My First Million: #201 - Why You Should Spend 5x Your Budget on an Engagement Ring

I don't care if I only had 100,000, I'm spending 50,000 because this is the whole point of working really, really hard is spending my money on stuff that will make my family happy and they'll talk about forever.

Alright, welcome to the episode. We actually talked about like maybe eight legitimately wonderful ideas. We talked about privacy startups. We talked about ghost.org, which is a wordpress competitor that we actually think is going to be $100 million plus company. We talked about

burrflow.io, which is a new business that just started like two weeks ago. That's quite interesting. What else did we talk about? We talked about Ikea hacking, which is the art of scooping up and upgrading your basic furniture into something dope using Ikea parts and that little trend that might actually be something that you could build a business around.

Alright, 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 host relived 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. Alright, back to the show.

This is going to be an interesting episode because we actually rattled off a ton of stuff. It just went from thing to thing to thing to thing.

Sam tells you why you should be spending three times as much on your engagement ring as you're planning to five times as much and I don't regret it at all. And I actually think everyone should. So listen to the end.

That's the that bits at the very end at 54 minutes. I think give it a listen and also go and click that subscribe button on iTunes and that follow button on Spotify because we're going to be launching some more episodes that are interesting next week.

And go subscribe to the YouTube channel. We just had our first video that had 100,000 views on YouTube. So we're getting big over there. Let's do it.

Alright, Sean, grab your iPhone for me. I'm going to talk to you about something, but first I'm going to show you. So alright, go to your iPhone, go to settings, type in privacy and click privacy.

Alright, and if you're following along on an iPhone, do this for me. This is like a real thing. Alright, click location services and then scroll all the way to the bottom where it says system services. Yep.

Alright, after you click that scroll halfway down to where it says significant locations. Do you see that? Yeah, click that.

And ask you for your password probably. It just face ID'd me. Alright. Alright, now your latest location, it might say Vegas or Nevada or something. Click it.

Yep. So what you're going to see is my precise location. Your precise location is tracked forever. So since you use your phone and you can clear your history, but you see how it's like tracking all your stuff.

I clicked it, it says arrived via a 27 minute drive. It knows exactly when I arrived and how I arrived.

Because it used Apple Maps or it uses a bunch of stuff. It'll tell you how you got there, it'll tell you what apps you were using, when you were getting there, it'll tell you all types of interesting stuff.

Now, the reason I'm talking about this is I want to tell you a story about privacy and I wanted to show you why this is crazy because if I told you intellectually, you'd be like, yeah, of course they're tracking me.

Oh, your iPhone tracks you. Yeah, of course. So I just wanted to show you. It is weird to see it like that. It's weird to see it. And the reason I'm bringing this up is I read this story about this guy named Kyle McDonald.

And in 2011, he basically did this story where he, well, actually, let me tell you this first. So he was interested in, in privacy.

And he thought, he read this line and it said, can you imagine living a life without any private information with no private bank statements, no private files in your computer? It's hard to understand, right?

But what if you actually asked that question a little bit differently? So do you trust the government? Do you trust large banks? Do you trust Facebook? Do you trust Google?

Do you trust these large entities with your information? Because that's kind of like the same thing.

It just asked a little bit differently. And so he did this first test where he created this thing called KeyTweeter and every 140 characters on his keyboard automatically tweeted.

So there was no privacy because he wanted to see what was the world like without privacy. And he took it a step further. And so he went to an Apple store in Brooklyn and they had 50 computers.

And he installed an app on all 50 computers that automatically took a picture every like 30 or 60 seconds. And anytime it detected a face, it would send him the pictures.

And he published it as like an art thing of like, look at what people look like when they're looking at computers at a laptop in Apple.

And after publishing that, the Secret Service rated his home and Apple contacted the Secret Service. They rated his home. They took his computers. They did a thorough investigation.

They declined to prosecute, but they definitely could have done something. And I thought that that was amazing. When I started thinking about that, I'm like, isn't that crazy that I am?

I would be upset too. If someone took my picture, I wouldn't be upset to call the police, but I would be upset. I wouldn't like it.

Isn't that crazy that I'm upset about that? But I like type in all my information throughout the web or I let someone track me.

And it's quite an interesting way. And I thought, what's another way? And so I discovered this little hack. I'm like, when I see that, it actually changed my perception.

And so there's this issue going on where I actually think these privacy startups are going to be huge in 10, 20, 30 years.

Now, my problem that I'm having personally is I'm actually struggling to find different solutions that need to like different ways to solve or different problems that need to be solved.

But I agree with this general premise of like, when I just did that experiment where I showed you your tracking stuff, and when I just read this guy's art story, I was like, yeah, I'm totally not okay with that.

I don't like that.

Right.

You tweeted something out that was like this, you go, say your tweet, you go, imagine if you walked into, go ahead.

Yeah. So let's just say that you're walking around the street and a company walks you into their office and they go, check this out and they give you a file cabinet.

You open this file cabinet and there's 10,000 pictures of you and your family taken throughout the last five years.

And you had no idea that those pictures were being taken. How would you feel about that? Of course, you'd feel violated.

Now they would say, they would say, look, you were in public and I would say, yeah, I know I was in public. I can't be too angry, but I still don't feel right about this.

Now that's exactly how what happens with your data. You know that you're opting into things, you know, you're consenting, but sometimes you don't realize what you're getting into.

And if you actually truly knew what was happening, you might regret it.

And I think that the next generations of humans, like the guys who are five and 10 years old now, I actually think that they're not going to like this stuff.

And we're going to see a lot of products that come out that fight it because I think that, like, when you think of like, oh, wow, you used to be able to smoke in a restaurant in the 1990s.

I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I could smoke in a restaurant or you would be smoking in a restaurant. Now we think that's asinine.

I think that the privacy stuff now, we're actually going to look back in 20 years and be like, I can't believe that that was, you're able to do that.

So anyway, I wanted to start it off with that experiment.

I like that. I like that story a lot. And I'm with you. We've talked about different quote unquote privacy focused startups ranging from like privacy.com to doc.go.

I love like privacy.com, by the way, become like a real kind of like sort of competitor to Google and obviously, you know, niche, but hey, it made it.

It made it out after, you know, 10 years against Google.

And we've talked about different versions of this, whether it's browsers, phones, a lot of the crypto stuff is based on these same principles, right?

Like you own your data and you just you custodiate yourself rather than trusting this like kind of central company to do to hold it for you.

And so I'm definitely with you that I think that some really big companies can be there because people really give a shit about this and you could tell people give a shit about this.

Like it's ironic you were saying go to your Apple iPhone settings because if you want, if you go down the street in San Francisco, you're going to see huge billboards and it just says privacy.

And it's just Apple and there's a phone blocking out your face like there's like somebody holding a phone and you can't see their face.

And that's their whole ad and that's their differentiation.

That's their shtick about like what they care about at the Super Bowl.

They had that ad of somebody just looking at their phone like typing it like kind of like a text message to somebody.

