My First Million: From $0 to Billionaire By Starting A Toy Factory In China - Billy Of The Week

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.

Have you ever heard the name Nick Mowbray?

No.

Okay.

So Nick Mowbray, here's the, here's my headline for this.

University dropout from New Zealand becomes a billionaire with zero dollars invested.

Okay.

So what happened?

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to, I put my all in

it like no days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.

All right.

We live.

All right.

I got something good for you.

I got a crazy story.

So this is a Billy of the Week.

Million dollars isn't cool.

You know what's cool?

A billion dollars.

You know, sometimes we get a little fast and lose with a billion a week where it's not

a real Billy.

This guy is a real billionaire.

Okay.

Have you ever heard the name Nick Mowbray?

No.

Okay.

So Nick Mowbray, here's the, here's my headline for this.

University dropout from New Zealand becomes a billionaire with zero dollars invested.

Okay.

So what, what happened?

I'll click.

Yeah.

You clicked.

All right.

Here's the, here's the next bit.

Two brothers, when they were in, I think middle school, they enter a science fair and

in the science fair, they create a hot air balloon modeling kit and they end up winning

the science fair.

So here's Nick, 12 years old, wins the science fair and he decides, all right, people really

liked my hot air balloon kit, my like model hot air balloon kit.

I'm going to go selvi.

So he goes and starts selling them door to door and he opens up a farm, a little like

factory in his, his family's farm to like build the kits as he's going, but like he's

having trouble scaling up because he's trying to do production himself and he's doing the

sales himself.

And it's like, okay, this is tough.

So age 18, him and his brother get on a plane to go to Hong Kong and they're like, we are

going to start our toy factory here in Hong Kong.

They get there first night.

He literally sleeps in a bush because they didn't have like, you know, a place to stay

that night.

So he sleeps on a bush.

Why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk?

Too hard, bro.

He, you know, you don't want to sleep on the ground.

You know, you want to sleep on, on a bush.

So he sleeps on a bush outside of the normal use the bench.

They end up getting a apartment that I think was $8 a month and that was their, their apartment.

They, they start a factory.

This was now maybe 15 years ago-ish, something like that.

And so they're in a very small city in China and so not, they're not in Hong Kong anymore.

So they, they end up creating a factory and so here's the factory.

So they, they create a factory.

Nick ends up sleeping in the factory for eight years and they had $13,000 to their name.

That was what their parents loaned them to start this business.

And so they do, they started doing two things.

Number one, they're like, all right, we only have this much money and now we're living

in China.

And they're like, make this stretch.

So these guys are like doing all the like, you know, the hustle porn stories you hear

for entrepreneurship, they're doing it where he's like, we used to eat only off the dollar

menu at McDonald's in China.

And he's like, every day he's like, for Christmas, we would go get the Big Mac and it was like

$2 and change.

And that was our celebration.

He's like, I would eat half my fries and then I would go back to the counter and be like,

Hey, this is like, not even full full container of fries.

He's like, that's how we did it.

And he's like, we had the $13,000 from our parents and then we had to make this work.

And so they end up creating a bunch of fast forward till today.

They have, they have basically like the, like they do a billion dollars a year in sales

on their toy company.

This guy is personally a self made billionaire.

They've created toys, Zuru Z, Z, U, R, U.

And so they've created a bunch of toys that you've heard of like robo fish.

I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

Like a, like a little fake, it's a toy fish that'll swim around in a, in a jar or like

a fishbowl.

They've created a bunch of balloons, which I've bought this a bunch of times is like,

you could, you put the hose in and it'll fill up a bunch of water balloons all at once.

And so they, you know, the dark blaster, they've sold 39 million of these or whatever.

And so they basically built all these like hit viral toys.

And so, and early on what they did, like at the beginning, what they did was they basically

just knock off other good toys like gimmick toys and they would just make them themselves

and try to like out execute them.

So they were like trying to out manufacture them or out distribute them.

So there'd be like a light up Frisbee that was like hot.

So he would, they would like clone the light up Frisbee and then they would go and they

would like, like to get into retail stores, they crashed the like the buyer's dinner for

Dick's boarding goods.

And his sister just like showed up and kind of like schmoozed her way in and got the account.

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

They, you know, they, and they would get sued by the companies like, Hey, you're copying

our toys.

They're like, Oh yeah.

They started to create original toys.

