My First Million: Big Fish In A Small Pond, LIV Golf, And Financial Freedom

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 think there's so much to be said about being the best or a big fish in a little pond

and like you can make a name for yourself and have a way better life.

Like this random dude is having so much more impact by creating a map, being like the guy

for like this very small math contest versus, you know, a rich, he's probably way more fulfilled

than being just like another $100 million banker.

All right.

What's going on, dude?

How are you?

Fantastic.

So I have something that I've been thinking about that I've been wanting to talk to you

about.

Have you ever seen that video of Adolf Hitler at the German Olympics in 1936 when he's watching

the Olympics and he's like rocking back and forth?

Have you ever seen that?

Bro, you can't be blonde haired, blue eyed and coming on here starting off saying, have

you ever seen my favorite video of Hitler?

No.

No, no, no.

Have you ever seen that video?

We're trying to go up the charts, bro.

We're trying to go up.

Have you ever seen that video of him?

Like, so he's like basically there's this video that I saw a couple of weeks ago where

he's at the Olympics and he's rocking back and forth and he's very clearly on drugs like

some type of Coke or something like he's on drugs and I started getting curious about

it and I started looking into this and someone in the comments said that there's this really

good book called Blitz.

So I bought it.

It's right here.

It's called Blitz and basically it's a it's called Blitz drugs in the third Reich.

So basically after reading it, Hitler and a ton of the Nazis as well as just a ton of

Germany starting in the 1930s, like morphine, heroin and meth was invented and they used

to think that it was like a miracle drug.

Doctors were like, take this meth.

It makes you feel it's like this.

It's like a it's like a it's like a miracle drug.

Like you get euphoria.

You want to stay up all the time.

You'll eat less.

It's this wonderful drug and like it was a legal drug that Bayer, you know, B-A-Y-E-R

the drug company.

Now they were like selling this shit and they would even put it in chocolates and there

was like a chocolate that you would eat that had a little meth in it and it was like

always satisfied or something like that.

And like it was so common and turns out, Hitler was a junkie.

He was getting injected with meth for years.

And that's one of the reasons why, you know, like when they were getting bombed the very

last minute, he was like, oh no, we're doing great because he had like these like, you

know, he was like hallucinating, you know, he had like thoughts of grandeur, typical

meth shit.

And I started thinking about this.

What other stuff in history was supposed to be one way and be happening like one time,

but it turns out it was for a totally other reason.

And I started looking into it.

So for example, Henry VIII, he was the kid, you know what Protestants are?

No.

I've heard that word a thousand times.

I knew you wouldn't know what it is.

Protagonist?

No.

So like there's like the Catholics and then there's the Protestants.

It's basically like if you're like an evangelical Christian, if you're a Baptist, if you're like

all these other different types of Christian religions, you're probably a Protestants.

Maybe by definition you are.

Anyway, someone came up with it like Martin Luther came up with it and and in the 1500s,

the king of England, he basically like had like eight divorces because he couldn't have

a kid.

Like it was, it was him.

He was infertile and the Pope was like, Hey, you can't have these divorces anymore.

This is bullshit.

And he's like, no, fuck that then.

We're going to switch to Protestant because that allows like, you know, me to get a divorce

and I can have all these kids.

And so now like there's a billion Protestants in the world because he just turns out like

he wanted a divorce and then like there's this like there's this like story that you

never know how Barcelona people say Barcelona really funny like Barcelona.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's like this urban myth that the king of Spain had a lisp and someone's like, Hey,

you know, it's pronounced Barcelona and he goes, No, from now on it's Barcelona because

you know, that's just how I say it.

That's just my first million.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, Mike Tyson rule the world and just thinking about like what other stuff

did we think that was going to be like, you know, was for this like grand reason, but

it was really just like, you know, like the guy's dad said something like like George

Bush invading like, you know, looking for weapons of mass destruction because like his

dad was like, you know, you're not strong like your brother and like, or, you know,

because he couldn't find the remote one time.

Yeah, this complex already had this like leftover like mission accomplished banner.

He's like, Oh, we got to do something with it.

You know, like what else like what else in history has been done just for like totally

the opposite reason.

I don't know, but I bet there's so much like I think about this with food all the time

when I see, you know, people are like, Oh, you know, that the active ingredient in Advil

or aspirin comes from this like oak tree and like blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, Yeah.

But how did we figure that out?

Like who was just gnawing on trees and was like, you know, this one I had a headache

earlier and now I don't have it anymore.

Right.

Like all foods was like, Oh, this one kills you.

This one's good for you.

It's like, okay.

But like, you know, who were the testers?

Who was figuring this out along the way?

I actually think that that was probably like, what's the most fun time to be alive was then

when nothing, when no one knew anything about anything, like you didn't know what was food

and what was not food.

Like how much just random soil has been eaten by somebody being like, this has to be food.

And then somebody else is like, you know, sees a chicken running by is like, no, I think

under that feather, under those feathers, there's something there.

Dude, there's all sorts of good stories like that and I never research it.

So like, have you heard about like the invention of LSD?

No.

The guy, he was a European doctor.

He was trying to like a doctor, right?

Yeah.

He was just trying to make like a, I forget what it was, but some type of antibiotic,

like just something normal.

And he got a little bit of the shit in his skin.

Like he like touched it funny and he was like, Oh my God, this is awesome.

And then he like starts tinkering with it even more and he goes, all right, let's try

this.

And he gives himself a huge dose.

And he starts running home on his bicycle.

He's like, nothing's happening.

Like this didn't work.

And then all of a sudden it hits him and he like has the biggest trip of his life.

And then you like, you know, it changes everything.

Yeah.

I feel like penicillin.

There's a whole bunch of drugs that were discovered by, by accident for sure.

Yeah.

It's, it's, I mean, I don't know where you want to go with this topic, but I don't want

to go anywhere.

I just thought it was interesting.

This book, like I just been reading this book about drugs and like the Nazis.

And I was like, it's crazy.

Like the book says that they, at the time in the thirties and forties, when World War

II was happening, that something like 60% of German doctors were addicted to morphine.

And they are the ones like, you know, voting on what the laws were going to be around,

you know, how these controlled substances are handled.

It's, it's, it's crazy.

It changed my persp...

Well, I guess it didn't change my perspective, but you know what I mean, it's just like an

interesting read.

Let me tell you an interesting story.

Have you heard about this math teacher in Florida?

No.

No.

These stories can go one of two ways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was he a dog, the body hunter?

I'm not.

I mean, this could go a bunch of different ways.

Yeah.

Is there a funny like viral video of him in a 7-Eleven?

No.

So I get this.

So, so Brandon was telling me about this.

This is kind of amazing.

So there's this guy.

Okay.

So you know, you know, there's like kind of like school competitions, whether it's spelling

B or math competitions or whatever.

So there's this math competition.

And there's this kind of strange thing going on where one small school, it's not a private

school, has won like 15 out of the last 17 of these math competitions.

And people were like, God, what is going on at like Buckholz High School?

And the story is kind of amazing.

So there's this guy, Will Fraser, he starts as a banker on Wall Street and he's doing

like bond trading or something like that.

And the guy is, you know, this is like in the 80s, he's like, you know, this is the

heyday of, of, of where, you know, you've ever read those books like Liars poker and

things like that.

And the day of Wall Street, people are making tons of money.

He retires by 27.

So he's made a bunch of money.

He's like, dude, this is too stressful of a lifestyle.

How much did he make?

I don't know exactly how much he made, but enough to retire at 27.

So let's assume it's, you know, like, I would say 10 million at least.

Okay.

That's my guess.

So he buys a Ferrari.

He drives down to Florida.

He's like, just dreaming of like a slower, calmer life.

He's like, you know what, I'm just going to go to Florida, bought this Ferrari.

I'm going to just play a bunch of golf, play a bunch of basketball, and I'm just going

to hang out.

Do Ferrari shit.

Yeah.

He's made.

He's, you know, that guy you see on like Tuesday at one PM, just like hanging out at the park

and you're just like, you don't have a job.