They're just laughing uncontrollably, but they never explained what it is because it's like, hey, that's your information.

And so Apple is like basically bet the farm on privacy as like their core attribute that they're going to be providing to customers like the number one value prop now.

And but you know, here you go.

You go into you go into your phone settings and it's like, hey, we've tracked your location and you can share that.

And here's here's all the different services you've shared that with, you know, here and they are trying to fight back like you've you've probably heard the Facebook stuff that happened.

But if you're not advertising Facebook, you realize how big of a deal it was.

You should explain what's going on because even I I don't own an advertising business anymore.

But I did even I was a little bit under under educated.

But it's actually an incredibly big deal.

And this is an incredibly big deal for a consumer.

But also as business people last week, we talked about this inflection with the NCAA athlete thing.

This is actually a new inflection.

It actually helps guys like me who owned an advertising business, but I don't know anymore.

Right. Yeah. So basically, Facebook's this, you know, obviously, it's the advertising juggernaut.

It's Facebook and Google.

And with Facebook, Facebook relied on having obviously detailed targeting information about you.

People always said, oh, it's creepy.

You know, your iPhone.

My iPhone is listening to me.

And and by the way, do you know the explanation?

They are the real explanation of why of how that works.

It's like, dude, I was just talking to my friend about this.

And then, you know, and now it's showing up in my my Facebook ads.

And like the reason why is because your your friend has searched for a thing or interacted with a product.

And then they know that you were close to your friend.

Your phones were in close proximity.

And so they start showing you ads that have been like your friends that your friends have been interested in because they know that that works.

And there's a chance that you had talked about it.

And then, you know, out of 30 times that you didn't talk about it, you just saw an ad and just went by you.

And then the one time it's the thing you guys were talking about, it stands out and you remember that and you think Facebook's listening to you.

But nonetheless, Facebook basically had the biggest targeting machine in the world, right?

You could segment by state, by religion, by whatever.

And then they've slowly stripped away some of those things as they got in trouble for, you know, like privacy with the election about what what sorts of things you can target on.

But fundamentally, Facebook knew more about you than you knew about yourself.

Facebook knows before you're pregnant, right?

Facebook knows you're pregnant before you know you're pregnant.

And it knows based on your behaviors, but it knows based on your interests and those based on many things, you know, a lot of stuff about you.

And so what happened is Apple basically stripped the one thing Facebook needed.

It lets you Facebook leads basically lets you opt out of data tracking.

So when you update to the new iOS or say Apple did when you update to the new iOS system, it says, Hey, do you want to share all your data?

You're just like, No. And that one no took away Facebook's entire like kind of like knowledge about you as a customer.

And so you've opted out of this tracking.

And so now when you go visit websites, Facebook doesn't get that data back to it.

It doesn't get that that information back.

And so as a Facebook advertiser, if you're an e-commerce right now, all the numbers just sort of changed overnight.

Like even when you send it, show Facebook ad to somebody, they click it and they go buy a product from you.

Facebook's only catching like 60% of those conversions.

And it doesn't know about the other 40% because they've opted out of tracking or it didn't work.

And so Facebook all of a sudden is kind of like scrambling to figure out, All right, how the heck are we going to like deliver the same value to our advertisers,

which is our main business model without the, it's like, you know, fighting with one hand tied behind your back now halfway through the fight.

And so that's, that's sort of what Apple did to Facebook and Facebook tried to fight it in court and they try to do all this PR where they're like,

you're hurting small businesses and in reality, they are hurting small businesses.

But you know, net net, it's good for the consumer to not have Facebook just build this like super rich profile of your every move and your every taste

and your every tendency just so that businesses can advertise to you better.

So if you're listening and you got a privacy or something like related to this idea, I would like to learn about it.

Reach out to us.

I'm interested. I got a few more ideas. You want to go after one?

Yeah, go for it. You do one.

All right, I'm going to tell you one interesting one. I'll tell you two.

The first is called ghost, ghost.org. Have you heard of ghost.org?

I've used ghost. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm interested in this ghost. It's a WordPress meet sub stack is the best maybe explanation.

So it's a WordPress site.

It's its own platform. So it's a WordPress competitor, but they offer a handful of features like you can accept money for a paywall article.

They have a few more features. I actually don't know all the features that they have and why people love it.

So let's say the use case is you want to spin up a website for yourself. You can use ghost.

You want to spin up an email newsletter that's either free or paid or both. You can use ghost instead of sub stack.

Or you can want to spin up a community, a paid community. You can use ghost.

And so basically ghost is this open source version of sub stack. It's this low cost instead of let's say sub stack that take 10% of all your revenue.

Ghost just says, Hey, pay us 10 bucks a month and we're happy. And so they don't take, they don't take a percentage of your revenue.

So for a lot of people, that could be thousands of dollars a month that you're saving if you use ghost.

And they have different tiers. So $10 a month, $30 a month, $80 to $200 a month.

And so there's a few interesting things about it. But first, like the guy behind it is intriguing.

So he launched it as a nonprofit, which I actually think is stupid, but it's probably was good for like PR and a lot of people actually worked on it for free to help him.

I think definitely he should switch, but it's actually making three and a half million dollars a year.

And he uses a ton of people like free labor, like people who just want to contribute.

And I think he actually has staff. But what he does is if you go to ghost.org slash about you can, he actually reveals all of his revenue.

And I think that's interesting because I was going through this and I, I'm an investor in a, in a, in a company called convert kit.

Maybe you are too. I don't remember. But this company called convert kit, they do something like 30 million and recurring revenue right now.

They're in the value of like, you could say that maybe they're worth $200 to $30 million based off of like public comp.

So 10 times revenue ish. And I was looking through ghost.org's numbers.

They're very similar to what convert kit was about four years ago when they just got started.

And so my prediction, and I want to go on record by saying this is a, I think this is awesome.

And B, I actually think that this could be a multi hundred million dollar company in the making.

And you could watch this guy build it in public. And I think it's interesting.

Also, he had one major quote. So typically people who build these types of things are kind of like nerdy and engineer like.

And which means there's sometimes like reserve and held back and I, which I, which I like, but he had a great quote that I read.

He goes, someone goes, what's your major advice for people getting started?

He goes, honestly, my single biggest piece of advice would probably be to stop looking for so much advice and shut the fuck up and go build something.

So what do you think about this company? Do you agree in my prediction that this could actually could be a multi hundred million dollar business?

Okay, kind of boring, but I agree, right? It's more entertaining when we disagree, but I totally agree.

I used ghost for many of the reasons you talked about. A, I was intrigued. I thought their story was interesting.

I liked that they're kind of like, kind of like pirates. They're sort of like just going against the grain on a bunch of stuff that they were doing.

Product is good. Not super simple to use. It's kind of like, like I also find, you know, frankly, I find WordPress to be a little bit confusing if you want to.

WordPress is incredibly confusing.

Yeah, like it's kind of like easy to get the first thing going and then to get it to do what you want takes like a lot of stuff.