And so they, they kind of knocked it off, they, they brute forced their way into retail

and then they started creating their original toys, like a bunch of balloons and robo fish

and the stuff.

And so basically they, you know, they would basically sell these at Walmart, wherever.

And their big thing was like, how do we manufacture this with no people?

So they're like, can we do this where it's automated and 10 times cheaper than everybody

else?

And so they claim, they claim that their factories that have the robots that produce these have

like no humans on the line.

I don't know if this is true because like even like Tesla, which tried to do this with the

factories was not able to do this, but like maybe, maybe it's true or maybe it's like

pretty much true.

Like there's very minimal human intervention.

How did you find this guy?

Someone DM'd it.

Remember I talked about being known well.

Somebody was like, you're going to love this.

This is a perfect Billy of the week.

So by the way, I forgot your name.

And it looks like him and his brother co-founded it and their sister's the COO.

So it's all in the family.

Family owned.

Family owned the whole thing.

I think still.

And it did.

Basically they have 8,000 employees, 26 offices around the world.

Last year they tripled sales to 1.1 billion in 2021.

And you know, they're still not as big as Hasbro or Mattel or like, you know, Pop Proctor

and Gamble, which are like Hasbro's 6 billion, Mattel's 5 billion, P&G's like, you know, 80

billion.

But now they're like launching new, new products and new, new brands.

So, so they do the toy business.

They conquer that becomes a billionaire there.

And then he's like, all right, what can we do next?

So they go into other products.

And now they're like, all right, we're going to create, what does Proctor and Gamble do?

They have products in every category.

We're going to do diapers.

And so they go into the diapers thing with this brand called Rascal and Friends.

And I think in the first year, Rascal and Friends is going to do 200 million.

That's not the first year, but last year they're going to do 200 million.

Next year they're projecting it to be 400 million.

And so highly profitable, just Prince Cash and the toy business, basically Prince Cash,

they use it to invest in these.

So how did the diaper business take off?

Well, they saw that Huggies has partnered with Disney and Proctor and Gamble's partnered

with Warner Brothers.

That's why they could do like, you know, Disney or like Batman, like things like that.

And so these guys went partner with Coco Melon, which is the YouTube like kid sensation.

And so Rascal and Friends, sorry, last year was 100 million this year, 150 million next

year projecting 200 million.

Then they also did this with hair care.

They have a brand called Monday Hair.

Then they did pet food with brand called nude.

They did a collagen brand called Dose and they're just trying to replicate this with

each thing.

So the hair care brand is going to do 60 million this year.

And so they're just stacking these on top of each other.

But then the coup de gras, the biggest one they're trying to do of all of them is this

thing called Zuru Tech.

So what are they trying to do with Zuru Tech?

They're basically trying to create a factory that can just build you houses, robots that

build houses is the big idea.

And so they're trying to create the biggest factory on earth, period, bigger than Tesla's

Gigafactory, bigger than all of it.

So let me give you the stats on this thing.

They're trying to scale it up to 1.6 million square meters, two kilometers long.

I can't even...

Okay.

So that's about a mile and a quarter long.

Yeah.

2,000 K?

Yeah.

2,000 meters.

They're trying to hire 2,000 more people in the next 24 months, which is just insane.

And so their idea with this factory for the Zuru Tech thing is basically like you can

design a home, they basically took a gaming engine, like Unreal or like Unity or whatever,

and they're like, okay, if you go into a game like The Sims, you can like create a house

and you could paint the wall and you could put a couch there and then you could make

the floors different.

Like in The Sims, you can basically design a house, you could design a whole neighborhood,

you could design a large house, small house, whatever.

So they're like, why don't we do that, except it's real.

Like when you're done, you click print and then the robots basically just make that house.

And so this is what they're trying to do with this thing, which honestly just sounds like,

you know, frankly, bizarre, but that's what they're doing.

And so that's the new venture that they're spinning out of this called Zuru Tech.

And it's basically a way to use robots to build homes, which is just kind of insane.

Dude, that is crazy.

Like they built the architecture software using a gaming engine.

What do you think made him so special?

Like I'm looking at him and he just seemed like a, have you ever met any New Zealand

guys?

Yeah.

They're like the same, like the stereotype of like an Australian guy is like fun loving,

loves to get drunk, bad with money.

We'll spend all their money because they're like, they just want to like be care.

Like a lot of Australians don't have a lot of savings because they just don't mind spending

at the bar.

They're fun loving.