Like what's going on?

He's that guy.

And he does it for 10 years.

No income.

10 years.

He's just chilling.

And he plays a bunch of golf.

And along the way, he's sort of like, yeah, you know what?

Like feeling a little aimless, don't have a great purpose in my life at this point.

So he's like, he reaches out to a local high school and he's like, Hey, can I teach golf

over there?

They're like, Oh, sure.

He comes over and teaches golf.

He was like, I like teaching actually, even on Wall Street.

Actually, I liked teaching the young guys.

So he's like, what else?

Can I teach like a finance class?

You know, I'm a former Wall Street guy, made it big, retired, can I teach a fine day?

No, we don't have finance, but you can become a math teacher if you want.

And he's like, all right, I'll do it.

And so he goes and becomes a math teacher and he walks in on day one and he's like,

listen, let me tell you this right now.

I don't need this job.

Yes.

You guys give me any shit?

This will be my last day.

And they're like, okay, you don't respect.

And so he gets one day, he's like checking his mailbox as a teacher and he sees this

math competition coming up.

He's like, well, like that's cool.

Let's try this.

So he enters into the math competition, they go there and they get smoked.

They get fifth out of sixth place.

So this is the second to last.

And he's like, dude, I couldn't even solve some of these problems.

Like this was hard.

But like the flip, you know, the switch got flipped.

The competitive switch in him gets flipped and he's just like, actually, I liked that

competition.

I missed the competition of Wall Street where it was just like completely doggy dog and

you were like high intensity, and so he decides to do it again and again and again.

And he goes and they get fifth the next time and they get third and so on and so forth.

And he basically decides that we're going to dominate these competitions.

That's exactly what's happened.

Dude, isn't that the best?

Now they have one 15 out of 17.

The 15 and 17.

Isn't that the best when someone just like sees like a small opportunity and they're like,

no one takes this as seriously as we're going to take this.

Let's do it.

You know what I mean?

I love that.

That's exactly what happened.

Just like that cheerleading movie that we watched on Netflix that it's like they just

like check it.

Yeah.

They take it to the highest degree.

That one I discovered.

Yeah.

The one that you made popular.

So the guys, so people are like, dude, what's your secret?

What are you doing differently?

He's like, oh, I just took a different level of intensity.

He's like, it's just an insane hard work.

He goes, you know, average math teacher gets 72 hours of classroom time with their students

per semester.

And then they hope that after school, some of those kids come and they learn for an hour,

you know, once a week or whatever, that's what they're putting in.

He goes, oh, I just switched it.

First, I took all the good math kids.

I put them in the same class, kind of like almost like, you know, like blended of age,

but like he's like, I put all the best people in the same class that they would compete

with each other.

Then we used our class time to start preparing for these competitions.

Then I started creating summer camps where we could get 80 hours in four weeks.

So the equivalent of a full semester of teaching in this high intensity thing is like, and

I just developed a program because they're like, are you the best at math?

He's like, no, I don't even teach the advanced math stuff.

Like one of my former students teaches like the hard stuff.

I just build the program.

He's like, I put the high school students with the middle school students and that because

the middle school students sort of idolize the high schoolers and they teach down and

then the middle schoolers rise up.

He's like, so I built this program where one alumna basically like the older kids teach

the younger kids, the younger teachers, kids even your teach the even younger kids.

And we just put in way more time.

He's like, then I started scouting.

Like this is like, you know, Alabama football.

So he'll go and he'll look at the scores of other schools and he'll find the high performing

kids and he'll recruit them to his program and then the reputation got built where they

started winning.

So now parents are coming inbound and being like, please take my kid.

And he's like, we only have so many spots.

I'm sorry.

And so he's built this like talent pipeline.

And not only that, they actually, the talent pipeline goes even further.

Now companies like McKinsey and the big banks, Wall Street, they come recruit from his high

school, the big schools.

I've even come recruit from his high school because they want his students now.

So he built like a platform for where they can go, which helps them recruit even better

students.

And so where'd you see this story to happen?

Where'd you read this?

I think that so it's been in just like the local Florida news for a while.

And then I saw something.

Yeah.

But what were you doing?

I mean, it's an article.

Who's Brandon?

No, he sent this article from the Wall Street Journal or something.

It was like paywall.

So I only got the first paragraph.

I'm too cheap to pay for it.

But I was like, Oh, what's the story?

And then I found all these local Florida papers that had the rest.

And so they said, like during COVID, they were like, Oh, you got to teach remotely.

And he's just like, Oh, okay, yeah, we're going to downgrade the intensity.

He's like, hell no, I resign.

And then he went to a church, rented out the church.

I was like, Hey, if you guys want to come and train here, we could do this.

And 140 kids went and trained daily in his church during COVID when everybody else was

low, had to lower their intensity.

He ratcheted.

How old is this guy now?

So now he's like in his sixties.

And so he's been doing this now for like, you know, a number of years.

So he took, he was basically 27.

He took 10 years off.

So he's closer to 40, 10, 11 years off.

And then basically from 40 to 60, he's just been dominating this one thing.

Isn't this incredible?

That's incredible.

This is incredible.

I think there's a few things.

One, just the intensity.

Number two, I think sometimes if you pick like a lot of people, including me, we want

to move to San Francisco, New York, LA and try to become like a medium sized fish in

a big pond.

I think there's so much to be said about being the best or a big fish in a little pond.

And like you can make a name for yourself and have a way better life.

Like this random dude is having so much more impact by creating a map, being like the guy

for like this very small math contest versus, you know, rich, it's probably way more fulfilled

than being just like another hundred million dollar banker.

Dude, I want to get diagnosed with a bad case of SPS.

I want small pond syndrome.

I am a huge believer in this.

Dude, when I, so I lived in Houston in high school and Houston, I went to a big public

school, 5,000 kids and kids from all over Houston.

And basically I, my life was basketball, I loved basketball.

And I remember a game in ninth grade, um, diversity coach, I was on the ninth grade

team and I, you know, the, the goal would be to someday be on varsity and the varsity

coach watching her game.

And for some reason, I think I scored like two, I had like two threes to start the game.

And then all of a sudden the most athletic kid on their team decided like, nah, this

guy's not going to like see the hoop again.

And he starts picking me up full court, basically like from the moment I can move, this guy's

like in my shirt.

And you know, and I, I literally can't get by this guy, like I'm trying to go left.

I'm trying to go right.

I cannot get by this guy.

And I don't know what to do.

And I'm just basically like getting frazzled.

So coach calls timeout, the coach calls timeout, the varsity coach walks into the huddle.

And I think he's going to give me this like epic advice, maybe like that varsity advice.

How am I supposed to get by this guy?

And he just goes, you will never play varsity basketball.

Oh my God.

And I was like, what?

Thanks coach Hollingsworth.

And he's just like, if you can't handle this guy, you will never like, cause he's like,

I thought you might be, and now I see, no, as like some motivational thing.

Yeah.

Then he just gave you a wedgie and walked away.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Fucking nerd.

So hard.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Like, hey, I'd like to report a bully.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now is there a checkbox for faculty?

But he was right.

And in the Houston pond, I was nowhere near athletic enough to be, whatever, now luckily

my parents, my dad gets a job in Beijing, we moved to China in the 10th grade.

I go to China.

First day I start playing basketball, you know, these kids don't get protein over there.

Yeah.

These kids don't get protein.

Everybody's scrawny.

I'm blowing by everybody.

Varsity coach walks over.

He's just like, Hey, what's your name?

I end up being captain of the varsity team.

You know, I got a girlfriend.

Like my life changed for the better.

Like, oh, everything got better because I caught SPS.

I got small small pond syndrome and I was able to go be a varsity player over there.

Captain of the team captain of a football team of a football team in rural Alabama with

a hundred students.

They live the life, screw the big city, live that life.

You know what I'm saying?

And there was a part of me, a foggy part of my memory that remembered like, you ain't

shit.

Do the man thing and wash that down washed away and I thought it became like, you're

the shit.

You're the shit.