I'm surprised this is as small as it is. So 3.7 million annual run rate.

I'm surprised it's that small because ghost has been around for a while for years.

So I don't think that's, I don't think it's that impressive where it is, but it's sort of like a duck that go where I'm like, I believe it.

I first, I believe that these guys are not going to quit. So I think that's like, you know, the first thing these guys aren't going away.

And when they don't go away, they are very differentiated and uniquely positioned where they're going to pick up like 10% or so of this entire wave of like, like self publishing that's going on with sub stack and others.

And I like, I'm more excited about this business than I am about sub stack.

100%. I completely agree with you. And I the reason I'm breaking this up to listeners is not necessarily this is a new idea that they can go and do.

But if you want to go and watch this person build, he updates the blog every month and he reveals most all their revenue.

They're also a nonprofit. So if you dig around, if you Google like ghost foundation 501c, you probably can see their total financials because nonprofits disclose that.

But really cool company that you could watch being built. It's still small now, but it's going to be fun to watch this being become huge over the next four years.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. All right, I got some ideas. So one is from trends actually this Ikea hacking thing.

So, yeah, so, so I saw this in, in Niels trends, like whatever the weekly newsletter thing that you guys put out.

And I thought this was pretty fascinating. So what is Ikea hacking? Ikea hacking is when you buy something that's sort of like a basic looking piece.

A basic looking piece of furniture. And then because Ikea is like, what's it called totally modular store like any piece of any piece of furniture it's like, all the wheels are kind of like, they accept this one like one peg so you can go swap 50

different wheels onto the same piece of furniture, or same thing with the handle or the facade or the like, you know, the top the table top the glass top whatever right.

And it's like this uniform nature to it which lets you just swap parts almost like Minecraft or Roblox or something like that.

And so Ikea hacking is the art of taking something that's sort of a simple plain Jane look and Ikea piece of furniture.

And then you go to the store and you just buy different little upgrades, you know, like you're souping up a car on on Pimp My Ride.

And then you but you're pimping out your dresser or your desk or whatever it is and you make something that looks pretty sick. And actually it was just like, you know, $180 worth of random Ikea parts that if you assemble them correctly, they take you from this before picture to this after picture.

If it's a YouTube video, put up the before and after that's in from the trends thing. It's awesome. Like, it just looks so simple, like very basic looking thing to like a really cool looking thing.

And this was all just done using Ikea parts. So I have some ideas around this. But did I first did I even accurately describe it?

Yeah, you described it correctly. And the way that we discovered this or I think I mean, I used this four years ago when we first started our company.

Basically, I found this subreddit called Ikea hacking. And what I did was I bought a $150 kitchen countertop.

It was basically like a a really nice wood block. That's all. I mean, that was like a like a countertop. But I and then I just went and got some legs from from like a whole totally different thing.

This countertop you're actually supposed to lay on like granite or like a like a countertop. And I just but I just screwed legs on it and I put it in the middle of our room.

And that was like our kitchen table at our office. And that's and I think I started talking to Steph about Ikea hacking. It's very fascinating.

I don't know what the business ideas are, though.

Okay, so here's the business idea. So first, it's r slash Ikea hacks. It's got 78,000 members on Reddit. So back to the episode we did with Greg Eisenberg, where he talked about unbundling Reddit.

This is a classic example. So shout out to Greg. Basically, I would look at a community like this, I would say, huh, these people are pretty passionate about what's what they're doing here and like, these photos are kind of amazing.

These would make for great ads. This would make for great content just seeing seeing this right. And so I would just go to r slash Reddit.com slash r slash r slash Ikea hacks.

And then I would sort by like top top posts, you know, for the year or something like that and just go get a sense of like what's there.

And then click comments and read all the top comments of all the top posts.

So I think you could do a few things here, right? I think you could do what you I would then take many of the proven business models and then I would like apply them here.

So if I was getting started, what would I do to start? I would start by saying, look, I don't know the exact business model, but what I do know is that this is great content.

So I would create an Instagram account right away, right? Because the first thing that you got to know is that most people don't bury their head in Reddit.

They're not going to find all these new subreddit, even someone like me who uses Reddit every day. I didn't know about this subreddit.

And so let alone my sister who will never use Reddit and she'll only use Instagram.

And so like the first thing I would do is I would immediately create an Instagram account.

That's just posting the Ikea hacks, the best pictures from Reddit and basically just plagiarize it and just put it there and then just credit the username from Reddit in every photo as a photo credit.

Just so you don't get in trouble.

Yeah, just so I would say, what are you talking about? I was giving credit right there and it's like, dude, you're ripping this off.

So that's the first thing I would do. I would try to get that to like 50 to 100,000 followers on Instagram because that's now my asset.

That's my audience that's interested in this thing that I can then leak out different products.

So it could be a course, like a simple like $100, $200 course that's like your guide to Ikea hacking.

It could be like individual courses. It's like the bedroom course, the home office course, the home garage, you know, the garage gym course or whatever, right?

Like maybe different modules that I would do. So I would maybe think about courses.

I would think about maybe I could sell these as kits. So like maybe I could save you the hassle of having to go to Ikea.

But like figure out, oh, I need this knob and then this little paper thing and then this other thing and then those three together what you use to like make this vintage looking dresser.

Maybe I would just sell the vintage looking dresser kit and it might just be as simple as a recipe. Walk into Ikea, go to the section 198.C and go pick up this item, right?

And so it might be something like that. I don't know what I would do, but I do think there's like a small bootstrap business and this is a good business for somebody who is genuinely passionate about this, right?

So like how do you take what I'll call your like, okay, this is not meant to be offensive, but like there's a lot of hobbies that are like basic bitch hobbies.

So what's a basic bitch hobby? Basic bitch hobby is a hobby that you think is unique to you.

It's like saying like, no, you're fucking disgusting. No offense.

Yeah, anytime you say no offense, it's like, what it means is brace yourself for some offense.

Yeah, no offense.

I fucking hate you. No offense.

So the no offense here. So like for guys, the basic bitch hobby is like sports. Oh, bro, I love the NBA.

Yeah, you and like 80 million other people right now, right? So it's not like a unique hobby.

So you can't, how do you turn your passion into business? Well, it's not a unique passion.

So you're probably going to have like a me too business unless you think of a new angle.

And so another basic bitch hobby is like, oh, I love interior decorating.

It's like, cool, you and like 90, 90 million other people who like to watch HGTV and just judge stuff or like you're happy to scroll on Instagram, pretty looking things and push like.

Well, I think that's why if you, if you look at it from this angle with like IKEA hacks, you're finding a niche and you're building your own audience on that.

On that, like that one kind of trend. And then maybe you can release some kind of subscription product, education product, DC product, like something to that audience.

And now you've turned your business into a business.

We already talked about the basic bitch version of this for us, which was the knees over toes guy.

Yeah, another, another example of this working out, dude.

Yeah. Another example of this is Phillips Hughes, Phillips Hughes light bulbs, crazy subreddit that is like has a rabid fan base.