They're always a blast to be around.

And that's what this guy, like if I had to like just look at him and like, oh, this

guy seems like he goes all in on things.

Well, I think the key to, he's a redhead, key to success.

So, you know, redheads, they have a chip on their shoulder from day one that they got

something to prove.

So I think that's a big deal.

That's I would say 80% for real though, the other 20% is hard work.

This is a great find.

This guy's cool.

And he's only 35, I think.

Yeah.

So I'm going to read you some of his tips for success.

Okay.

You can give me a thumbs up, thumbs down or a meh or whatever, you know, if it's just

okay.

So the first one, rethink your vocabulary.

I never use the word employee because we're a high performing team and we're playing

different positions.

I'm coaching the team.

I'm trying to get the best players in all the positions.

We have team members, not employees in our business.

What do you think?

Cool.

I do the same thing.

I hate calling them employees.

Sometimes I'll use the word staff, but I hate using employees.

But yeah.

I thought you just say the help.

I would do the same thing also.

I'll never like when somebody say it worked for for you, I'm like, no, you work with me.

That was exactly what I was going to say.

I always correct people on that.

Oh yeah.

You know, I work for Sean.

No, you don't work for Sean.

You work with me.

And I never say I work for anybody.

I work with them and it's an, it's an arrangement.

It's a partnership.

I do X and I get Y and you do X and you get Y and that's, you know, hold yourself to that.

Okay.

Next one.

Bullets before cannonballs.

Because the first thing I learned, one of the things I learned early on was to fire

bullets for cannonballs.

We're always firing lots of little bullets everywhere to see if those work.

If they work, then we fire a cannonball behind it.

I love it.

That's a good analogy.

All right.

Break the rules.

I went to university.

I studied law and commerce, but I didn't like it.

I'd like it to be honest.

And there was a big, big hill I had to walk up every day to get to law school.

I didn't like that hill either.

I did it for a year and I thought, why not have a crack at just doing this work thing?

So I moved to China.

I didn't even make it to my second year of law.

I missed out, which is probably a good thing, a blessing in disguise.

Okay.

Yeah.

I don't really get the jump from to move to China, but different strokes for different

folks.

But I appreciate it.

All right.

Don't be shaken by competition.

So he says, in the early days, we had this tiny production lab, we spent half our money

on an injection motor machine.

We started to produce our hot air balloon, which didn't sell many of because it didn't

meet regulations globally.

So we went online and copied a couple of products.

One was a Frisbee.

We got sued after it.

We went to a toy fair and we got through day one, but the companies we copied came to

our booth and yelled at us.

Then we started innovating and it was our journey that took us six or seven years to get successful

at product.

We lived off very, very, very little.

We scrapped and scraped to find something that would work.

Awesome.

Okay.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

All right.

Okay.

Don't lose sight.

He says, I remember when we made our first million.

Hey, fan of the show.

We did a big deal with David Beckham, where we made a David Beckham Tamagotchi at Walmart.

I was 21 at the time.

We got a $28 million order from Walmart, but we couldn't finance it.

Walmart ended up canceling the whole order.

We was stuck with half of the Tamagotchis.

We were so excited because it was this awful amount of money at the time.

We had no money, but we got a little bit complacent.

We were always checking how we were doing every month and we ended up losing, I think,

$200,000 that month.

We lost a bunch of money.

We sat down and we thought, from this day forward, we are never, ever going to have

a month where we lose money.

We took that approach and we never lost money again.

We were always profitable.

This guy's awesome.

What's his name?

Nick Mowbray?

Yeah.

Mowbray, I think.

Hey, if anyone knows Nick or can do the introduction to him, this guy, I would love to have him on

the pod.

This guy's awesome.

Right.

This guy's dope.

Don't call him the redhead, Joe.

Love redheads.

My friend said something really funny.

He goes, I'm doing this deal and we were dealing with some people that I was like, I just can't

tell if this person's all hype or they're just going to be like a charlatan or what.

And I was like, for some reason, they're just not getting along with this other person and

I don't know what to make of it.

And he goes, oh, he goes, I've seen this many times in business.

Two charlatans can't be in a room at the same time together.

They just combust.

They can't stand it because it's like my girlfriend.

She's a redhead.

She told me once, I can't stand being in the room with another redhead.

And I was like, is this the same thing with charlatans?

And he goes, how do you know if one person's a charlatan?

You put him in the room with another known charlatan, they'll hate each other.