You're the shit.

And that's what you want to do in life.

This guy, this guy's doing it right.

I actually have this dream too.

I was like, I just kind of want to retire and coach high school basketball.

Like, I think that would just be a lot of fun.

And then, and yeah, you know, this small pond thing, I think we're onto something.

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I've thought about this for a long time.

I thought about moving back to St. Louis for a minute, but my wife wasn't down.

But I was like, dude, I could just be the man here.

You know, I could buy a million dollar house and it would make the news.

You know what I'm saying?

Like a million dollars in San Francisco or New York is a studio.

But I was like, it would be one of the biggest purchases of the quarter.

I would make the news.

It would be awesome.

But then I realized I, you know, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that.

Bro.

By the way, I have straight fire today.

If you want more, I've got fire too.

I think they do see what I have in there.

I know.

I don't even have the thing open.

Oh well.

Fuck.

Well, you could screw.

Give me one.

Well, okay.

So I spoke to like a bunch of different companies this week and they gave me all their revenue,

all their profit and a few of them are interesting and I could just like bullet point and quickly

go through a few of them.

You want to do that?

By the way, explain why does somebody, you know, why does somebody just give you all

the revenue and give you all the profit, as you say, because it sounds like a unrealistic

and be like you sort of like tricked them, but that's not the case.

No.

Okay.

So I've got this like community that I'm running that I'm not going to talk about yet,

but it's like a CEO community and when they joined, they tell me all types of interesting

information so we could place them in the right group and I messaged eight of them and

I said, Hey, can I talk about you on the pod and can you answer these questions and am

I allowed to reveal all of your information?

Well, if I am I allowed to reveal the information that you gave me and they said, Yeah, sure.

So that's how I got it.

So nothing like crazy.

Which one do you want to do?

All right.

I got a couple of them actually.

Give me the most interesting one first.

Let's do.

Okay.

Well, here's one that's actually not on.

I don't even think I put it on here, but have you ever seen those pedal taverns in like

Nashville and Denver?

It's like the bars that you like pedal with like a visit.

They're honestly pretty obnoxious, but you know, I'm talking about no pedal.

What?

What?

So basically a bus like you've never seen.

I guess you don't like leave the suburbs of San Francisco.

But in a lot of other cities, Denver, Austin, Nashville, like these like style cities, there's

these things called pedal taverns.

Imagine a bar in the middle and there's eight people sitting on one side and eight people

sit on the other side.

Now imagine that being on top of a four wheeled platform and you're pedaling that platform

while you're drinking booze.

You've never heard of that.

But you're outdoors, right outdoors on the street.

Yeah.

It's like a party thing.

Yeah.

The guy who created one of the first ones is in the group and his name's Pete and his

business does, he bootstrapped it from nothing just out of school.

It's getting close to eight million a year in revenue and just the pedal taverns do

about five million a year in sales.

Quite profitable.

And they're using the profits to buy the real estate that their pedal taverns stay in overnight.

That's a pretty interesting business.

Let's see.

So here's an interesting one.

There's this business called The Peak.

It's written by this guy named Brett.

So it's a daily newsletter.

So just like the Hustle, Morning Brew, whatever, mostly bootstrapped only and it's in Canada.

And so every day it gives you the news you need to know about Canada, Canadian news.

Only a team of 10, 90,000 newsletter subscribers, not that much and doing about three million

revenue with a million in profit.

Pretty good business.

A small team of 10, 90,000 subscribers, 53% open rate, 67,000 monthly podcast listeners.

The guys were like kind of good writers, but not really that good.

And they just started like writing and cold emailing people and hiring writers.

And after two or three years, it's already about two or three million in revenue.

So what are they doing differently?

Because that's more revenue per subscriber than most, I think.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

But basically they just said that with in Canada, like there's not that many, there's

not as many publications and B2B advertisers, software companies, they don't have that

mint money places to advertise.

And so these guys have just done a really good job of getting the banks, the telecommunication

companies, B2B software companies, all these like high end enterprise companies to advertise

with them.

Gotcha.

That's pretty good.

Okay.

I want to tell you about a company that you may have heard of.

Have you heard of this thing called LiveGolf?

I think it's called Live.

I don't know how you pronounce it.

L-I-V.

No, I don't know.

What's LiveGolf?

LiveGolf.

Okay.

So you know about the PGA tour.

It's like the main...

Yeah, it's like the NFL.

The tennis thing.

No.

Golf.

So, so LiveGolf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged out of the Saudi Arabia

thing.

Oh, the Saudi Arabia thing.

Exactly.

It's a Saudi backed rival.

And these guys are basically trying to, it's like they're trying to spin up a new league

by brute force.

They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Which I appreciate.

I think they pledged...

Yeah, yeah, me too.

Big swing.

So this is not, this is the opposite of SPS, right?

Yeah.

So this is BDE.

Yeah.

So they put, the Saudi public investment fund put in, they pledged 400 million dollars

to start the league.

I think they've even committed more than that now.

I thought they offered Tiger Woods like 500 million or something crazy.

News came out, yeah, they offered him $800 million and he said no.

Which is like just kind of an insane thing.

So, but they have signed other huge stars, so Phil Mickelson, you know, Dustin Johnson,

this guy, you know, Brooks Kefka or whatever, who recently won the, he won like four majors

or whatever.

Cameron Smith, who's like this young star.

He signed a $100 million deal, Dustin Johnson, $125 million deal, Phil Mickelson, $200 million

deal.

They offered Tiger and didn't get him yet, but...

And Phil can only be on, it can only be on live and not PGA.

Exactly.

So it's a competitive thing.

So PGA is like, there's like, I don't know, 60 events a year or whatever.

And then there's like four majors.

What these guys are doing is like, there's eight events and they all matter.

They're going for more of like the NFL model versus baseball, right?

Baseball has 100, you know, almost 200 games a year and, you know, they don't really matter,

but they're sort of always something on.

Whereas the NFL is like, there's like 17 Sundays or 18 Sundays and like they each one is going

to matter.

So that's what these guys are trying to do with the golf model.

And to like put this into context, you know, Tiger Woods, he has earned $121 million in

all of his PGA winnings, like over time, you know, obviously he makes more through sponsors

and, you know, other sort of like paid events and things like that.

But just from the PGA, his lifetime, I think earnings are 121 million.

So Liv is coming out strong and basically giving these guys like Tiger Woods lifetime

money as a guaranteed contract instead of the way the PGA works is it's like, there's

a prize pool for every tournament, there's nine million for every tournament, the winner

gets three, everybody else gets like a piece depending on how you finished.

And they just do that over and over and over again.

And so they do 48 events a year and, and, and so Liv comes in and they basically are

giving guaranteed money away instead of saying you have to win in order to be there.

And so PGA makes like a billion and a half dollars a year in revenue.

Yeah, I'm looking into it now.

Five, a little over 1.5.

And you know, 85% of that is like their tournaments and the media rights and ads and all that

stuff that comes from that.

They have like a nine year, they're in year one of a nine year contract.

And then Mr. Steel, your girl comes in and is starting to just take these stars away

and basically is trying to, you know, compete with them.

They also have like prize money as well.

And so they would need to generate like a billion dollars as well to sort of like have

like a similar economics, but what's the play here is do like Middle Eastern's watch

a lot of golf.

Is that the shtick is like this?

No, I don't know.

That's why like maybe like, you know, there's like that weird thing where like Russia really

loves like women's basketball.

I don't know if you know that if you're a great women's basketball player, you play

college in the United States, then you try to make it to the WNBA and the WNBA pays you

basically nothing like, you know, you'll make like 70, 80 K.

Yeah, like a shoe salesman salary.

And then you'll get like 300, 400 K for playing the off season in Russia.

Yeah.

And everyone's like, why does Russia care this much about women's basketball?

Like nobody has questions.

And like, yeah, it's a little bit, whatever, I don't know exactly what's going on there.

But that's like, you know, they disproportionately like that sport.

And so maybe there is something in the Saudi Arabia for this, or it's just they have a huge

amount of money and they see the business opportunity where PGA basically had a monopoly

on this.

