thing for me to do and I was I had always thought about the other way

I thought high impact was

You're in a small company. Therefore your fingerprints are all over the whole thing compared to google where you're just

Trying to get your pinky to touch the machine and then you know, that's the level of impact you can have

I and and I actually agree with that which is um

And I just I still want to blunt this because I I don't mean this in the form of disrespect because I don't think it's important

To be significant

But I really do think that like if you have a chip on your shoulder like I was listening to this guy

Chimoth, whatever his last name is

Uh chima, you know billionaire vc guy. He was like, yeah, he's like my goal is to be one of the 150 people in the

Who control the world and I'm going to do it by getting incredibly wealth wealthy and controlling the capital and deciding

How I want to allocate the capital and when you hear him describe that you're like, well, that's that's definitely more

Significant than like making eight hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue and living a very happy life

That doesn't mean that chima's way is that will actually make him happy because I bet he's incredibly unhappy

But that interview you're listening to by the way

I think is from a few years ago and since then his whole like investment company blew up all his partners left

He had a midlife crisis left his wife like, you know, like I don't think he was happy going down that that road at that time

Yes, I think he's an openly admitted it. He in that interview. He did he goes. I'm not really happy. I'm very lonely

So I'm not saying that that's the way to live, but I am saying that that generally is the two sides of it

Which is you're going to be um

Kind of unhappy maybe unhealthy and you're going to optimize for cultural significance through allocative through

obtaining massive amounts of capital or creating something that's world famous

Or impacts a lot of people or you're potentially going to be much smaller

Maybe work less make a fantastic living and not be as significant and which one appeals to you

The one that appeals to me is the the second one

Um, it's about like I want the quality of my life to be high, right?

Like that quality of my life and my family's life to be high and the quality of my life is going to be affected by

Do we have to like, you know, do we have to to slum it?

Or do we have, you know, the the means to do what we want to live the way we want?

But also I'm going to be spending half my day working. I'd rather be working on something that I'm doing for fun

Not because I have to do it in order to

You know achieve some status or make some amount of money, right?

Like I want to I want to find that zone of genius, right? The thing I like to do feels like play to me

people want it and um, you know, I'm good at it

And if I can find the zone of genius, like that's what that's what works for me

Whether that's in a big company, a small company or as a blogger or a podcaster doesn't matter, right?

Like that's my that's my personal focus is find my zone of genius and then just operate from there

Because that's where I have the highest quality of life

Not I'm not worried about societal impact in that way

I think that's a byproduct of if you live your best life

You're going to end up influencing and and helping a whole bunch of other people

That's just like a a law of nature to me

My personal flaw is that I am easily influenced by others and like I'll hang out with some shit

Yeah, yeah, like I'll hang out with you or

Our best friend Ramon who doesn't fit into either one of those categories

Um, well, he fits in the go hard category, but I'll hang out with jack butcher and I'm like

Um, or whatever who have nevel and I'm like, man

It would be a little bit easier to just be a little easier and then I'll go and read, uh, the steve jobs biography

Or I'll go and read about chamath or go and read about, um

Um, someone who's like pretty significant and I'm like, they fucking got after it. That is so cool. They like they risked it all

And there's something fascinating about that, which is they just bent the world to their

Will and I find that to be incredibly intoxicating and neat and so

I don't I personally don't know where I fall, but I respect both. That's for sure

Yeah, I'm I'm agree. I agree with you. I respect both. I've been through that cycle where I like

I can't figure out what the fuck I admire

Uh, one day I admire one thing and then I start to follow that path and then all of a sudden

I start to admire this other thing because it's the opposite

Um, and I and now I've gotten to a point where I'm like, look, there's multiple ways to win

Here's what I know. I know what I don't want, right? So the thing I am absolutely sure I don't want to do is trade time for money

Right. So any sort of consulting any sort of coaching

Um, I know that that's a trap and I'm never going to go down that path

So even if there's people who are happy down that path, I know I personally I'm not happy down that path

Okay, cool. That's one right. I want assets

Assets that accrue in value over time

Um, I think what I admire right now and I used to believe that the

The elon musk path is like, you know, the gold standard and now I sort of look at that as something that's a lot more fun to watch than to do

Um, I don't think those guys are happy. I don't think they live a life that I would be happy living

And um, where you're, you know, extreme amount of stress, extreme amount of, uh, business

Not able to to detach not able to be learning not able to be with your family as much, right? Like it's always

You know, it it's it's it's a high frequency where those same people have, you know

Multiple marriages they have, you know health issues and have other stuff because of the lifestyle they live

They live what I call an olympic lifestyle

It's like I think michael phelps is dope when I heard what michael phelps's life was like while he was training to be michael phelps

I was like, that's a trap. That's miserable. I would never want to do that. Like you can give me all the gold medals

I don't want that the thing that a lot of people don't do and someone a mentor of mine taught me how to do this at

Age 20 and he goes you need to write down everything you want to earn this year

And then you also need to write down everything you're going to give up this year to get that like what costs are you gonna pay?