I've actually like lighting or something, right? What is it?

Phillips Hughes, it started as just a bulb that was, and you would say, Alexa, make the bulbs or, you know, make the living room purple.

But then they have like 50 other products now and people like have all these blogs and they're actually making good money.

I bet you like apartment therapy or like one of these bigger brands actually owns one of these blogs.

I don't have to scroll down and look at who the copyright owns the copyright, but basically it's blogs on where to put the lights like under the bed in order to make it feel cool.

Right. An example of who did this well is House of Highlights.

I don't know if you followed them on Instagram, but they're, they're big.

Basically, they took ESPN Sports Center, which was like this 30 minute television show highly produced.

And all it was doing was showing you the best highlights of the day.

And so back in the day, you know, like sports would happen all day.

And then the evening or the morning, the next morning you would watch Sports Center to catch up through the best highlights, right?

It's like just the sugar and House of Highlights smartly realized, hey, you know, we can just post those as like 10 second clips on Instagram as soon as they happen.

All day.

And like, I can basically have like two people, two like people who like the NBA just run this account and this account can grow to like a million people.

So the guy like Omar created this thing.

I think Bleacher Report owns it.

Yeah. So he ends up selling it to Bleacher Report and, and runs it there.

They run it now.

I bet you whatever you sold it for, you sold it for way too little.

And so like, you know, overtime did kind of the same thing.

But, but anyways, that's like an example of taking these like, how do you take this content that's not your content?

It's not original content.

It's in this like kind of basic bitch hobby.

And then you turn it into like a media, media property that you own and then you own that audience and you can figure out what you want to do from there.

So there's this couple who they got popular because right before the pandemic started, there was a French guy and his American girlfriend who are now husband and wife.

And they started baking croissants in their apartment and then they brought it to work and they like sold them to their friends or the co-workers.

And then eventually they created an Instagram and they went viral and the apartment that I'm staying in right now bought like pre-order.

You have to pre-order eight weeks out because they're sold out for weeks and weeks and they're just baking this, these croissants and cookies out of their apartment.

And the guy who owns my apartment got them and then ended up going out of the country and he's like, hey, you can actually have my order.

It's like $90 of like these fancy croissants.

And so on Sunday, I'm going to get those fancy croissants.

And I invited Dave Nemitz, the founder of Bleach Report and his wife to come over and eat these.

I was like, hey, you want to cut these are like fancy girl croissants.

Like I don't understand at the time. I didn't know the story, but like for some reason, I think this is a big deal.

Do you want to come over and eat these with your kids?

So I'll be eating croissants with the founder of Bleach Report on Sunday and I can ask him the story about house highlights.

Do please do it. It's amazing by by him like mad credit to them for picking this up before before ESPN or anybody else.

I think by the way, he listens to the podcast or at least he like talks to us on Twitter a bunch.

And so he seems great and Bleach Report.

I saw his talk at HustleCon.

Very impressive.

Like the way they kind of like won and they survived.

I just remember this one anecdote he told, which was he was like, yeah, we basically like every other content site

was kind of like, okay, I might butcher this just because I'm trying to remember a talk from three years ago.

But here's what I remember him saying.

Every other like sports news website was just talking about whatever was interesting to them.

They're all kind of putting out the same content.

He's like, we needed to be smarter, right?

Like we needed to say every hour of writer is going to spend.

We don't have the same number of writers or budget.

So they need to spend writing articles that are going to get more traffic than anybody else.

And so he would just reverse engineer it.

So he like, they would just study Google searches and they would say, oh, everybody's searching.

What time is the NFL draft?

He's like, so we would immediately like have like the number one ranking thing on Google for what time is the NFL draft,

where to watch it and how to watch it and what's going to happen in the draft.

Just like this kind of filler content on a website.

He's like, people really like the draft.

Okay, we're going to go like all in on the draft.

We're going to write 10 times more content about the draft because that's what there's a big appetite for that ESPN is like under serving.

And so I thought it was pretty awesome how they took kind of like a supply demand approach to it instead of like artsy.

Right.

Like an artsy approach of like, oh, you know, this is what this is.

We're a journalistic publication and we should we should write the hard hitting pieces about whatever.

Or like, you know, well, here's what I'm passionate about.

It's like, you know, they like took a science approach to it, which I liked.

And then the other founder went and did that he had a non-compete after he sold Bleacher Report.

So he couldn't do sports anymore.

But he started a media company called Bustle, which is like women's content.

So all types of articles, but like an example of his long tail search strategy.

He deployed the same strategy.

So like if you Google, like what happens when I get my period while I'm on the beach, like Bustle will show up.

Number one, it's like there's only going to be like a hundred people a month or something that search for that.

If I have no idea.

But I think I had heard through him that was one of the examples.

Or if you Google things like that, you'll come to cross Bustle and they do like over a hundred million in revenue.

And so it still works.

Right.

And by the way, one insert is just pivoting off the Instagram thing.

We talked about this in the past, but there's some new news.

So we should bring it up.

We talked about this, um, this woman who's an influencer.

She's a fitness influencer on Instagram.

Kayla, I think it's seen as or something.

I don't know exactly.

It's new. I think it's it's new.

Every woman listening to this is just going to be like, what the fuck guys?

I think it's it's new.

What there was something else we, we tried to pronounce that we just like couldn't.

It was just like, like, I don't know, some, some fancy luxury brand for, for purses or something like Hermes.

Yeah.

She wears Hermes bags.

So anyway, she has this app.

So she basically took this Instagram following.

It was just posting like workout clips on Instagram stuff.

Her and her boyfriend, I think, or her husband, I don't remember who was.

Well, before the app, they were just selling a PDF.

Sarah, my wife, she bought it for $29.

My sister-in-law has the PDF and she was just using this PDF for like,

as they're like the beach body or forgot what it's called.

It's like some, some kind of like 30 day program.

Yeah.

That's our 30 minute workout.

That was like, you know, from, from this girl and she was buying the PDF.

Then they turned it into an app.

Right.

So they turned it into an app.

App starts doing great.

My wife was a subscriber.

You pay a hundred bucks a year and then you open up the app.

And it's basically like, from what I remember, you open up the app.

There was like five women who were like the trainers.

And it's like, one is like very muscular.

One is like very, just like thin.

One is like half kind of like toned or whatever.

Another one has like a huge butt.

It's like, which body do you want and go follow their program.

And so you would just pick it and then you would get like daily workouts,

kind of like a video that was like very good.

And so anyways, that app was doing like, I think they had done over a hundred

million dollars revenue.

I don't know if that's annual or cumulative, but they just sold.

So I don't know if you have the details in front of you, but they just sold

for like $400 million or something.

Right.

Like they just exited, exited the app this week.

Yeah.

For $400 million dollars, they sold to this company called iFit,

which is about to go public.

They said they're doing a hundred million in revenue.

Pretty amazing.

No brainer to buy.

Definitely worth it.