And when you create a successful sports league, these are worth billions and billions of

dollars.

Like we both love the UFC.

UFC sold for I think 4.2 billion, which in my opinion is under now, like very low undervalued

for where it is.

And that's like, the O.C. is like fringe compared to NBA, NFL, like these major, major leagues.

What's more popular golf or P or or UFC golf, right?

I think golf is not more popular, but it generates more revenue because it's like sort of the

people who beats up who a golfer with their club or a UFC fighter with his hands.

I fucking hate golf.

I hate golf.

I cannot sustain golf, golf's not a sport, golf's an activity.

Honestly, how much of your thinking at the end of the day boils down to who could beat

up who?

Most.

I think that's like, that's like something that we're all like, we're all afraid of.

Like the guy who at the end of the day is like, Oh, I can kill anyone in this room with

my bare hands.

He is, you know, he's the true, the true dog, you know, he has nothing to fear.

Somebody said this once, I was reading like a NFL scouting reports, like there was a draft.

There's four quarterbacks.

They're all like top prospects is like, who's going to go number one?

Who's number two?

And the guy who does like the draft, he said this line that I thought was so bad as he

goes.

If they were all on vacation and going for a ride, you know, they're walking out to

go to the car.

They would all throw the keys to Mark, like they would check the keys to Mark's driving.

And they were, it was like this like alpha male thing.

And I was just like, what was this analogy and why did I love it so much?

Like if you just said, if it was like, Hey, Elon Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

go out to dinner.

He's picking up the check.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who ordered the Uber?

Yeah.

None of these guys are driving.

Do you, when you're in a room, like at a restaurant, who sits aisle, how, how, what

percentage of the time when you're at a restaurant, do you look around and be like, who's asked,

can I kick and who's, can I not zero, but I know that you do, which is why I asked you

this question.

Cause it's hilarious.

Think about that.

Zero, zero percent of the time, dude, I can, I cannot stand golf.

Any sport that you wear khaki pants to, to like play, it's not a sport.

That's not a sport.

It's an activity.

It's a hobby.

It's checkers, but it's not, you know, like, it's barely a job.

If you have to wear khaki, barely a job, like sport is, sport is out of the question.

Khaki is in a collared shirt.

That is not, that's, I mean, that's not a sport.

Like you, you don't sweat.

It's an activity.

It's a hobby.

This is amazing though.

I, I, I don't like, let's get rid of the Saudi Arabia thing.

I think it's pretty cool.

But if you're Phil Mickelson and you have fuck you money hardcore and Saudi Arabia, who

has, you know, a lot of human rights issues offers you this, what do you do?

Do you take it or not?

So I think you can't take it alone in a vacuum because you're not trying to go sit on an

island doing nothing by yourself and like lose all your relevance.

You lose your future earnings if you do that.

But what I do is I say to them, look, I'm in, if you can go get 40 percent of this list

to join.

You can tell them that fills in if you're in.

And I would basically say you need to sweep the critical mass of us so that this is relevant,

that this is considered the top class.

I'm not going to go play in the B league or the D league by doing this.

And I would tell them that and I would say, I'll do it.

You're going to have to cut the fattest check of your life and you got to go get 40 percent

of this list.

So there's a, there's a price that you take for sure.

Oh, of course.

Of course.

You know, if somebody said, hey, you got to go do this podcast on, on Android and I'd

be like, is Android even, is there a podcast player on Google?

And they'd be like, yeah, we're reporting a lot of investment into it.

I'd be like, all right, all right, I'll do that.

I'll take this podcast to SoundCloud.

I'll take it to the, to the Google Play Store, but I'm going to need to see seven and a half

million dollars.

That's what I would say about this podcast.

I would move this podcast for seven and a half million dollars.

That is my price.

There's a price to pay to be a whore.

I'm down.

But so we actually were going to do this.

So at one point in time, I had a startup that was based on like streaming video games.

And Twitch was the like 900 pound gorilla in the room that was like, it was the big

streaming platform.

And we were just like, we were trying to build a tool that worked on top of Twitch.

Like streamers could use it when they use Twitch and it was working and every day we'd

come into work and we'd work really hard on this tool.

But like, there was definitely a part of us that was like, dude, how did we end up here?

We're making this like tool for Twitch streamers that like is free and then we're hoping that

we can like after they all use it, then we might be able to monetize this other way.

We're just like this guppy and this like in the, in the, in the ecosystem of this food

chain, we're like that little fish that like swims in front of the whales nose, like whatever

that thing is called, like we're that.

And I was like, I like to fur kind of was like, man, don't you just want to be the whale?

And he's like, he's just so badly want to be the whale.

And I'm like, yeah.

So what could we do?

He's, and we're just like, mate, we went to the room, which whiteboard of like, how would

you like compete with Twitch itself?

How would you just beat Twitch?

And I was like, dude, look at the numbers.

So we, we like ran the numbers were like, Twitch has this insane power law where you

can see that the top, you know, X hundred streamers, we take the top 300 streamers,

they basically make up all the viewership, all the, all the meaningful viewership.

Like, yeah, I don't remember what the exact ratios were at the time, but like any power

law, it's like, you know, the top 1% or whatever make up a very significant portion of viewership.

So let's just make up some numbers.

Let's say the top 300 made up 50% of the viewers at any given time.

I was like, so Twitch is worth, Twitch sold for a billion dollars, like a decade ago or

whatever, you know, seven years ago, it's probably worth five, seven billion dollars

now.

You're saying that if we could take, you know, half of that half, if we can get to a quarter

of that, we'd be worth a bill, you know, we might, we might have the equivalent, you

know, 25% of the traffic would be worth, you know, a quarter of what they're worth, which

is like a billion dollars today.

How much money would it take for us to throw at those people, right?

Go get 25% of that through top 300.

How much money would it take for us to go through with them to be like, come join our

new thing?

And we like game theory the whole thing out.

We're like, all right, this guy makes this much today.

We basically need to offer him like 10 times what he's making today.

How much to come move?

How much to do some of these guys make just on Twitch?

So shortly after that, the contracts exploded.

But like, at that time, the top guys were making like single digit millions per year

off Twitch.

So like, let's call it between one and five million, plus there's some endorsements you

don't really know how to track and, you know, they, they sell some amount of t-shirts.

It's hard to know.

And then it sort of exploded.

Guys started signing like, you know, 10, 20 million deals, but they're, they're, they're

like multi-year deals, three-year deals or something like that.

So you know, they're making six million guaranteed or something like that, five million guaranteed,

10 million guaranteed.

So that was like the kind of like what our estimates were for the very, very top guys.

We thought, okay, so how much would we need?

And it's like, we basically did the math and we're like, okay, I think you need, I don't

remember what the number was today, but let's call it.

Let's just pretend it was 150 million.

We need 150 million dollars to go through with them.

But it's like, if I told you, you could go raise 150 million dollars.

And you're saying you needed the 150 million dollars in order to pay the streamers and

tell them bail on Twitch, come to our platform.

And when you come to our platform, you're going to bring your audience and we're going

to make all this money eventually through other people coming.

You get this much guaranteed.

All you have to do is just continue to stream and you have to promote it in this way and

let us promote you.

Can I make a prediction?

You know, we're going to be five million to build this platform.

My prediction is that would never work.

I don't think that works.

Okay.

So tell me why.

I'll tell you how, how, obviously it didn't happen.

So, you know, you're partly right.

I think it could.

Tell me why you think.

Well, I know that you didn't really try to do this, but I don't know.

In earnest, I don't know if you, you didn't raise 150 million dollars.

I think maybe the PGA tour could work, maybe, but doing this for consumers, you need to

have like a brand and you need to have some magic about it.

It's kind of like, you know, even if you put all of like the resources into creating a

boy band, like sometimes that shit just don't work.

Even though like everything, like everything on paper, it's like, well, we got the blonde

hair kid.

We got the mixed race kid.

We got the, the dancer.

We got the singer like on paper.