Right the trade-offs and I think that's what a lot of people have to do you like I want this

Like I want to win a gold medal therefore I'm gonna be I'm willing to be lonely

right

Have you ever done it? Did you ever do that exercise? Yeah, I do it all the time. I was like

I mean, that's an example of viewers right now. What what you what you want and what you gave up or what you're willing to give up

um, well like I uh

Like I don't have I don't see friends like

On school nights. I don't I call it. We call it school nights

Me it means here. It's like no, it's a school night. We don't go out on school nights

right

So like that you do that like it's like Monday through Friday like I don't see anyone I only see people saturday and sunday

It's it's a school night. So that's funny like that's something we do which is um

Like you okay. I have an example for you with yours, right? You wanted more freedom. You gave up control as CEO of your company

Yeah, for sure. Yes, you brought in a president and a CEO or whatever it is, right? And um, and so I think that was like uh

That was a given a get that you that you agreed to that

I think most people would not but you consciously chose to do that

Yeah, and I and I'd actually do it right now

I'm trying to weigh a certain weight because I got a little chubby when I got sick

And so it's like, okay. I want to look good naked and weigh this weight. Therefore. I'm going to be hungry throughout the day

I like and I will literally write that down. It's like am I willing to be hungry? Um, but um

Oh god, what was I going to bring up too? Oh, I do think that there is a

And I hate saying this because it's such a pussy thing to say there

But there is a middle ground with this

Um, in that like I do think that there are people who are immensely successful that actually do work pretty calm. So

Um, I don't know that I don't know this guy well, but tim chen is the founder of nerd wall

He's one of my investors and I've hung out with him a bit and it was hard at first when he started the company

But once it got going if you pick the right business model

You can grow and be huge and be influential and impactful and also not

Kill yourself once the ball gets rolling that is possible. Yeah, and I bet you

The twitch guys had that happen with them

Yeah, I think like for example from what I can see right now. I think, uh

Uh, you know, they live a pretty healthy balanced life. They have the time that they would want to do what they would want

Um, but I know that there was a

Number of years where that was not the case, right? Uh, and so I think Paul Graham had this thing

He said once which is like startups is basically a trade you make where you say I'm going to compress a 40 year career into the next four

So I'm willing to work

insanely hard and

You know do my absolute best for the next four years to try to get the value of a 40 year full career during that time

And um, I think that that was a good way of putting it

Let me tell you this other thing that I saw that, uh, you were just talking about money for a second ago

So there's a subreddit that I like and I don't like telling people I read it because it's quite embarrassing

But it's called fat fire. Do you know what fat fire is?

Yeah, we've talked about it a couple times, but go ahead. Okay, so explain it explain it for people who don't know

There's a leaned fire, which is you try to cut your expenses as low as you possibly can

And then you try to and fire stands for financially independent retire early. I think yes, so it's like if you could save up

Um, a hundred thousand dollars you can effectively

Live off of seven thousand dollars a year in interest or like in some type of investments

And so it's like, all right, let's see how high I can get that while seeing how low so it's like, all right

I'm only spending two grand a month right now in expenses. Therefore. I only need 24 thousand dollars or about a quarter of a million in savings

And I'm fired

That's what they call it and then there's fat fire, which is people who want to do that

But they want to do it where they are rich

Um, and so they want like 10 or 20 million and so but it's a really cool subreddit where everyone discussed different ideas

And there's this one subreddit that said dear anyone who has fat fired for a rich family of four

How much do you spend a year or a month in expenses?

And I was actually shocked by how low it was and so there is people there's like a guy who has 50 million dollars

And he was like we spend around 400 thousand dollars in living expenses

And we live in a high cost of living city and I was like that's actually not that much

Right, how much is 400 divided by 12?

33,000 a month. Okay. So 33 thousand dollars a month in living expenses is kind it is a lot for sure

But it's not like obscenely high if you are very wealthy and I'm like that's actually not that challenging

Um, what do you think would be your monthly burn if you could live how you want?