And it's pretty weird that a hundred million, if you're doing a hundred

million in revenue, you, you know, you sold for only 400 million.

So it's pretty low multiple for like a digital product, but they're probably

spending a ton on marketing.

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Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe not.

I mean, she had 13 million followers and it is based on her thing, on her

following.

Can I tell you about an idea that someone just sent to me and I thought it was

pretty amazing?

Okay.

Look at the thing called BurvFlow in the doc.

So it's called burvflow.io.

Did you click on that?

I saw you texting me about it this morning, but I haven't checked out.

So tell me about it.

Okay.

So this guy said to me, he goes, hey, I had this like software company and

it was trying to do all these problems and solve all the, like it's called

crowd flow or something like that.

And he's like, it's a, I spent three years working on it.

And then I just said, fuck it.

I'm just going to create a really micro small app.

I'm going to build it in two weeks.

It just does one thing really well.

It's called burvflow.

And if you click it, it says marketing automation for Twitter.

But basically I'll tell you, like it does three different things, but the

main thing is everyone who clicks follow on your profile, it automatically

sends them a message and you could say anything in that message.

Like, Hey, thanks for following or Hey, thanks for following.

Check out my website.

And I installed it.

He's charging $29.

I installed it and it's awesome.

It's awesome.

It's awesome.

I love these little micro SaaS tools.

I think it's so neat.

This is exactly how buffer got started.

And that's a multi hundred million dollar business.

Right.

Yeah.

I like the micro SaaS tool that does one simple thing that helps you win on

a platform you're already like trying to win on.

That's the key, right?

So like, I'm already trying to win on Twitter.

I'm trying to win on Instagram, trying to win on Reddit, whatever.

And if you could build the micro SaaS tool, it's like, here's, you know,

other examples of them.

Uh, there's, uh, what's it called jungle scout, which is for Amazon.

So let's say you're trying to win as an FBA seller on, on Amazon.

So you're selling a product on Amazon jungle scout is this app you can use.

And basically when you're searching any Amazon like search, search result,

you can use, you can open up jungle scout and it'll basically tell you how

much that product is worth, how much, how much search volume there is for it,

how competitive it is to be in that niche and how much money they think that

product is making so that you can find winning products that are like high

demand, low competition.

And then you could build a FBA, you know, an FBA business in that niche.

And so it's a simple SaaS tool.

I think jungle scout does some stupid amount of revenue too.

They were recently, um, partially acquired by PE in the hundreds of

millions of dollars evaluation.

Greg Mercer is good friends with Neville and in Austin.

And, uh, he like, uh, this is, I guess, public.

I mean, he's got like a plane and shit, uh, so whatever it was sold for,

like Neville will post pictures going to like tell you ride in a private jet.

And I'm like, dude, who's the guy or he's the jungle scout guy,

the guy who sold part of the company who started it.

Gotcha. Yeah.

So, so super simple tool that just helped you win there.

And they just built, they just kind of like dominate that one niche of like

FBA, you know, FBA selling or in this case, Twitter automations, right?

So, oh, somebody, and so I like this a lot.

I need something like this, uh, for me, because I'm trying to basically grow

my audience on Twitter and then cool.

The less work I can do, the better, right?

Like I love digital salespeople.

All right.

A digital salesperson.

That's what I think about when I think about landing pages or like this,

like little like automations, that's a digital salesperson.

It's somebody who's going to work 24 seven for me for zero cost or,

you know, in this case, whatever it was $29 a month.

Um, that's their salary and they're going to do exactly what I say every

single time predictably.

And, uh, they're just going to generate more value for me.

And so I look at my landing page, like a digital salesperson.

I look at my automations, like convert kit, things like that as

digital salespeople.

And, um, yeah, this is a really cool one.

I like this a lot.

Now, I can see this getting really annoying.

I mean, people hate getting these auto DMs, but, uh, it still will work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It might be annoying, but I actually just made mine.

It just says, Hey, exclamation point.

Thanks for following.

Now here's the problem that I already found.

So, uh, it's already sent out a couple hundred messages for me.

I guess I get maybe 500 to a thousand new followers a day.

This, uh, I feel like a douche saying this, a couple of women replied.

Yeah.

So a couple like really attractive women applied and or replied saying like,

Hey, what's going on?

You know, like your work.

Basically they applied.

Yeah.

So like these like attractive women replied.

And I was like, fuck, I don't want like anyone to get the wrong idea and

to think that I'm hollering just at them or that I'm hollering at all.

You know, and so I didn't reply to them, but I was like, Oh my gosh, like this

guy actually might be able to, this could definitely get me in trouble a little

bit.

I could totally see it.

Right.

When that, when that kind of, I sent you that message.

It was kind of weird, right?

It was hilarious.

Um, yeah, I could see that, you know, the same thing with somebody else pointed

this out too, which is like, let's say you write a thread that goes viral.

You might get 5,000 followers.

You're going to send out what 5,000 auto DMs and then get like 2,000 random

replies back.

It's going to like kind of ruin your inbox and maybe it gets you banned from

Twitter.

I don't know.

Cause it'll just rate limit you.

So, so I think there's some problems with it.

Maybe, maybe this guy's built in some rules.

Like for me, I would only want to do this.

I would only want to DM somebody who has over X followers or that I, you know,

I already follow or something like that.

So then it kind of like limits the number of people this does it to.

I think you can.

You need it to be like, Hey, you know, only if it's a, you know, farmer looking

white boy, then send this.

So I don't get in trouble with my wife, you know, like I need it to be like this

guy needs to have like, you know, Patel or Gupta at his last day, if it's

going to send this auto DM.

So my Indian fanboys can, uh, can get these messages from me, but not everybody

else.

Yeah.

I could see it get me in trouble.

Um, all right.

You want to do another one?

Yeah, let's do one.

Uh, okay.

A little idea that I think is kind of interesting.

I don't have a ton to say about the business, but it's more like, this is a

cool way to get ideas.

So this is my first time traveling with, uh, with babies and, uh, traveling

with babies is like, you know, all the things you would expect, like on the

plane, you know, kid pooped through his clothes, had to change it.

You know, like on a tray table because we couldn't stand up because the

fast and see field sign, the person next to us looking at us like we're gross

and what are you supposed to do?

That is disgusting.

I mean, you are.

Exactly.

I know.

I agree.

There's a bunch of problems.

So like we had to take our car seats, right?

Cause you can't just like be like, Oh, I'll get there.

You know, I used to pack light.

I used to be like, cool, I'll get there.

I just need my phone.

I'll call an Uber, get to my hotel.

If I'm missing something, I'll just buy it there.

And with this kids, it's like the opposite.

It's like, can't even get in an Uber because you have to like have a car

seat.

All that stuff.

So I saw this business called baby quip that I thought was kind of cool.

It's again, one of our like telltale signs is any business that shows up at

the top of a Google, a popular Google search, but the website looks like it was

last updated in like 1996.

Um, those are businesses that print money.

And so it's like, congratulations, you've identified a money printer.