This checks out.

I feel like the shit work, you know what I mean?

We should be popular in Korea by this point and it's just, there's, there's just no magic.

Right.

It, it just happens.

And then like, you have some like, you know, kid who just like sings a funny song and makes

a joke about like wearing a cowboy hat and he gets hugely famous, like Lil Nas X or something.

Shit just happens.

And I think that there's like a bit of magic that probably would be missing out when you're

because with consumers, it's quite challenging to like grab their attention.

It's like getting a cat to play with something.

It just sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Right.

So, so, so I do think that that that's part of it, but there have been instances where

people have thrown money at the problem and it actually worked, right?

For every quibi where you just raise a bunch of money, you go try to do the thing and doesn't

work for every one of the, or every 10 of those, there's one where you're like, no, actually

they did kind of just brute force their way.

And I don't know if you remember this, but when TikTok first launched, TikTok was lame

as hell, dude.

TikTok was lame as hell.

It was pigeonholed as like the lame version of musically, which was a pretty lame thing.

It was like 12 year olds lip-syncing videos.

And now TikTok is huge and one thing that happened in between, I remember meeting a

guy and he was like, yeah, you know, TikTok is going to spend a billion dollars marketing

the app.

Cause I was like, dude, there's billboards in San Francisco, like at bus stops to download

TikTok.

I was like, do they really think this is going to work?

And we had an intern, not an intern, really, like a kind of just like a junior guy working

for us.

He was in ninth grade and he worked at our company and I was like, he started mentioning

TikTok and I was like, is TikTok actually a thing?

He's like, yeah, you know, we just kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it, kept hearing

about it.

And then they started just paying all of the top YouTubers and vine people to just make

TikToks and like, you know, eventually it just worked.

Like it's like, we all think it's lame, but like, we all kind of started to use it.

And then sure enough, the lame thing fell away too, right?

By the end of it.

And like, you know, it became like a pretty mainstream thing, like TikTok really did brute

force their way.

Now they did a bunch of other things, right?

Good product, great algorithm.

They did a bunch of other things.

They didn't do that.

But it's not like they started with this like brand love and authenticity and like loyalty

and things like that.

So let me tell you how this, this Twitch thing played out.

So I had a hunch that you might be right.

So I approached Discord and I said, hey, Discord, do you want to buy us?

And they're like, maybe who are you?

And like, what do you want to do?

What do you do?

And I was like, oh, we do this thing today, but here's what we would do with Discord.

We would help you compete with Twitch.

You have brand love.

Like Discord is one of the most loved brands in gaming is like, you have the brand, you

have brand love, but you don't do this today, we will build the platform and like we can

use this strategy to do this.

And they were like, well, okay, this is just kind of like a crazy big pivot idea.

Like respect the audacity.

Who did you email?

What role?

I don't know.

CEO.

And you said, hey, CEO, I'm Sean.

This is what I do.

Kind of come to your office and pitch you.

And then you went to the office and told them that or you told them this all.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Why did he take your meeting?

And he at the end of it, at the end of it, his, his take was basically like, we will acquire

you if you want.

I don't know if we'll pay the most.

So you know, that's, that's, I don't know if the deal will happen.

And I don't know if we would do this, but the fact that you can come in here and whiteboard

this on a wall makes me want you to like come here and do things.

And like,

That's the biggest, that's the biggest bullshit artist thing I've ever heard of and you almost

pulled it off.

What was the guy like?

He's amazing.

He's a young guy, right?

Just like a young nerdy dude.

Jason Citron.

Yeah.

I was like, I had never met Zuck, but I was like the way he talked about their product

or strategy and like his like calm, like confidence is a quiet, nerdy confidence.

I was like, Oh, I don't want to compete with this guy and I see why they've kicked everyone's

ass.

Like this is like, this guy's really smart and just really has a point of view about

the way this needs to go.

And like, it's just simple.

It's understandable.

It's different.

Why do you think he took your meeting?

I just feel like he's going to execute on that.

I think I had gotten a warm intro through his investor, his lead investor.

I told his lead investor, Hey, we're thinking about selling, but I went to him and I was

like, Hey, we're thinking about selling.

Would you do this deal or not?

And he was like, well, you should first talk to the discord guys.

And I was like, great.

You know, that's exactly what I was hoping for, you know, cause I, I just need to create

a bidding war of some kind to get the best deal possible.

So can you make that interest?

So he just emailed him.

It was like, you guys should meet there.

Like, you know, here's his email.

He's like, I think he will warm intro to you should meet.

And I just said, Hey, I'd love to come by the office today and like, you know, 40 minutes

I'll sketch out what I have in mind.

And like, you know, you can just, that's nuts or if I'm genius or I'm nuts and you can

decide for yourself.

But he respected it.

I don't know what I said.

Yeah.

I'd like to come like be one of the like C-suite type people because I don't think we're going

to do that plan that you outlined, but I like you, you know, it's like, you know, there's

not, I don't, we didn't get that dude.

This is how, which you can be a leader.

Everyone needs the confidence of a Sean Purry.

This is a great story.

This is proof that you can just create shit out of thin air value.

Yeah.

You can create value.

I always say this, like at my last startup, the best thing I did ultimately in that, in

that company was I did right by the team and the shareholders of like, at the end, I put

my best foot forward to try to get us the most value we could of all the things I did.

That was the best one.

And like, I tried to do many other things.

Well, I tried to find product market fit, tried to scale, tried to hire a great team

and I did some of those.

Okay.

Some of those poorly.

The one thing I did great was this, this process.

Let me, let me finish the story here.

So then, so I'm like, okay, these guys don't want to do it, but maybe we could still do

it.

And so we start trying to set up a meeting and I realized pretty quickly, oh, you have

to do this as one, you have to do this as like a coup because it's kind of like a rebellion.

And that I was like, we need to do two things.

We need to wait till people are pissed off about something that Twitch does, which big

companies will shoot themselves in the foot, they'll come out with policies, they'll, they'll

make some statement, they'll change some feature, they'll change the revenue split and people

will get annoyed.

I was like, so we need to capitalize on that.

And then secondly, we need to get everybody all at once, you know, that movie that's out

that people like every, everything, everywhere, all at once.

That's how I was like, that's how we need to do this.

We can't just get, we can't just slowly negotiate one by one.

It won't feel like there's enough momentum.

And so I was like, we need to do this at Twitch's big conference where all the streamers will

go to all the big streamers go because most big streamers, they don't leave their house.

They're like, they're like me, but they actually have like, you know, they're actually, you

know, rich and famous from their streaming, but they can't leave their room that it's

like their job.

And so they go on vacation very little.

They take very few days off.

The one thing they do is they often go to TwitchCon because they can meet their fans

and it's the big event.

So I was like, we need to do like a dinner the day before the day of war, the day after

the conference, probably the, probably the day before I was like, you know, this might

be the worst time because they're going to be up in, you know, the Twitch kind of like

ecosystem, but it's the only time we can get them all in the same room.

I was like, and we'll lay out our case, which is basically look, you guys are going to make

stupid money.

If you all are in, there's no risk to any of you individually because you're, if you're

all there, this will actually work and see like, you don't have to play by Twitch's rules

anymore.

Like you have a say in this thing.

Dude, there's this like famous meeting that happened in Atlantic City in like 1930s.

And that's when they, it was all the mafia guys that got together and like Al Capone

and all these guys.

And that's when they like formed like the syndicate or whatever, you know, like the

mob and like, you know, it's us versus everyone.

That's basically what you did.

You had like your little mob meeting.

And that sounds awesome.

I didn't do it.

I wanted to do this.

I didn't even get there.

Why?

Because there was one thing that happened.

And when we ended up getting acquired by Twitch, it was like, Hey, let's grab a drink.

We'll celebrate.

So we go to the first time I met him, like out of the office, and we go to this bar and

you know, we're talking about stuff.

And I was just like, you know, I was like, what do you think?

How would somebody beat Twitch?

And he's like, hmm, he's like thinking, he's like, it's pretty hard.