And yeah, right. So I did this so I basically said

Uh, and people have argued with me that this is not the right way to think about it. Uh, smart people

So maybe I have this like totally wrong

Um, but basically I uh, I said that I would need initially I wrote

I need eight million dollars to work for me. Um

You know eight million dollars that is uh

capital I have invested where my money is earning me money

And I said, okay, cool. If I had eight eight eight million dollars that was working for me

And I was getting you know, uh, five percent a year of capital increase there. That's about a 400 thousand dollar a year

you know net gain and an asset value and

Um, 400,000 is what I put as so I think that guy said 400,000. I also had put down 400,000 as what I thought it would cost me

Um to live every year, which is basically like live lavishly or live in the way that like whatever's lavish to me today

now maybe you escalate shit over time you start buying tigers and shit for your house, but like

You know without going crazy

It's basically like live in the type of house that I want

You know travels as much as we kind of like to travel and not really thinking about you know buying stuff and and what not on a

Day-to-day basis like we're kind of heavy consumers. We're not like Marie Kondo minimalist

Right. Don't don't consume anything if you're spending $400,000 a year though. You're definitely not in the middle

You're on the upper

Right now I spend half that right so right now I spent 200,000. That's my current life burn rate is I spent $200,000 a year

And um, so I basically factored in okay. What if I spent double what I spent today?

How much money would I need so that I could spend that amount and my total assets are going up not down, right?

What's my last if I sort of break even why was that wrong because they said here's I imagine they said

Okay, you're going to do that for a year and then you're going to go and earn more income by working

So it was our mutual friend actually Narendra who I think it was the first one that was like

That's not the right way to think about it. Um, and he's got a lot more money and he's older than me

So I was like, okay, you know, I should take it. I should I should not totally blow this person off when they tell me that

Um, but what he said he said two things as far as I could remember he said

You're assumption of making five percent a year. Um, like kind of like good luck with that and um,

I don't know why he said that like that seems like a pretty conservative estimate to me that that it would uh

Compound at five percent a year, but for whatever reason he said no, no, maybe he was factoring in taxes or something

I don't know. Uh, and then the second thing was he's like, uh, you're you're

When you when you get rich like in this way your

Uh expenses will inflate over time and so like you're not factoring in that your lifestyle will inflate

Faster than you think it will today. Um, which is interesting his argument because that guy norendra

He's one of my great friends and I love him. He's a little hippie-dippy like he's not

Materialistic yeah, he's not materialistic and yet he's telling you that right

Uh, and maybe maybe I misunderstood his argument. It was a quick dm. It wasn't something that we had like some long conversation about

But uh, but yeah, I've always had this number initially with six million and then I bumped it to eight million

And I because I was like I had it six million at seven percent a year and then I changed it to eight million at five percent a year

But that's my like financial freedom number

Um is is the eight million in the bank. Uh, that's the that's the not in the bank, but eight million that's put to work

Um, and that's the financial freedom number for me. That's interesting. Well, if you like this stuff that subreddit's kind of cool

I do think that going on that stuff can be kind of toxic because

You compare yourself to one another and it doesn't matter if you're on the low end or the high end

There's always someone better and always someone worse

So I think I can suck to do that

But it is kind of cool to see unfiltered opinions and thoughts which are incredibly hard to come by when it when it's about this topic

Yeah, also just like a mini rant. Um, I feel like people, uh

It's so fucking in vogue to be the the guy or girl who's like

Anti money, uh, where it's like money, you know, like, oh it's too focused on money money doesn't matter

you know like, um

these arguments where it's like

You know, you know

Remember money's the tool and if you forget that you're the tool like, you know, there's all these like sort of quotes and

And lifestyle things and it's like dude. I've met a lot of people

Um, who are like me and it's like they want to be financially free and

They want to uh, you know, live a certain way and they want to be financially free

And that's a valid goal and there's so many people that like to shit on that goal that it's crazy to me like, okay

Maybe there is this higher level of wisdom that they've achieved and other people haven't achieved but I don't think they're that wise

Because they're so fucking judgy and if you were that judgy, you're not that wise as far as I'm concerned

And so, um, yeah, that's not my mini rant on like, look, it's okay to want to

Achieve financial freedom to think about what that means for you and then to work towards it. I think that's a totally fine thing to do

I agree and I would say it's the other way around as well, which is

It's okay not to want that and yes, exactly

And I agree with you and I would also say like I was talking to Jack

I was like, yeah, man, you could build this and then turn it into this

And you hire all these people and then I was like, but wait a minute like but also like if you don't

Want to be if that won't make you happy

I would say don't do that because that sounds sounds like you're pretty pumped and happy right now

So maybe just do what you're doing. Uh, I think it's like far too often do people

Uh, yeah, I agree with you where they like hate on someone because they're getting after it

And they are trying to become big and they're killing themselves to do it

But they're like, yeah, but this is just what I want. So it's like, all right, sounds good

And then also

Like for example, I used to do this with my wife

Or I was like, you need to quit your own job quit your job do this this and this and she was like

I like my job and I was like, right? Well

Okay, sounds good. Trump card, right?