And so I don't know how successful baby group is, but I would suspect it's

pretty good for as a bootstrap business.

And what it does is it's basically a marketplace.

So I could say, Hey, I just landed in Las Vegas.

I need two car seats.

I don't want to lug two car seats, check them in, uh, you know, like on the

floor, like, you know, drag them to the airport, check them in, take them home,

like just meet me at the airport with a car seat that I could just install

into a rental car or I can stall into, to, to an Uber or whatever.

Uh, and then like, let me rent it for four days.

And then when I'm leaving, come pick it back up from the airport.

And so that's a baby quip is it's a baby equipment, but it's a marketplace

where people will bring you what you need.

You need a stroller.

I got a stroller for you.

Don't lug that heavy thing around.

Just use mine when I'm here.

People are making a lot of money.

Just Google searching.

I was Google searching and again, it's a very good content play.

I was Google searching baby travel packing list.

So I was like, Oh, what do I even, what am I forgetting here?

And so they had a blog post.

I was like, here's all the things you need to pack for your baby.

And then at the bottom, it's like, by the way, if you don't want to pack

your stroller and car seats, cause they're heavy as hell, like, you know,

you could just use baby quip and get it when you're there.

And I was like, click through.

And I was like, this is cool.

And so I just thought this is like a very clever business that is a look

for problems, look for annoyances, look for inconveniences.

And then those become your opportunities if you can design a solution

around them.

So I just thought it was a clever little business.

This is awesome.

So baby quip is actually, it's a peer to peer marketplace.

So I don't think you actually said that.

I thought it was the company that would give you stuff.

No, it's just like Jane, whose kid outgrew her car seat and she

realizes she can make, you know, $200 a month just renting it out to

people.

As long as she's willing to go drop it off and pick it up from the airport.

I have these guys raised money.

They've been around for a while and they haven't,

it doesn't look like they've raised money.

But yeah, they, you know, they are basically like just kind of like a,

it looks like a bootstrap business from everything I could tell it launched

in 2016.

They've had over 30,000 orders.

I think they did a crowdfunding campaign at some point.

So maybe they're on a shark tank.

This is kind of interesting.

Now, I'm not convinced that this is going to, this can be a huge, huge

thing.

This is actually, what is actually interesting is let's go to New York.

It tells you how many reservations someone has ever had.

I bet you that there could be like some mom who's just dominated like a

LA or a New York scene, like to just rank really high on all the,

all the big cities and lend out all their stuff.

And so what it does is it, it tells you how much it, so what basically

what happens is you land in New York, you, but before you land,

you tell baby quip, you hire Camila Shannon, who's the top in New York.

She's rented it, her stuff out 73 times and she'll bring you any gear

that you need.

And you could see all the gear that she has and she costs 40 to $60 to

deliver the stuff to you.

Plus there's gear for, there's a car seat for $10 a day.

There's a play pin for $40 a day.

There's 15 pound dumbbells for $5 a day.

This is crazy.

This is awesome.

This is awesome.

This is a great find.

Yeah.

And so, so another example of this, by the way, have you used or probably

not used, but you're familiar with, I'm assuming teachers pay teachers.

No, what's that?

You've never heard of teachers pay teachers?

No.

What?

Dude, I don't have kids.

It doesn't, doesn't matter.

This is just like one of those things that you know about because it's

just awesome.

And so Google teachers pay teachers.

So what this is.

Oh my God.

If you, if you remember, like a teacher spends a huge amount of time,

like creating their lesson plans and quizzes and tests, and they have to

like keep recreating like content basically for their little classroom of

30 people.

It's pretty inefficient, right?

So you go home, you, you teach kids all day already kind of an exhausting

thing.

Now you go home and you, you have to grade papers.

You have to come up with tomorrow's lesson plan and then you have to design

the quiz for Thursday's quiz.

Then you have next Friday's test.

So you have all this stuff.

You're just constantly this content treadmill and what teachers pay teachers

did those genius was they said, look, that's a lot of effort.

And you may not be the best person at coming up with a lesson plan or the

quiz for this science topic.

So why don't we just create a marketplace or any teacher can list their

lesson plans, their quizzes, their tests.

And you could just find go instead of just making your own, go on here for

10 bucks and go buy the best science thing for a fourth grader trying to

learn about, you know, geology right now.

And you just go buy the thing for 10 bucks and you've saved four hours of

time.

And so it was like a great trade.

So teachers pay teachers as a marketplace doing this.

Some teachers were making millions of dollars just creating their,

putting their content up for sale here.

The business itself does I think 300 plus million dollars a year in revenue

and growth and gross revenue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it was bought by a private equity firm and like just look at their

traffic on this thing.

And it's like over 30 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's an insane business.

Beautiful business too.

Because it's like, wow, you turned some teachers who created amazing

lessons and amazing tests and quizzes.

You turned them into stars and millionaires, which is fantastic.

I think the best teachers should be millionaires and the age of the

internet.

There's, there's no reason not that they shouldn't be on the other side.

You saved a bunch of money and a bunch of, sorry, you saved a bunch of time

for all the other teachers so that they're more rested and can go into

class and perform instead of being, you know, like kind of falling behind

constantly on the content treadmill.

And so I thought this is like, you know, an amazing idea.

Same, it reminds me of the baby quip thing.

Obviously this is much bigger, much more successful, but it's like these niche

kind of like pain points turned into, you know, marketplace solutions.

This is badass.

Maybe you could also do this for speeches.

I remember doing my brother, John, gave a really good,

Oh, wedding speeches.

He gave a great best man speech and three people, three people paid

money to write their speech.

And I think that you could do that for, I think you could start with just

wedding speeches, but eventually do all other types of speeches.

Dude, that is hilarious.

And there's absolutely because there's a ton of Googling, right?

Like when you have to give your speech, you're like, Oh God, pressure

super high rep.

Like how many reps have I had doing this?

Zero.

Okay.

Let me go to Google and let me try to get some inspiration.

Try to get the ball rolling.

People go to YouTube and they try to watch like, you know, best, best man

speech ever, right?

Best bridesmaid speech ever.

And then you're like, okay, like what am I going to do?

What am I going to do with this?

Not quite.

But if somebody created these templates, that could be pretty good.

I like that.

Yeah.

I actually think you could do that.

There's this company called Book in a Box started by Tucker Max, who was

one of my investors before it was, when they did Book in a Box, they

would, you'd pay them any number from 20 to $100,000 on a bunch of

different options.

And they would write a book about your life.

So you could like get speaking gigs or you could give to your kids or

like whatever for any different reasons.

So you look like an expert, be a thought leader.

Your authors started getting speech offers.

You know, they would, someone would pay 10, $20, $30,000 to have someone

come and talk about like best practices and meetings because some guy

had wrote a book on how meetings suck and how to make them better.

And then they created a new subsidiary that would write your, do your

PowerPoint and presentation for you and you'd pay more money for that.

And I was like, that's cool.

That should probably be the business more so than just the book thing.

Right.