We do have like a pretty good business and like, you know, it's hard to compete against

these like marketplaces.

Once they get paid.

You know about your meeting.

No, no.

So I go, I go, I go, we had an idea.

I don't know if this would have ever worked.

We got very close and we didn't pull the trigger ultimately, but I always wondered like, would

this have worked?

And I told him the idea, he goes, he goes, yeah, we've thought about that.

Like that.

I don't want to quote him, but like the, the gist of what he said was, if you were going

to do it, that's the only way to do it.

But we knew that.

And that's why we started signing exclusive contracts with all these guys.

And specifically exclusive contracts that don't line up.

So we would make one expire in June and another expire in January.

Another one expires and following year.

He's like, so that nobody could ever like the year, they're all off cycle payment off

cycle contracts so that nobody could come and like, oh, they're all going to be free.

Well, we'll sign them all right.

Tiny ass detail.

Tiny detail.

And he's like, wow.

And then sure enough, this actually did end up, somebody did try to do this.

So Microsoft came out with this thing called mixer and they went and they tried to get

the top streamers that gave Ninja like, I don't know, some stupid 20, 30 million dollars

to come stream on mixer.

He said, yes.

He's like, dude, if I'm making four or five on Twitch and these guys will give me 30 guaranteed

to go sit here for two years.

All right, I'll do it.

And they tell me like, this is integrated with Xbox, it's going to like drive me a bunch

of new viewers.

Cool.

And then they tried to get shroud and tried to get a bunch of others, but they did it

too slowly.

And so, so this attack did actually end up happening.

But that helped me out of business, didn't it?

Yeah.

Cause they couldn't get the critical mass.

They couldn't get enough people to say yes.

But like this did happen.

Like the Chinese streaming platforms tried to do it, like a whole bunch of people tried

to do this against Twitch at the same time and Twitch did a, you know, a fairly good

job of not only this off cycle contract thing, but also figuring out is crazy.

There was like this, this, this like theory, which was how many of your favorite streamers

need to move before you move.

And so they looked at like, okay, if I'm a viewer, if I spend 100% of the time just

watching Sam and Sam leaves, okay, I have a high likelihood of leaving.

But as long as I can get you to watch like four people, the odds of all four leaving

are very low.

And if one leaves, I'm like 95% chance to just say, how about the fact that they probably

hired some like MIT like rocket scientists and he's like thinking for years, like I'm

going to, I'm going to help get man to Mars, you know, I'm going to help, I'm going to

be part of saving the world, the human race.

I'm just a little small part of this, but I'm helping and he gets his job offer from

SpaceX and it's 135,000 and then he gets this job offer from Twitch and it's like 140,000

and he's like, yeah, they got free lunch though, like, you know, like it's, it's like

the office is down the street from my house, you know, I could do this.

This space thing will always be here, you know, like their office is beautiful, you

know, and then they take that Twitch office and then they spend the next eight years of

their lives and the only point is figuring out how to make it so a streamer can click

a button and like a cat pops up on their shoulder like, like an emoji, you know what

I mean?

Or it's like, how do I just make it so like on Monday night football, the first year,

the down line, the yellow line moves perfectly with like the, you know, how do I do that?

You know, space will always be there though, but like, how do I get this like, I've just

imagined someone like dedicating their lives to that.

That sounds horrible to me.

That is not far from the truth and in fact, some people try to use that to their advantage.

Like, you know, Steve Jobs did that thing where you're saying recruiting John Scully

or whatever he's like, you know, when are you going to stop selling sugar water to kids

and come like help change the world?

And Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity Water, he's like, I remember he came to Silicon Valley,

he was recruiting for Charity Water and I was like, how do you recruit from like Google?

I was trying to hire somebody from Adobe, I remember, and he's like, yeah, she makes

four times as much as I'm going to offer.

I'm like, why would she take a, they got a huge pay cut like that, like four X last.

He's like, I just got to hope that she wants to do something that actually matters.

I was like, well, okay.

And he actually did succeed at recruiting a bunch of really interesting people.

But yeah, you know, it does happen.

Like when you're at these companies, it's like, what percent of your life goes towards like

being like, you know, can we get, you know, chat engagement up by 0.2% like, can we get

the, you know, if I add this emoji of this like, you know, bouncing cat, like, are you

34% more likely to come back next week?

Like, you know, there's a lot of life that comes out to you.

If you work at big tech company, you're working inside of a slot machine and you're looking

at this like person sitting down on the stool and you're like, can I get another four quarters

out of them?

And what do I need to, let's, they make that light flash over there.

Hey, hey, Cherries, you got a flash.

Yeah, that'll do it.

My wife, you know, went to this fancy Ivy League school.

She's this brilliant woman and she was at Facebook when we started dating and she was

telling me what she did.

She's like, I'm a PMM.

What's that stand for?

Product marketing manager.

And I was like, what's that mean?

She's like, oh, well, we just help people.

Like we want more people to use Facebook.

I'm like, oh, are you guys like the thing that puts like the jet above India so like they

get free internet access?

She's like, oh, no, not really.

Well, what do you do?

And she's like, well, you know, I create different products to help people to use Facebook.

I'm like, okay, but what do you really do?

She's like, I'm making it so you could put a sticker on your picture and more people

will spend just a little bit more time on this app.

And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, you should quit, right?

And like that's when she quit.

She's like, yeah, and went and did something that actually she cared about.

But yeah, I remember hearing about that.

I'm like, oh, that's why you went into debt for all these universities.

And that's why you did all that was so you can, you know, walk around the Facebook campus

for like three hours a day and make like a sticker of like Poo Jean, the cat or whatever

the fuck that thing was called.

Remember that thing Poo Jean?

Or what was that thing?

It was like, it was like a Japanese cat.

No idea what you're talking about.

It was called like Poo.

Remember how Facebook, they would have all these like Japanese cartoons.

There was like that dog with his tongue hanging out.

I don't remember.

It was a thing.

It was like Poo Jean.

It was like a cat that was Asian.

And like it was like a series of stickers.

Yeah, it's the thing in Snapchat that that dancing hot dog, which has been seen more

than like any cartoon or animation ever.

They've been seen like 10 billion times or like a billion times or something like that.

It's like, yeah, this hot dog is actually more popular than Mickey Mouse.

Just like the stupid way that time it reminds me of on that TV show Silicon Valley, one

of the apps that they said was amazing was Nipalert and it alerts you of erect nipples

in your vicinity.

I'm like, oh, this sticker thing.

That's Nipalert.

It sounds good.

Yeah.

Honestly, when I was there, when I was, I didn't think it was like, you know, a waste

of sort of time and energy in that sense.

Like, I don't know, maybe I think it's actually OK because Twitch is like this is like this

cool subculture, we're nerds.

No one likes us.

We finally have a space that we can do this stuff.

Facebook, I think is different.

And I respected the game theory of it.

I was like, when this whole like contract thing was going down and they were like, you know,

how basically the question of how much should we bid?

I was like, I don't know, you know, like it's like in sports.

There's like this money ball movement where you're trying to figure out the value of a

player and if you can accurately forecast the value of a player, you have an edge in

winning in the league.

The same thing is true now for all these like big media platforms that are like in Twitch

case, you know, they were bidding for content.

So they're bidding for this.

And you know, I went and met with people or like, you know, talk to people who are at

Netflix and it's like, hey, how do you decide how much to spend on the production of this?

Or, you know, how do you figure out if it was worth it to spend, you know, whatever hundred

million dollars on house of cards.

And like, and you go there and you'll meet, you know, you meet the guy who's doing that

same thing, right?

Like the brilliant data scientist who's like job is to like A.B. test the thumbnails of,

you know, like the new Garfield movie to figure out which one is going to lead to higher

engagement and like lower churn.

And it's like, yeah, you know, you're A.B. testing thumbnails for Netflix and YouTube

and all this stuff.

Like, yeah, that's like, it kind of feels like, you know, bringing a gun to a knife fight

type of thing, like you're, you're, you're damn, like, really, this is where all this

brain goes.