I enjoy this. She's like, I like my job. I make a lot of money. I'm happy. I feel good. I go

You're right. Don't start a company. What the hell am I saying?

You know, uh, don't don't do that. You're sound sounds good. So I do think it goes both ways

I went to I got invited back to my college to speak one time

And so I took my wife with me and we we just made a trip out of it. So we go back we fly there we

Uh, you know the night before I'm like preparing my talk and uh, and she's just like doing her own thing

Whatever, she's just like eat walking around. She's just exploring the campus and uh, and then I gave the talk and like

I don't know what the kids the students thought about it. Like, you know, they probably were like, oh, yeah

That was like whatever interesting back to like whatever figure out what I'm gonna do this weekend

Um, but my wife got like really into it. And so on the plane right back she quit her job

and

Like she had this consulting career and like straight up quit uh on the flight sent an email out and uh, like started her next life

And I was like, well that was not what I was trying to do

And you should try to tell the students are not you you should tell people what your wife does it's pretty fascinating

She draws animations for in-person events, right?

Yeah, it's like it's called. Yeah, it's called uh, either sketch notes or graphic facilitation

Basically, she would get she this is what she used to do. She used to get paid to fly to some

boardroom, you know, yahu's having that board meeting or adobe was one of her big clients and uh,

basically they're doing some kind of like executive meeting typically or like an off-site or a conference or something like that

And she would be there listening and while she while they're talking about okay, this year. Here's our priorities

You know, but what about this and what about that and like she's actually creating a visual like an infographics

So she's drawing

The words that they're saying mental models, uh, like little diagrams basically on this huge like wall sized whiteboard

um

And so they and by the time they're done with their conversation

They like look over and like it makes their whole like messy conversation look like this totally coherent plan

Because she's filtering out all the bullshit and like connecting ideas together herself

Which is funny. That's exactly what the visualized value thing is

Right and so she just does it live. I guess that's kind of the core difference. She made a great living doing it

Yeah, she did exactly. Uh, now it was a trading time for money thing

Right like had to go fly a bunch of places all the time

Which is not like super fun once you do it a lot and then uh for a lot of people

And what is a good place to like start building a career that if she wanted to she could have product made it a product

Uh, yeah

And that's the step she didn't take was like kind of like either create a form system of talent because

She got recruited because she was just doodling in her notebook in business school

And somebody was like, did you draw that and she's like, oh, yeah, sorry. I just wasn't paying attention to the class

And uh, they're like no, no, no, like I'm not saying it's a bad thing

Like if you drew that I have a job for you and she didn't even realize this is a career

Most people don't even realize this is a possible career, but she had this artistic talent that she was just like, oh art doesn't make money

I'm not gonna do art. That's just a hobby. I guess and then she realized

Oh, I can pair business with art and I can do this thing that very few people can do because they can't draw

Okay, so next episode

I want I want to show you one more example

But next episode what's come prepared and we'll both tweet it out

We'll come prepared with one to three person operations that are doing awesome stuff and we'll just rattle off who they are

Does that sound cool? Yeah, like a solopreneur slash duopreneur kind of uh

Success cases. Yeah, just like small teams. So like your wife would count as one

Like just small teams that have internet or internet related things that are kind of crushing it

Um, and I'll tell you a little more. So I met with this guy named steve

I don't know steve's last name, but have you heard of nerd fitness nerd fitness dot com?

No, but I like the name it's been around forever. He's been around for a long time and um, steve

Does coaching and creates programs and his whole and it also with a blog and his main

audience are people like you

um

I guess me but nerds who want to get fit who don't know too much about working out. Um

And it's called nerd fitness. So he's like we help people basically his whole shtick and he calls them nerds

But it's people who are just not well versed with gym equipment and don't want to go to the gym and squat because they

Think they're gonna look silly. He teaches you how to squat. So when you go to the gym, you can

You can look like, you know, you're doing actually do it and feel comfortable and it's pretty cool

And he I have no idea how big his business is. I bet it makes three or four million bucks a year

Um, but I went to his house yesterday and uh, I've loved meeting these types of people

It's been so fascinating to learn how different groups of people are building companies

and uh

Tell people how you're doing this because I think what you're doing is really smart and most people don't do this

So you you decided to go on tour just for a lifestyle decision of like I want to go live in different places

But you are actually

Meeting a bunch of cool people in every single city and what is this?