And so I think that actually teachers paying teachers, you could also do

speakers paying speakers.

I mean, you could do the same thing.

Another angle to this, which is I think that teachers are sort of this

extremely teachers and nurses.

These are two workforces that are very, very large.

They have a unique set of problems.

They're extremely like kind of word of mouth heavy.

And I don't think that the existing solutions were great for them.

So on the podcast a long time ago, we had a founder of like incredible

health command, which is basically like a, kind of like a job marketplace

thingy, like a kind of linked Danish nurses.

That was right before COVID.

How'd that do?

They raised a bunch of money.

I don't know if they're doing well or not, but I can't really say,

but they've raised a bunch of money because the opportunity is large,

meaning there are so many nurses and there's a shortage of nurses and

there's high demand for nurses.

So there's a lot of fees paid for placements.

So nurses want great jobs and then hospitals and clinics basically are

happy to pay to place nurses.

And so there's a lot of money to be made if you can build the right network

there, if you can build a vertical LinkedIn for just nurses.

And I think there's a similar opportunity for teachers, not in terms

of placing teachers, because it's not the same level of demand for like

hiring teachers.

But I do think that, I do think that if you built like a professional

networking thing for teachers, that's better.

They don't necessarily want or need to use LinkedIn.

I think you could build a custom solution that is for teachers.

It's like, how do teachers, how are teachers going to engage with like

kind of like their peers?

All right, what do they need to do?

Do they need to share tips?

Is it job opportunities?

Is it content?

Like teachers pay teachers?

I think if you did a brainstorm, if you were in, if that's the

issue we're in, I think there's a lot of opportunities for teachers

just because there's such a huge workforce and the generic solution

like LinkedIn is not going to be tailored to them.

How much do you think teachers paying teachers got acquired for?

I would say, if I was going to put a guess, I would say $500 million.

Yeah, I would guess that as well.

Or $400 or $500, because it is kind of a monopoly in its niche.

Or more, or more even, or rather if you said it's worth more than

that now, I wouldn't be surprised.

Yeah, we can research.

I didn't plan to bring it up, but we can look it up.

It might be out there publicly.

No, I looked it up while you were talking.

You want to do more or two more?

Yeah, I don't have much more.

What do you have?

I blew my load early.

I have one.

Okay, so we can end on kind of like this life wisdom thing.

So last night we're hanging out.

We're talking.

I'm hanging out with some other folks who are traveling with us.

Whose family?

Yeah, family members.

And so I asked this question.

I said, all right.

I said, what do you think?

I said, let's take it fast forward.

How old are you?

31?

Yeah.

You're 31.

I said, all right.

Fast forward.

You're 90 years old.

And let's say you have your life as it's gone so far.

And then let's just kind of like project forward.

And then let's say you're going,

the things have been going like the track you're on.

Let's say you continue on track.

You end up at 90.

What do you think if you look back,

you're going to be most happy with the way you lived your life?

And then what do you think you're going to regret the most about

the way you lived your life so far?

And so I was curious after I asked that question,

I got some answers from the group.

I was curious.

I was like, I'm going to ask Sam this because I don't know what

he would say.

I think it's a hard question to be fair,

but I'm curious what comes to mind for you.

I would say that I let my temper control things.

I lose my temper easily sometimes.

You've seen it sometimes when I get mad at you

or when I get mad at Dan or someone else and it's like,

sometimes they've actually done something that is warranted.

Oftentimes it's like, it's not that big a deal.

And so I get super fucking frustrated

and I'll hold grudges over like a relatively small frustration

and I let my emotions control some of my decisions.

And I've lost a lot of money and a lot of friends because of it.

So that's what I regret.

And I work quite hard to fix it,

but I wish I would have been even more aware of that early on.

What else do I regret?

That's a great answer.

Do I think that I'll regret?

I wish I didn't spend years neglecting my health thinking like,

oh, I can get to it later on.

Like I should have fun now.

I wish that when I was a kid,

my parents instilled healthy eating habits

because I think that's still kind of fucked with me.

Like eating a lot of bad sugar. What else?

What about the flip side?

What's the one thing you're going to look back and be like,

glad that you lived that way or you did that thing

or you made those choices?

Starting at age 20, I wrote this down.

I said, by 30, I want to have started something

that will make enough money that when I have children,

I won't ever have to worry about how to give them what they need.

Also, I'll be able to spend time with my family.

Even though I didn't have a family or anything like that,

I was like, that's what I think I'm going to want for that time.

I'm 30, so I'm going to work against that.

And I achieved that.

And so I'm most proud that I now can only worry

about the emotional aspects of the family

even though I don't even have a family.

I'm most proud I got that problem out of the way.

The financial problem.

What do you think of that question?

Is this a good question or is it kind of like a...

It's a really good question.

I actually changed it around.

I ask myself this all the time.

Well, it's quite similar.

I go, I think like, what can I do today

that will make my future self proud and not regretful?

Right.

And so...

What will I thank myself for?

And I say 10 years, but I would actually change it to six months.

Because oftentimes, how many times...

And the other question I ask myself is,

in six months, will you wish that you have done this

or wish that you had started trying to do blank?

So it's like losing weight, exercising is a really good one.

In six months, will you look back at yourself

and be like, fuck, I wish I already had started

learning how to speak Spanish.

I wish I already would have read these books.

I wish I already would have done this.

So just fucking do it.

Make your future self proud.

So that's the question I ask.

I think it's a great question.

And what was your answer?

What do you regret and what are you proud of?

So I had trouble with the regret side.

I was thinking about it and I was like, okay.

I went through some...

I couldn't think of an easy answer.

So I said, okay, what happens

when you can't think of the answer right away?

You just start throwing out, what might it be?

So that it doesn't have to be this,

but what even comes to mind?

And so I was like, oh, will I regret kind of

like spending too much time working?

Okay, it's possible.

No, I don't think so.

I mean, I think you got...

You're pretty healthy with that.

You worked really hard when you were single or not married.

Yeah, I worked like three times harder than I work now.

So it's something that made that shift well.

I was like, will I regret like working on the wrong things?

Like, oh, you just worked on this,

like right now I'm building this DTC business.

It's like, oh, well, like, you know, this isn't...

Frankly, this is a business that's meant to make money.

It's not like the joy of my life.

Like this podcast is more like the joy, right?

This is the fun and it's building up into something that's big,

but like the business I'm doing is I'm doing it as a business.

So maybe I'll say, oh, why didn't I go try to like

change the world some bigger way?

Maybe I'll say that.

I started brainstorming these.

And what I realized was that

the only things I think I'm going to regret

are either going to be health related.

But even then, by the time I'm 90,

I don't know how much I'm going to care about that.

If I got to 90, so it didn't quite work.

But I think if I asked that question for like 50 or 60,

I would say definitely one of the top answers

would be taking care of my health better.

Just prioritizing that number one.

Number two was like any...

I think when you're 90, you're short on time.

So I'll probably look back and think,

fuck, I pissed away a bunch of time on the wrong stuff.