That's so funny.

Okay.

So our buddy Julian has this company called Deman Curve.

He's like, hey, will you speak at this like Deman Curve conference thing?

And I'm like, you know, you know the rule.

The rule is, hell no, we don't do nothing for nobody, except if it's our friends that

we do it for free.

Right.

So it's either a big money or a big friend.

Julian's a big friend.

So I did it for free.

So we go on there and I'm like, I don't know what this is.

It's a conference talk about audience building or content or something like that.

You get that all the time.

I know.

And so you go up there and you're like, I'm going to do my spiel.

But something really interesting happened.

So it was me and this other guy, Sager from the show called Breaking Points.

I bet you're familiar with it.

Have you heard of this?

I know what Breaking Points is.

So Breaking Points, which is like Sager and Crystal, they do their own version of like

a political correspondence show or whatever, like a, I don't even know what you would call

a political talk show, basically.

And they do it.

They started off just doing it on YouTube or whatever.

And it's kind of blown up.

And so this, he was, the guy was on the panel with me and there was a few things he said

that I was like really taking notes on.

I was like, oh, that's really smart.

And also this, what this guy is doing is actually pretty awesome.

And I think could get huge.

Like it looks on the surface, sort of goofy.

It looks like kids playing dress up because it's like, they made it look like a talk show.

So they're like at a desk, he wears a suit and tie.

Is it like a liberal news?

It's like a liberal young Turks thing.

Or is it like conservative?

I don't know how they would call it.

I'm not very political.

So I don't really even want to say, I don't want to misclassify it.

But it's, their shtick is like, they cover the things, they say the things that the mainstream

media is not covering or they're undercovering these stories or they're just like spinning

it for their own agenda.

And they're like, we'll just try to say the truth, like what we think the truth is.

And I will just call it like we see it, which again, everybody says, but the question is

like, how close are you to actually doing that?

It's like company values.

Every company says integrity is our core value as they like, you know, destroy the earth.

And so that's what these guys do.

And so they have this set and it like looks like you, you went to, you know, you go to

like KFC in like China.

It's like, I don't know when I do that.

You've been somewhere, right?

I don't know, Canada.

Where have you gone Sam?

You know, like on Friday nights when you're like, I had a dominoes in Tokyo, you like,

you know that feeling?

Sorry, I had to big dog you there with my international experience.

But, but yeah, basically they had this, like I lived in China and they had this phrase

NQR.

Like I'd be like, yeah, I go to McDonald's here, but I don't really like it.

I don't know why they're like, oh, it's NQR.

It's NQR.

Not quite right.

And it's the perfect description, which is it's almost exactly right, but it's not quite

right.

And all my, all my, uh, all my Asian friends say it's same, same, but different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Same, same, but different.

Like this, this knockoff Nike shoe, it's same, same, just different.

Exactly.

So anyways, that's like what these guys show looks like.

It looks almost like a knockoff correspondence show.

That's kind of the, you know, my initial judgment, then I started watching it and they got on

Joe Rogan and I was like, wow, this is really, and Joe loves the show.

Joe's like, Joe basically, he was telling me just now, he goes, I go, how'd you get

on Rogan?

And he's like, Rogan was just a fan of the show and he just reached out was like, hey,

I love the show guys.

And they're like, wow, we kind of didn't think we were like, you know, early on, you kind

of feel like, am I doing the right thing?

I quit my job to do this.

It's not big, huge.

It's on YouTube.

It was on YouTube and how many views an episode they'll have like, I don't know, they have

like 800,000 subscribers or something like that.

So they're doing a good job now.

But this was like before that Joe got on it, well, Joe was like into it when it was pretty

early and he was like, they're like, wow, Joe Rogan, amazing.

If the number one podcaster in the world thinks this is like awesome, maybe we're on to something.

So they just kept going.

And then Joe invited them on the show and then they're they've launched like a paid subscription

because they're like, hey, look, like if you go to their website, it just says, help us

beat mainstream media or something like that, like help us defeat mainstream media or like

cover the stories that they don't cover some like it painted them as an enemy, which is

just a smart, smart like marketing tactic, basically.

But so Joe, their first show, the first paid show Joe Rogan came on.

And so, you know, they like had this like amazing way to like kind of kick off.

But that's because they put in a few years of like hard work before that it's like four

years old now.

All right.

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And so he said a couple of things that I thought were really smart.