Is this I tweet out when I go to a place where I put on facebook like hey, I'm in

Detroit, who's here? Uh, something like that. Yeah, so I just tweet out like I'm currently staying in cobble heights

Or cobble hill, brooklyn one time I accidentally tweeted out my address and I got a cool

It was kind of cool. I got mail, but I then

It could have been weird

But uh, I or I'll be like, hey, I mean, I'm gonna be a national from this date to this date

Uh holler, you know, and I just will get dms and I if I if it's like a friend of a friend

Or someone in my circle, then I'll go and meet up with them

So I met up with this guy named nick gray who had this business called museum hack

He is friends of friends with nevel and then nick introduced me to um

Steve the guy of nerd fitness and then um jack butcher, uh tweeted at me and uh, it's that's how I've been meeting everyone

And so when I'm in Austin, I'm sure gonna I'm gonna be quite busy and then I met like this guy named sweaty startup

You know him. Yep. Uh, he's in Athens, Georgia. So I'm gonna go to Athens, Georgia and I'll say hi to him. It's been awesome

Yeah, I think it's amazing what you're doing and uh

And and you know, most people would try this but like nobody's gonna respond to the tweet or the

So there there is this precursor you have to do

It's like a be an interesting person who does interesting things yourself

Because then people will want to meet with you and the second is like build up an audience

Um, like we did this we built up an audience. We asked for nothing in return. We spent time every single week doing this for like a year now

and um

It's amazing the value that we've been able to it's more valuable than I realized and we're small still if we were big

I can't even imagine how easy it is for people who are big to get shit done

I think well, first of all, let me say that I did this in 2014 after the first hustle con

and I definitely had a

I had like 2000 facebook friends a lot of them like startup e-businessy type folk and

And I travel on my motorcycle for eight weeks around the country and I met up with a lot of people

So your audience doesn't need to be that big, but I will say I I think we're we're definitely not like a big podcast

but I think that we're like, uh

Maybe top 50

Yeah, we're definitely top 100. Maybe top 50 sometimes. Uh, yeah, we're we're not small

but we're not like there's famous people and then there's like nobody's and we're somewhere in between and

I guess my closer to the nobody's but yeah

Yeah, exactly. Uh, but my point is like if it works even at when we're at this scale

Like I can't even imagine how well it'll work as we get bigger like that's is crazy

How many how many advantages there are to just having a kind of an audience of people? So

And then what's even crazier is like imagine if you're Joe Rogan and it's like he's like, yeah, dude

My buddy had COVID in Nashville and he's like, who's your buddy?

He's like, well like sturchel simpson this famous singer or he's like, yeah, my buddy wrote a book on that

Oh, you mean Malcolm Gladwell

You like you like or like, uh, yeah, you know, I met with this guy. He's got this car company

You like he like he like it. He's cool about it. But that's what you call too famous

Actually, you're too famous and then you're constantly trying to downplay other, you know

The shit that's happening in your life as well as like you can't actually function anymore because people just keep mobbing you

Yes, that's what I'm saying like I uh, so I just don't I'm like I we're not famous at all

But I get a ton of messages. I just don't reply to any of them

Imagine if you're like Joe Rogan and you say like, uh, I have a call today and then you'll get 3000 messages saying

Have you tried flonies? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? You know, I you know

My friend's the best doctor in the world at the

So I have this guy now who who works with me and he's like my right-hand man and he I gave him access to everything

I was like, here's my dms

Like he can read all those if you want like just just reply

I was like because there's a lot of shit

I just don't reply to because we would find that he would mention something that's like blowing up

I'd be like, oh, I think I've talked to the founder. I messaged him a while back

I don't know what happened and then we'll go back

We'll find it and it's basically nine times out of ten

It's me saying, hey, this thing's dope and they're like, wow, thanks. I didn't know nobody knows about this yet

I'm like, yeah, we'd love to talk, you know, we'd love to invest in this to talk to you about it

And they're like, cool. Here's my email. Let's find a time

And then I never reply and then like it's four years later

And I'm like, hey, congrats on that, you know 100 million dollar round you just raised like that's the next message that comes through

What was that company by the way?