And so that's what I...

That's the second category is like,

where am I pissing away time?

That when I look back, I'm going to say,

oh, I can't believe I wasted those precious years

on the wrong stuff or on the wrong things,

caring about the wrong things.

Or even in the moment, focusing on the wrong things.

The last one is relationships.

It's like, I think ultimately...

So my answer that I came to in the end was,

I'll probably regret not having more kids.

Because I think the older I get, the more joy I'm going to have.

The most value and joy in my life is just going to come from my kids.

And I know right now it feels like, oh my God, I couldn't...

I have two.

I couldn't possibly have another because...

Why not?

It's already so hard with two.

How's your wife?

She's young.

It's not the biological clock.

It's like the workload.

It's like, oh my God, like how do I have another kid

with these two kids, with the business stuff,

with the podcast, with the 10 things that I do?

You can.

In two years, you can.

Sure.

I'm not saying I don't.

I guess what I'm saying is I think that's the one thing.

If I look back, I'm probably going to wish I had more kids

because it's probably going to be from age 65 to 90.

It's probably going to be the number one source of fun in my life

is going to be my kids slash grandkids.

I think you should address that.

I told Sarah I want five.

And so we froze our embryos.

Listen to this.

We froze our embryos and I've got six kids.

The reason...

I don't want...

Sarah's got this thing.

There's just a genetic component that we made sure

we didn't want to pass on so the kids were healthy.

And I got five kids, all girls.

And so I'm asking her if we could go and do it again

because I would like to have two boys, two girls.

Right.

And so I've got five kids waiting for me,

but they're all girls.

So anyway, I actually think that that's a good one.

I asked my Twitter following, how many of you...

how do you feel about kids in age?

And almost unanimously, the people who had...

So this is like a bias survey, right?

What do you mean?

How do you think about kids in age?

What does that mean?

Well, I forget the exact way that I asked it,

but I said, do you wish that you'd had kids sooner

or later in life?

Okay, gotcha.

And of course, there's like a bias here.

People who are already bought into one category

will likely answer and support that category

or support that decision.

But almost unanimously, I feel like the answer was,

I wish I had my kids sooner in life.

And that actually shocked me because particularly in New York,

Silicon Valley, L.A., the coastal bigger cities,

it's actually versus like Missouri where I'm from,

it's actually more normal to get married

and have kids at 21, 22, 23, whereas on the coast,

it's like 31, 32, 33.

And you're constantly told, you know, just wait, just wait.

Even like Andrew Wilkinson told me,

a couple of my friends told me,

and I guess you have kids now,

you could actually give your opinion.

Most everyone said, I wish I had kids sooner.

And one guy actually changed my perspective on everything.

I go, why do you think that?

He goes, because now I'm just going to die sooner

and I wish I could have spent more time with them.

Yeah, I don't know the answer.

I think whatever, I think it works either way.

It's not really, I don't really,

I don't really think there's a right answer there,

but kids are great.

They kids are really great.

So I like that question.

I like the one you had too.

So I guess like if I was going to do,

I recommend people do this after the podcast.

If you've listened this far,

I would basically write down both.

I would say, what's the thing I'm going to thank myself for,

and what's the thing I'm going to regret when I'm 90,

about the way I'm living my life right now,

and if I just project it forward.

And then there's the one you said,

which is six months from now,

what's the thing I'm going to wish I had started doing now,

or stopped doing now?

Yeah, because there's a lot.

Because I'm still going to wish I had done it then.

There's a lot you could do in six months.

And now you're not going to maybe have a life changing thing,

but like you can lose 60 pounds in six months, maybe.

You can learn a little bit of a language,

enough to go and speak maybe in a different country.

And you could read a bunch of books.

You could learn how to play the piano in six months.

You could do a lot of interesting stuff.

Yeah, you could go repair the shitty relationship you have with your dad,

or whatever.

You could do many, many things.

I guess that's the other one I thought about for the regret,

is not having maybe spent more time,

or being nicer to my parents.

I know I'm going to miss them a lot when they're gone,

and they're going to go.

It's going to happen.

And once they do, I'm just going to,

I think that's probably going to be one of the things I want to wish.

Why didn't I talk to them more, or spend more time,

or tell them thanks?

Something like that is probably going to be one of my answers for that.

So I'll wrap this up with a quick story that hopefully will change people's perspective.

So do you know who Ramit Sethi is?

Sethi?

Yeah.

I got this business book, business slash book,

a huge brand called I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

He's a good friend of mine.

And whenever I have money, like doubts or questions, I call him,

and he kind of like, so for example,

and he always like thinks about everything, like very thoughtfully,

and I was talking to him about buying a ring for my wife years ago,

and I go, how much should I spend?

And he goes, like I told him I wanted to spend $5,000,

and he was like, no, no, no, no, no.

And he like told me a budget way higher.

He goes, trust me, and he explained his reasoning.

And I listened to him.

I went and bought a ring that was,

I spent $27,000 on the ring,

and I didn't have that much money at the time.

What was his reasoning though?

His reasoning was like, first of all, it's your wife.

Like, whatever she wants.

Like, what's the point of working hard?

It's to make someone like your wife proud and happy,

and she's going to want to show this off,

so just make her happy.

Second, if you're going to be married to her for potentially 80 years,

he gives a fuck of 20 grand divided by 80 grand, or 80 years.

And he goes, just don't be cheap on the stuff that actually matters.

This probably really matters to her.

Now, some people, it doesn't matter.

But then the second thing was, I called Rumi,

and I go, hey Rumi, you took your family to Europe one time,

to Italy.

He goes, yeah, you want me to plan yours for you?

And I go, well, yeah, but what do you mean?

He goes, well, like, I love doing this,

and I'll plan yours for you, but I only have one rule.

I said, what?

He goes, I'll plan it for you,

but you have to have an unlimited budget.

Well, he goes, dude, the whole point of traveling with your family,

so I'm taking my mom and dad and my wife to Italy.

My parents have really never been out of the country

other than one time to visit me in Australia.

And he goes, you got to give them on a limited budget.

I was like, dude, I was going to spend like 15,000 maybe.

And he goes, no, no, no, no, no.

We're going to spend 50 at least.

And I was like, that's so much money.

He goes, dude, you're never going to go out of the country again

with your family.

And I've done it before, like one time.

It's the one thing that they will never stop talking about it.

And I don't care if I only had 100,000.

I'm spending 50,000 because this is the whole point of working

really, really hard is spending my money on stuff that will make my family

happy and they'll talk about forever.

And I was like, you're right, I need to quit being a cheapskate.

So I bought my mom and dad first class.

They've never been first class, first class tickets to Europe.

We're going to have a great time.

And it kind of changed my perspective on spending and being tight.

So that's my quick little story.

That's amazing.

I love it.

All right, we should end on that.

All right, good episode.

What do you think?

This was good.

I'll give you guys a nine and a half.

Okay, good.

I'll take that.

Last one was an eight, but an eight and a half.

All right, that's the episode.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.