I'm going to share them here.

In fact, I actually think we should just run the whole interview we just did with him like

as my first million episode, if those guys are down with it, because I thought there's

a bunch of interesting things.

One thing he got, they go, how'd you get started?

Like, how'd you get your first thousand customers or like subscribers or whatever?

And we all get asked this a bunch.

Really do you hear something that interesting?

But he said a pretty interesting answer.

He goes, well, here's what I did.

I saw that in my niche, there were these people that were already like popular accounts.

And so he's like, I just went and looked at who are the top 1% of like popular accounts

already.

And then I just decided, okay, the first content I create is just going to be content that

they love, because if they love it, they'll share it, they'll kind of endorse it.

And that'll drive a bunch of growth right away of the right audience.

And so what he did was he's like, okay, they have this, they need data.

They need visualizations.

They need charts.

Cool.

So I'm just going to, or they need transcripts, like quick transcripts of like what Trump

just said.

They need to have like the edited, well-formatted transcript.

So he's like, we weren't doing our own opinions and analysis.

No, I would just sit there and I would lie when Trump was talking.

I'm transcribing it.

I clean it up.

I format it.

I have the first to post Trump said this.

And then those guys would retweet it.

And that's how I got my first like 10,000 subscribers is like, and after you get 10,000,

they're psychologically the thing where you'll just start growing faster because people want

to follow popular accounts.

Well, what was your advice though to these people on growing an audience?

My advice was pretty simple.

I go, I don't think you should grow an audience for the sake of growing an audience.

The audience is basically a byproduct of you doing something else you really want to do.

Like, if you just got that itch, you want to scratch, like, I want to create content.

Like, I've seen YouTubers.

I think I could do it.

That's actually a better reason to go do it than if I can get to a million subscribers,

then I'll upsell my merch to this percentage of them and I can make this much money.

It's like, don't do the calculating way to do it.

Just be like, I'm doing this because either like in my case, it was, I'm super curious

about these topics and like, how am I going to justify spending nine hours reading about

this bullshit topic that like I have no agenda for?

Well, if I had a podcast or a YouTube channel, then I could just like make the content out

of that.

Then it has like a kind of like a purpose to my curiosity.

I have like an endpoint to it.

I have a justification for my curiosity.

I get to be professionally curious or like when I, when I originally started the pod,

I literally wrote this in a doc.

I've shared this before.

I wrote, most likely nobody's going to listen to this, but there's a hack.

Really smart and interesting, successful people are willing to go on a podcast even

if it has, they don't know how many listeners it has.

And so at the very, like my main goal is to just have an excuse to meet with 50 awesome

people that live in San Francisco.

Like I'm in the tech hub of the world, San Francisco, and I don't drink coffee.

So I don't want to just invite these guys to coffee.

I'll invite them on my podcast instead.

That was my whole like number one success criteria and like number one agenda with like

starting this podcast was, oh, it's a great excuse to hang out with these people that are

like, they're nearby, they're in my orbit and don't do it.

And like, I don't, I don't know.

It's better than saying, let me just get lunch with you.

Please, please.

Please.

And so that was why I started the pod.

Dude, I have people ask me all the time as well how to build an audience.

And I used to have like a somewhat academic answer where I'm like, well, you just got

to like find content that like ranks well all the places and you repurp it to do all

of this, this, this.

And lately I've just like quit saying that.

And I just go, well, just like be an interesting person, live an interesting life and just

be at least kind of okay at talking about it publicly.

Because the thing you just said, like, if you're interesting, if you lead an interesting

life, then all you have to do is share 10% of it.

And you only have to be okay at talking about it.

Give people a peek into 10% of your life.

Yeah.

And you don't even need to be that great.

And so people like over optimized for like this, like the, like, you know, it's kind

of like when people talk about search, they're like, well, you need all this keywords and

do this, do this.

And I'm like, or I just do dope shit and write about it and people are just going to go straight

to the website and look it up.

And that's harder.

And I still think you need that other stuff, but like, I still think that it's mostly a

game of just be interesting, learn interesting stuff and be kind of good at talking about

it so everyone else can consume.

And like, there are people that do it otherwise, like Trung who used to work for you at the

hustle, you kind of discovered him, you set up, I think his Twitter account.

Now he's got like whatever, I don't know, a million Twitter followers, something crazy.

And I don't think Trung took that advice.

Like, I don't think Trung lives an interesting life or has this interesting business experience.