Uh, well, like air table was one of them. Um, but there's there's two there's two others and the same thing just happened

And so I told him I was like, you have free reign

I was like, there is a lot of value in the just like not being a total dipshit that I am and like actually just reply to these people

and um

And he's like, dude, we could just turbo charge your network so easily if we do this and so I encourage you to actually do this

This this has been a kind of a game changer for me because I think you're probably like me

You might be a little bit better about it, but you're probably like me that there's a lot of value on the table

No, like these guys just de-end me and they're like, we do 120 million revenue 40 million in profit

Can we come on the podcast and I uh, I was like, I don't I think I said I was going to talk to you about it. Um

But I would have forgotten about it had I not just thought about it

Sounds great

That's the last one here for me. Yeah, I'll just say bad ass

And then I just like I gotta go and answer an email. Um, what was the two companies that you're referring to? Can you say?

Uh, I don't remember without my head, but I just know that this has happened three times to us in the last uh,

Last three weeks. And so he was like, dude, can I just reply to all these so that this doesn't happen again?

Like that's three times. We found this exact same thing. Uh,

Let's do something about this and I was like, yes, please, please do

I want to show you something really quick now that we're talking about this because last time we had a podcast called jobs that

We wish we could have or no, uh jobs that we almost had but

But like got fired from or something like that or didn't get the didn't get the job

So I went so when I I went and looked at my stuff. Um

My notes from 2012

um, so

In 2012 what I did was I created a google form and I put a heading for company name company url job title job listing

Uh hiring manager and then I would email them and I would track the notes. Yeah. Yeah

Let me show you some of the ones that I I found my thing

Oh, this is amazing

Okay, all right. Can I just read these off that? I'm saying all right. So sam par prospects. Okay, so company name uber

And this is 2012

Yeah, july 2012 so not not totally small hiring manager ryan graves. Who's the CEO of uber at the time or maybe maybe had moved

No, he wasn't I don't think he was so look launcher whatever the community manager launcher was like the city launcher thing sales manager sales rock star

So zozi, I don't know what that is. Do that and look at this one?

Oh, yeah airbnb exactly airbnb 2012

Uh, this is so funny. I want to look at sales manager who these people are like did they get like crazy rich now?

They're all on sabbatical, dude

They're all taking a you know a three-year gap year where they're gonna go read about mindfulness. Okay, but here's where it doesn't get good

So zozi is this around anymore? I I've never heard of that company. So what do they do? I don't know

Let's make it around

It's a watch company. Okay. Oh, watch. No, it's not around. Did not do not win. Okay. Did not win

No, did trip trotting win. Uh, dude, this is so funny. So your next one there is zim ride, which became lift

You became lift. Is that crazy pre pre the the name change to lift. Okay. Wow. That's good

Account manager. Uh, that's all it was was account manager. No, no university account manager even better

Um, okay, so then zero cater. They I don't think they panned out exactly, but they had a good run

And then that's it. Oh, and then cater to me

A different catering company. Oh, there's more. Uh, ef tours that didn't pan out nixon red bull every other

That's every company ever that you do

I mean that everyone applies that red bull. So here's here's what's crazy. That's eight years ago

Um, that's not like eight years. It's not that long. So, um, like, you know, I remember the president back then so so

I'm projecting forward eight years

Imagine if imagine what your life today is going to look like in comparison to eight years forward

How exciting is that because like back then you would have been pumped to get this university account manager job at zim ride

It's like, dude, man

Here's the shitty part is I would I would be pumped now if I got that back then like I would have I would have been

I should have done that. What was I thinking?

So did you not get any of these shops or you got the airbnb one of them that

And then I interviewed at the other one. No, like I don't think you understand how redneck I was like

I was in nashville. I didn't know what the word startup was really like I was like I would call it like a startup company

Like, oh, you guys like a cool startup company

The dead giveaway. Yeah, like they would say the bay area and I was like, I don't know what the bay area is

Um, and they're like they were talking about San Francisco and I was like, yeah, like silicone valley like uh by la

Yeah, like I didn't know anything. I was just I was just a redneck. I was I was contrary. I didn't I just didn't know anything

Yeah, I did a lot of cringe stuff

I looked up the email that I had sent to um to the michael birch who's running the the ideal lab at the time monkey inferno

And there's some stuff in there that I'm like, this is so fucking cringy

Um, but it's actually good to read because now when I look back when now when people message me

I'm like, dude, I was 10 times worse at this than you are

So I should not judge anybody because I was I was awful at this not not too long ago

That's like seven eight years ago

And even if it is cringe you could still tell like earnestness and you could still tell someone um

Is hard working like if they're go-getters so like right like like I used to make fun of my friend tam