It's a scale.

It's not binary.

It's a scale, you know.

And so for some companies, it's like, oh, no, this is just way too lame for others.

It's like, oh, this got a little pinch of lame, a little half a cup of lame, but like,

it's mostly pretty cool.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

Netflix.

I actually think that's cool.

It's like, oh, I'm giving the world a little bit of entertainment.

Facebook.

It's like, I'm just making people hate themselves.

Yeah.

The thing that I, the way I ended up thinking about it was, do I matter here?

Like if I left, like who cares?

I called this the Django law.

Like if you remove this block from the Django tower, tower still there, I guess that wasn't

a key block.

Like, you know, sure, we'd love to have it there.

It's more, it's better if it's there, but like, nah, nobody really cares for leaves.

It's like, look, if I don't really matter here, then like it's very hard for me to get

excited.

That's kind of an ego thing, but it's also like an impact thing.

Like if I, at a startup, like I can, I can just by myself create a product, give value

to customers that didn't exist, and I can capture a huge amount of the value.

And at a big company, I'm neither the key person creating the value nor the key person,

nor the person who captures any of the value, right?

Like your value capture inside of a company is, is, is fixed.

Like you, you get paid what you get paid in most cases, you know, aside from like maybe

a bonus that you could get and whether your product succeeds or fails, which is why a

bunch of products fail or go really slow inside these companies, because it doesn't matter.

You don't get, you don't get a prize if it works, you know, you get, you get praise.

And so, and then the other side, which is like, you know, does this matter?

And I think there is a counter argument.

Like I talked to, let's get Josh Elman and, and actually even the chief product officer

at Twitch, this guy, Dan, I was like, Dan, why, why do you always join, you know, worked

at Google, worked at Nextdoor, worked at Natwitch?

I was like, why are you doing this big company?

He's like, if you ever wanted to go do your own, he's like, yeah, but I wanted like impact

scale.

And I was like, I was like, in my head, it was always, if I'm at a small company, I

have a bigger impact because I am big relative to the company.

He's like, yeah, but that's not how you think about it.

Like here, if I can improve one product that 10 million people use, or at Google, you know,

a billion people use search, you know, every single day.

And so if I can make that better, he's like, I created the book search, you know, feature,

obviously, you know, on the book team, we created that project.

So now you could like search for books and like a bunch of people on earth do that.

Not a startup, but it'd be very hard for me to do that.

And I was like, okay, like that is the counterpoint is like, if you're, if you're working at Apple

and you're working on the App Store, like, you know, the App Store, if a billion people

use it every single day, I guess, like making that better reaches a billion people, you

know, making their life 1% better or whatever, you know, that that day is higher impact than

at a startup.

But it just doesn't feel that way.

The action doesn't feel the same to me.

No, I agree.

You want to do another topic?

Can I give you a framework that I think is pretty dope that I heard?

So I was talking to somebody about, you know, let's say the topic of money, like, you know,

should I do this?

Should I do this?

It's going to yield this amount of money or not.

And the person was like, well, the way I think about money is what can you say no to

if you have this money?

And I was like, what do you mean by that?

That's interesting.

I started, he actually, he didn't even respond, but I was like, I had my head, I was like,

that's interesting.

I've never heard that before.

Like, I started thinking about it and I go, that's true.

Like, people always say, you know, I want financial freedom.

I want freedom.

You know, I don't care about money.

I care about freedom.

That's like a common thing you'll hear.

And it's like, what does that actually mean?

I was like, oh, it's actually not the freedom to do something.

It's the freedom from having to do something.

So it's like, what can I say no to?

So let me give you kind of like, so I started thinking about my own life.

I was like, when I had $25,000 in my bank account, I could say no to a really shitty job.

Like I didn't have to go flip burgers or be a janitor cause I could, I could pay my like

monthly bill and I could do that for like, you know, six to 12 months and like, cool.

That means I didn't have to go get a bad job, a shitty job today.

But then at like a hundred K in the bank, you could say no to like a shitty manager.

It's like, okay, I don't, I can't just retire, but I can like quit this job, take a gap and

like find another job.

And I don't feel like this like financial stress in doing that.

So a hundred K lets me say no to a shitty manager.

I was like, half a million, that's when I could say no to like, I don't have to work

for a couple of years.

I could just say no to work for a little bit, temporarily say no to work.

Like a six or 12 month thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I could go for a year.

I could try a startup or go trap backpacking or whatever.

Like I could pursue a passion of some kind.

So that's a new thing you could say no to is like work for a little while.

Then it kind of like, I would say three million.

You could just say no to jobs.

Like I'm only going to work for myself.

I can bet on myself and give myself enough time to figure stuff out without having to

stress about it.

At 10 million, I think you just say no to working in general.

It's like, all right, like my money makes enough money.

I just don't need to use my time to make money if I don't want to.

And then it kind of goes on.

And then you say, no, well, at like, I've been thinking about this as well at like between

some number, maybe around a hundred.

You say no to having to be in one location.

So for example, right now I rent a place in one location and I own a place in another location.

If I had a hundred million dollars, I'd probably own three or four homes.

And it's just like, Hey, let's just go from place to place to place.

I don't have to spend any time organizing a rental or anything.

And then maybe around like two or three hundred, it's, I'm going to say no to wasting time

at an airport.

I'm just, we only, you know, we only fly.

I think it's that, but the numbers are a little bit less.

I said at 50 million, I think you could say no to any inconvenience that money can solve.

You could.

I think you could fly private at 50 million.

You don't have to own the jet.

You could fly private.

You sure?

You could hire assistants to do anything you need.

You could hire, you know, chefs and drivers and, and, and, you know, errands and accountants

and anything you don't want to do.

You don't have to do once you get to sort of 50 million range.

I talked to a guy there today who owns a jet and he said it's about two and a half million

a year in expenses.

Right.

And he owns it.

If you want to rent it, I think you could go most, you can go to a lot of places and

spend half a million dollars a year.

And if you have 50 million, that's, that's doable.

But you can't own like an eight million dollar house in Brooklyn and then a three million

dollar house in Austin and then a five million dollar house in LA.

But you could own pretty nice shit in those places.

Right.

And so, you know, like the top ladders, you get to a hundred million and I think you

could say no to the way the world works.

You could just change some rules.

And at a billion, I think you say no to like politicians.

You say no to the police.

You say, you say no to a bunch of people when you get to a billion because you have the

ability to kind of fight back and they, they kind of, there's, there's a different level

of respect.

And so to me, I liked this framework of what does this amount of money?

Allow me to say no to that I want to say no to.

Did you, um, yeah, what would, what hourly rate would you say no to right now for a

project that you don't want to do for a one hour phone call?

What would you have to accept?

So like, I think there's like what you say and then there's like what you actually like

what the market clearing price actually is.

So you would, you would, right now I charge $2,000 an hour and I take about two hours

a week of phone calls.

Would you do that or not?

So that's the exact borderline.

So on GLG, that's like what you get the max you can set my rate to is 2,000.

And if I get a, if I get a bid and I'm like, ah, this phone call doesn't sound like it's

going to be a lot of fun.

It's like right at that borderline where I feel like I kind of should like for an hour,

I should.

I don't take the calls because I need the money.

I take the calls because I feel guilty saying no.

And so it's the same thing, right?

Like feeling like I should means feeling like I want to say no, but I don't think I should.

And therefore, if I say no, I kind of feel like I've made a, you know, I'm guilty, right?

Like I've used the app intro and I just like, for example, I'm flying down to your event

and then I'm flying to LA, I, I schedule it.

So I know when I'm going to be signed the money, well, I know when I'm going to be in

the Uber and I just make my availability there.

So I'm like sick.

I'll just take this in the Uber and now I can afford like I could justify a $200 Uber

black because I'm making $2,000 in this hour.

And so I'm going to be comfortable and I'll order even early.

So if I arrive early at the airport, I can just sit outside of the airport and finish

this call.

So that's kind of how I've been justifying it now.

But it feels weird selling time per hour.