That's what he's sharing.

He's mining for gold.

Yes, that is true.

And so he did dig that.

You could make sure, right?

You could make the argument.

Yeah.

But you could also make the argument that he's leaving, leading an interesting life in that

he's learning and discovering cool stuff.

So that's like, you could make the argument both ways.

But I remember I'm not, I hate saying this because I'm definitely not like a ladies man,

but I've come a long way from being like a Napoleon dynamite.

More of a males man, yeah, more of a males man.

I'm a guy's guy, but not the way that you think it's usually meant like our many guys

is guy and but I've come a long way from looking like Napoleon dynamite and I remember like

I had some like 18 year old asked me about like meeting girls and I was like shocked.

I was like, your, your, your bar for advice is quite low here, but let me give you some

advice if I could give anything, which was basically I'm like, you'll meet more women

if you just focus on yourself and have cool bad ass hobbies and just invite people to

come and do those hobbies with you.

And I was like, that's the, that's the coolest hack ever for a young man.

You just do dope shit and then you just bring along people and that's kind of like that

with content.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I think there are a bunch of different ways to win.

You could be like Ben for how to take over the world.

I would say he's curious about these, you know, great men in history or like these,

you know, these sort of like biographies or whatever.

And then what he does, he does a service.

He says, I'll save you time.

So I call him a time saver because he packages it down into something concise.

The hustles newsletter and milk roads newsletter is exactly that.

It's a time saver.

So what do you do?

You curate, you package, you deliver, then you have like, you know, sort of like a remixer

or remixer basically takes maybe one or two unrelated things, spins them together, puts

them together and, and puts that out there.

You have an original content creator that's like a Naval or a biology.

They're coming up with like independent theses about the world and opinions and analyses

that really just originate from them and they put that out in the world.

And then you have what I'll call like a lifestyle influencer.

That's what you're talking about, which was lead an interesting life, share 10% of it.

So there's all these different play styles that you can use.

It's like in a video game is that you want to play tank, you want to play DPS, you want

to play healer, you can play all these different roles and they'll all they're all winning.

You just have to know which play style you're trying to play.

I see that with, with content, but the one use you recommended, which is live an interesting

life and then share 10% of it.

I think that that is the most fun play style to play and the most valuable and the most

valuable and the most unique because anybody, honestly, no, no offense to trunk, but like

many people do and anybody can go read fucking Reddit and Wikipedia and like create a threat

of, you know, here's the story of how whatever the dude created Starbucks.

And it's like,

Yeah, the one that's repeatedly done is, is the hot sauce guy.

What's the hot sauce guy?

The Sriracha guy.

Yeah.

Everyone talks about that guy.

That guy is the king of the Thread Boys.

Yeah.

Every Thread Boy at home has like a small bottle of Sriracha on a shrine and they're like, I'll

always remember the day I could tell people that Sriracha started in Thailand.

Or the peppers were so bad that the neighbors at the factory hated him and they don't even

advertise that it's the same bottle since day one is still a dollar and 50 cents.

Yeah.

Like this disease like, you know, classic, but the one you said was the most, I think

at the most rewarding play style and my trainer had a great phrase for this, I was asking

about his business.

I was like, I was trying to help him with his business and he ended up dropping like,

like I thought I'm, I'm the business guy.

I'm going to share with him this great knowledge and I was like, you got to think about your

niche, your audience, who's your idea, you know, who's your customer persona?

And I was like, just looking back, you know, just cringe city about like trying to help

him with these things.

And he just said, I was like, you don't have a website, you don't have a business card,

blah, blah, blah.

And he just, I was like, so who's your, you know, you got to know who's your customer.

He goes, my customers are people that love what I do.

And I was like, okay, that sounds like some smooth ass R&B lyric, but what does that

mean?

What are you going to do with that?

And he's like, and I didn't understand at that time, but he just, he's like, that's

it.

My customers are going to be the people that love what I do.

And he's like, okay, well, what do you do?

He's like, I'll train you on your fitness.

And during that, during that session, I'll train your mind as much as your body, right?

It's mindset.

And because the mindset's totally aligned with this stuff.

And that's what I'm into.

And I'll just share with you stuff that I'm doing with my own training, with my own mindset

training or my personal training.

I'll work out with you together sometimes and I'll come to your house and we'll just

kick it for hours.

I don't, I don't watch the clock, right?