Do you remember tam fam? Yes. Yeah, this guy tam was it and turned out my company at like 19

And I would kind of bully him around because each kind of I would treat him like a little brother

Because I was only 23 he was 19 and I would treat him like a little brother. I'm like shut up tam

Like you nerd like I would tease him

But I look you back. I'm like that guy he is like he was like the most like

eager

Dorky guy ever. Yeah. He was a go-getter. Yeah, he was just like butters on South Park and uh

He was a great dude, but I would just like bully him

But now I see him on facebook what he's like. He was like learning pole dancing or something in his house

He's always doing stuff and he would like he like proposed to like some prom to a girl about like dancing

He could show you up at the side and I would just like tease them but looking back and even then I knew it

I'm like, yeah, but dude tam you're like a badass like you're gonna you want him around

Yeah, like you're gonna be really special like all these weird quirks that you have

You're gonna get teased now because you're barely out of high school

But trust me like you're gonna kick ass trust me like keep it going

All right, I'm gonna keep making fun of you, but you keep doing what you're doing, right?

Like I mean I'm and when I make fun of you. I'm not trying to be mean

I'm just trying to like

Conclude you in part of the joke, but you're uh, you're gonna be badass and I think people can tell that right really easily

Yeah, that's uh, that's

That's really funny

Can we do two minutes on kabebe for the like one percent of the audience that that cared about kabebe?

fucking awesome

So awesome

So where did you you worried you watched it just at home just at home. So the background for anyone listening kabebe

His name is kabebe nirmaga made up. What is it?

So I learned it. So his so it's actually habib not kabebe

I know even though it's okay, and then it's you know, no new nirmaga

Nirmaga met off is like the way we say it

But there's actually like three silent letters in there that you're not supposed to say I don't know which ones

He's like a stoic

MMA guy, he's a very muslim

So he's like always says like, you know, I'll shalom or some type of praise be to whoever and he doesn't bring his wife

Or his kids around he doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't cuss. He's very calm very stoic

But he'll say very in a russian accent. He goes. I'm going to bring you on the ground and maul you

Like that's what he says. Yeah, I'm gonna smash this guy. I'm gonna smash this guy

I'm gonna give him good smash. So he's from dagestan, which is a place. I literally never heard of till I heard of kabebe

Um, and then it's like it's like afghanistan in russia

If you ever look at photos like it looks like it it kind of looks like uh, it looks like the middle east

But it's technically russia and it's all muslim. So the thing that's interesting

So it's not about oh what happened in the match, right? There's like an interesting match

But this guy is just like a remarkable character that I think you can like pull a lot from this is a character to hear about

So guy from dagestan

Which is a mountain town in russia

That's like not like the russian people don't like dagestanis

So they're like this like outcast group of people just like a hard hard group of people that live there

Like a little hard like like and this isn't like kind of sending

It's the truth if you google his town and his house like a stone home with not much electricity

And so his dad is one of the was one of the greatest

Um, like martial arts coaches ever basically turns out

But at the time like kabebe kabebe was a little kid and there's these videos on youtube of him wrestling a bear

A baby bear a baby bear. So he's a kid

He's probably like i don't know six or seven or something like that eight maybe and he's literally his dad has him

Actually wrestling against a baby bear

Um as like they're like they're like they're like the same size. Yeah, they're like the same size

It's insane and so this guy from a young age trained wrestling in this uh in this like in the mountains of dagestan

So he he joins the ufc

He ends up now

So he retired after this match that just happened over the weekend

So he's completely undefeated or as he says undisputed undefeated ufc lightweight champion greatest of all time

and um 29 and oh 29 no never really lost a round they gave one round to uh to connor mcgregor um, but like

He dominated pretty much every minute. He was in the in the ufc. He dominated his opponent and he fought everybody

And so that was kind of crazy. So he uh and then like sam said, he's you know, like kind of a devout muslim guy

What's interesting is he got super popular

So he has 23 million followers on instagram. He has more followers than floyd mayweather

Um, he has made his dad estimated that he made about a hundred million dollars total because

There's a billion muslim people out there and he became the most famous muslim athlete since mahamad ali

and so

He developed this huge following even though he's a very kind of

Modest guy, you know, he was not like connor mcgregor or floyd mayweather. He's really flamboyant

He wasn't like that and he got famous because after the connor mcgregor fight who's in it

He's an asshole

Khabib had a flip he flipped out because connor made fun of his religion a little bit and was disrespectful to his family

After the fight he beat connor mcgregor up jumped the stands and went and beat up connor mcgregor's team

And and that that's why he got so many followers

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I think he's just in general like idolized by by a whole bunch of like muslim people

He's the most famous muslim athlete and you know, there's just a lot of people in that population

So he's like super famous across russia, the middle east everywhere else. And so he retires undefeated

Dominates this guy again, you know as he always does and his dad passed away. I think due to covid this year

So his dad who trained him passed away a few months ago

So this is his first fight without his dad and he surprised everybody he retires

Uh, first he breaks down in tears because this is first, you know first fight post his dad

And so he knew I think he knew what was about to happen. It was over, right?