And I don't even know if I like that in general.

Yeah, exactly.

So I would say my true answer is if I don't want to do it right now, I think that the

number is something like $2,000 or $3,000 for an hour.

If I, if I just, if I, if I don't want to do it, I actually just don't do it.

But if it's like borderline, if I'm not sure if I want to do it or I don't think I would

like it, but it's not so painful, I think that's my current thing.

But I'm actively trying to get away from it.

Like something that came up yesterday that was like this.

And I was like, I was by default, I was just going to say yes.

And I was like, should I say yes to this?

Let me just like recheck what I want to be saying yes to.

Because I think that, you know, one of the most important decisions of your life is what

are the things I'm going to say yes to and what are the things I'm going to say no to.

So there's your default box, which is like, oh, I, I obviously say yes and no to these

things.

Then what are the non-obvious things?

I want to be saying yes to things that I know will be fun and help me grow, but scare me

a little or put me out of my comfort zone.

Right?

So it's like, I know I want to say yes to that.

I know I want to say yes to, if my friend is in town, I want to go pick them up from

the airport or if my mom needs to get to the airport, I want to drive her there.

Like I want to say yes to tasks that like I don't want to do, but I actually want to

be the person who does those things.

So I'm just like, I'm deciding consciously, what are the things that are like, what, what

should I be moving into the yes box and what should I be moving into the no box?

What's some shit I do today that I should be saying no, do you have a polite way of saying

no to all the inbound or do you just ignore?

I used to just ignore and then I realized like, it's totally fine to just say, um, hey, this

sounds cool, but I just got my hands full.

I don't want to do anything else or like, Hey, you know, uh, thanks for reaching out.

I don't want to do any more phone calls that I'm doing right now, but if that changes,

I'll let you know.

Yeah.

And like, I'll just say something.

You know, people, they just appreciate a response more than a blow off and be, I think there's

some level of respect for, you know, somebody just being honest and like just saying, look,

I don't want to do that.

I've decided I want to travel less.

You know?

So I'm going to say, so I'm saying no to traffic.

Dude, I had this guy messaging me saying he wants to come on the pod and I was just like,

I ignored it.

I ignored it because I hate when people ask to come on because I'm like, dude, why are

you going to make me say no?

Like we say, I say no to everyone practically, even good friends.

So we just say no to most everyone.

And this guy, he was like, I was like, hey, or he was like, can I come on?

I'm a huge fan.

And I just said, like, thanks for reaching out.

Like I didn't even, I tried to avoid it.

Like it was quite obvious.

And he's like, Hey, so can I come on?

And I go, you know, this isn't a good fit, but I really appreciate you listening.

And he was like, can I get some feedback?

I was like, it's just not a good fit.

And he goes, okay, but why?

And I was like, okay, because you're not interesting and you're not that successful.

And he was angry at me.

And I was like, dude, what the hell?

I mean, I was trying to like, you know, make a point of like avoiding this topic and being

kind, but you, if you're going to ask for feedback, you know, I'm going to tell you,

you know, what, what, what it's about.

Don't get angry.

Right.

It's like, yeah, I, my, my, my Goldilocks thing here was I was too cold when I just

blew people off because they didn't like that.

And then they would just stop like, you know, I found I would miss opportunities because

I wouldn't reply to things, misopportunities that I cared about in the long run.

Then the too hot was I would just be like, I don't do phone calls.

I was like, okay, you know, you're sort of a jerk for just being like, I don't do phone

calls.

Or like, I don't meet with people.

I don't know.

Or like, you know, I don't do this.

It's like too hard of a rule.

And I found that the sweet spot was somewhere in the middle of just saying, Hey, thanks,

but, but, you know, I'm trying to do less of this right now.

Or, or sometimes I'll say like, they'll be like, Hey, did you want to do this?

I'll be like, you know, I haven't decided and, you know, like, I don't know.

I don't, I don't even know what I want yet.

So let me get clear on what I want.

And then I'll come back if I, if I, you know, when I get clear, if I ever get clear on it.

But like, it's not about you.

I just don't know exactly what I want to do right now and like, I'll just say like something

honest like that.

And I found that that, that tends to work a little bit better.

Dude, we went from Hitler to Saudi Arabia to saying no to people.

Mental models.

Yeah.

Mental models.

Good pod.

I'm going to be in LA on Sunday.

You're not coming, right?

LA on Sunday?

No, I don't think so.

But then I'm going to see you in.

What are you going to say?

What are you going to?

I told you about it.

I'm hosting an event there.

Dude, for the New York event that I'm hosting, we've got like 1300 RSVPs.

I'm eager to see how many show up.

You got to cut that down.

Right.

You can't do it.

You're going to do a thousand person event.

No, that's how many people said they're coming, but it's free.

So like maybe half will come.

But we put up 10 grand.

You're going to do a 650 person event.

Dude, it's all guys, by the way, it's all guys.

I like scroll through.

It's all dudes.

I could smell that event already.

Yeah.

It's fucked up, man.

So many chats are going to be there.

And then I'm doing the same thing in LA and that one has like five or 600 RSVPs.

I just, you and I were talking about an event and I was like, kind of like actually this

is like a toilet decision and I just wrote it on event right on my phone and just posted

it right away and people signed up and said we're committed.

So we're doing that.

And then I'm going to be good.

And then we're going to go to the Carolinas for the thing you're organizing, which everyone's

been reaching out to me.

Did we talk about it last pod?

Yeah.

We mentioned that they had the last pod.

Dude.

So many people have reached out.

They reach out about.

They want to come.

They basically people wanting to come.

And I'm like, this isn't, no, no, sorry.

It's not my thing.

But.

So I came up with a, I was like, what do we call this?

And I was like, I want to call it camp MFM.

So it's camp MFM.

And I was like, we could do these, but we can do a bunch of these.

We could just do like adult summer camps.

Basically.

Great idea.

What's, what is something that's really fun?

Cause I don't want to go to something that's like, like even this like a thousand person

meetup.

Like I'm sure it's cool.

Well, it serves a different purpose.

It's a party versus an experience.

Yeah.

So I want to have experiences.

You know, when you were like, I'm a fucking artist, man.

Yeah.

That's how I am.

Like I don't have experiences.

This is going to be a good one.

Now we got to come up with another one.

Let's go to like hope.

And so some of these will be like this one, which is like ultra, like more like super

exclusive, right?

There's only, there was only supposed to be 12 people going to expand it to 24.

And you know, that's a lot.

I wanted it to be more like 12, but I'm like, there'll be those.

And I think we should do some that are for like, if you know the phrase, you know, we

don't do public math, manifest cowboys, you know, Sam wants to own a lake.

If you know the inside jokes of this pod, then you, that's your admittance into the,

to this, this camp.

And I was like, I think we should do these like twice a year that are just like fun and

awesome and get people together.

Or quarterly.

I think camp MFM should be the thing.

I never wanted to do the work for this.

And neither do you.

And so that's like, you know, one of the challenges, but, but it wasn't a lot of work for this

one, was it?

Kind of feel like it is.

This is a lot.

Because as soon as I try to do something, I'm like, well, let's make it fucking awesome

then.

And so like, all of a sudden, like for this basketball thing, we got like, Nike's giving

us all like, like sneakers, like from like one of their players and like, we're getting

like custom swag.

We rented these like dope Airbnb's, we got like a chef, we got like, all this stuff

coming together.

I was like, well, if we're going to have good people, let's get like, some like good names

in here.

Let's get like, some people were excited to meet.

And then it's all coming together.

And like, but like each one of those now, I'm like, now I want it to be like, awesome.

If we're going to do it.

Dude, we got, we, we, we get a, we can get a sponsor to say, like, are you going to,

you get $300,000 a year to do cool shit, but we get to be there at all the events.

Yeah.

Okay.

If somebody wants to do a sponsor camp, camp MFM, you can do this.

All the money will go to basically hiring a planner to actually like do these things

for us.

And it's secondly to, to, you know, the venue and logistics of it.

All right.

That's a pot.

I'm out.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.