So he and he basically says I promise my mom. I wouldn't do this anymore and he gives this like post fight speech where he's like, look

Spend time with your parents. I only have one now

And uh, if you have parents spend time with them and he said I'm gonna spend some time with my mom

I remember yeah, he goes he goes my

He goes mother mother asked me not to fight without father. I said this last I said this I'll do and he that's how he said it

He goes, I promise her this will be my last one. I'm done. Thank you

I gave her my word. So so now I must do it and like a lot of people in fighting retire

But they do not stick to their word because they've retired as like a stunt to drive more interest in their next their comeback fight

So there's guys who have retired like five times like Mike Tyson's coming back again

Uh to fight this year and so like that's a tactic, but this guy doesn't play around

This guy is like he's like the definition of man of your word

I don't have no idea if it's true, but when I look at him and his crew, I'm like you guys have killed people before for sure

Like they're like are you happily would?

Yeah, they're just like they lived a hard of life and they're real gangsters and there's this hilarious video

Have you seen the video of them playing basketball? Yes

They're playing what they call daggastani basketball, which is basketball played like football

So you don't have to dribble you just run around with the ball and there's 20 guys on the court

And everyone's tackling each other to get the ball and then like you know

If you score if you if you shoot the ball and you make it like great

You get like a touchdown and that's daggastani basketball. It's the best. I uh, it's made me

Like I bet a lot of people are like us where they're like

I just want to see what daggastani is about and I want to learn how to wrestle and do all that stuff

Right. It was pretty cool

I think people make fun of the UFC because I say it's kind of like redneck or barbaric and it definitely is barbaric

But it's it's so cool to be introduced to new cultures and and you know, I fucking daggastani who would have

We're talking about it. Yeah, exactly

And I think uh, there's a lot I admire about the culture. It's very stoic very, um

Family very mostly respectful like they asked them. They said you retired and like you you were 29

I know you could have got to 30. No, which would have been the greatest record in MMA

uh history and because of this fight you had the best

Um, you had the biggest sort of like uh fights ahead of you you could have fought connor mcgregor and you could have made another

10 to 20 million dollars off that fight

You could have fought floyd mayweather. He wants to fight you because you're a big star

Um, you could have fought george st. Pierre this old, you know, former great star who could who wanted to come back and fight you

And that would have you know cemented your legacy and he goes I heard this interview and he just goes, um

What am I gonna do with money? He goes even like billionaire only eat bread one time a day one bread a day

I was like coming if I love you

That's hilarious

Um, and I think you know, there's something that is kind of amazing about this guy who who lived his life in this way

And got famous and got successful on his terms. There's so many people that are just copying the playbook

It's like, oh, okay connor mcgregor got famous this way and got rich this way

So now you have all these wannabes who like try to wear his suit and try to talk trash and try to like

Be a fashion icon and like, you know, say brash things

And uh, could be the exact opposite and got just as famous and almost just as rich

Um, and what and way more light

You never like and respect the universe respected. Yeah

Um, so I thought that's kind of a great example or a great lesson to pull

I thought it was special, you know, and I think that a lot of very few people in america will know who he is

But he's I bet you he's a top

20 most famous athlete in the world due to him being number one amongst the muslims right

And uh, it's like the fight this saturday was an abhi-dhabi. Is that how you say abhi-dhabi?

Yeah, abhi-dhabi and they said that they treat him like the king

So like he has a full on coming from the hotel to the arena, which is a literal two minute walk

And there's a police escort

driving like 40 feet

He's a bad ass fan

He's just a bad ass and then like putin called them right after like he's just royalty and I think that's bad ass

Yeah, he's insane. So to all the ufc fans, uh, hopefully you like this to the non usv's fan ufc fans

Kabib, how do you spell it k-h-a-b-i-b? That's right. Look them up. He's famous for saying like that was incredible

I'll smash this guy. That's like how he talks

All right, I'm gonna go smash my workout now. I'll see you later. All right. Bye. See you

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.