Like that's how I want to live.

And people, my customers are going to be people who want that.

And I'm not going to try to go backwards and say, what does the market want?

I'm going to conform myself to it.

And so there was this real artist streak to it.

And I thought, all right, well, that sounds cool, but like, that's shit done work in the

real world.

Sure enough, how did it work?

I was his only client, I think at the time, and we work out like in my garage, but we

just leave the garage open.

And then people walk by and they walk by and he never, he never, he just super friendly

with him, but never says like, Hey, by the way, you know, if you ever were interested

in my services, here's my card.

Never.

They would walk by, he would joke around with them, sort of like just flirt with people

and then he would just like, you know, go back and keep doing our thing.

He's just a happy guy.

By like the seventh day, people are like, man, it looks like y'all are having fun.

The music looks fun.

The home gym.

They saw us like setting it up each day would get better.

They saw us joking around.

They would see my, you know, I'm breaking a sweat.

They would see how we're using, like we'd use our tree and we'd use all this stuff that

was just around us because I didn't have all this equipment.

And it just looked like two people having a lot of fun.

And so my neighbor signed just a bunch of, just a bunch of sweaty shirtless guys hugging.

You know what I mean?

They're hanging off the trees and just, you know, touch each other's body.

And so guess what?

People wanted some of that.

And so my neighbor signs up and her husband signs up.

Then the other neighbor signs up, then my sister's visiting.

She doesn't work out.

She signs up.

My mom signs up.

My brother-in-law signs up.

My niece and nephew sign up.

Everybody starts signing up.

This guy now is a full roster, still never had a website, never had a business card, never

went and knocked on a door or tried to do a sales pitch.

All these people like conform their schedules to him.

He's not even a trainer.

He's just a guy who just comes in and hangs out talk.

The best part is, he's me.

He's just a prodigy who won't have sex with you.

I don't even know what to call him.

He'll just hang out with you.

I got a guy.

You need a guy to come hang out with you.

I got a guy.

But long story short, this phrase of who are my customers, the people that love what I

do, that is like playing, in my opinion, business at the highest level because it is the most

freeing.

Imagine if that was true, that's the most freeing thing you could do.

Same thing with content creation.

Who am I going to get subscribers?

I'm not going to grow my audience.

I'm just going to do the most interesting things.

I'm going to share it as I go.

The people who follow me are going to be the people who love what I do.

That is just, I think, a much better way to go than this, frankly, a desperate approach

that I think most people take to building a business, getting customers, getting subscribers,

all that stuff.

Dude, let me show you an example of, I think, might be the exact opposite of what we're

talking about.

So, I've been researching, and I think someone's DMed me on this on Twitter, but I found this

thing called Strongland, like the word strong, and then the word land, strongland, publishing.

His main thing is called Life Math Money, yeah, lifemathmoney.gumroad.com.

All right, check this out.

So this guy, he owns maybe half a dozen to a dozen.

I've found like four or five so far, different Twitter handles.

One is called the 48 Laws of Power Bot, or quote bot, I believe.

Another one is called The Book of Pook, P-O-O-K.

And the 48 Laws of Power Bot, quote, or quote bot, it's just like, he's got a ton of quotes

loaded into this, and it has maybe two or three hundred thousand followers.

Another one is called The Book of Pook.

I think that's how you pronounce Pook, P-O-O-K.

And he's just like quoting like this pickup artist from the early 2000 that no longer writes.

And then he owns a handful or more of these like just Twitter handles that are just like

generic.

And they're all basically focused for men, and it's about getting laid, meeting girls,

making money, getting fit.

And he owns like six or 12 of these handles, which is obviously like not the hardest thing

to grow because it's like these cool taboo topics.

So like it's one of those things where you don't talk about your friends, but everyone

wants to be better at all those things.

So you follow these guys.

And he like has like a circular thing where he like retweets each one.

And each handle links off to a Gumroad page that sells a document related to that.

So like the 48 Laws of Power one, it's like, here's how you get more powerful power, here's

how you get more power and influence at your job, which like, who doesn't want to learn

that?

And he sells it for $89.

And then it's another one.

It's like, here's a bunch of lines to pick up girls.

Here's like a workout plan to get abs in eight weeks, or here's like the perfect way to eat

healthy and feel good.

And if I had to guess, I would say that he's doing between $500 and a million a year in

sales just off these Gumroad things.

So you can see the sales.

So basically, not the sales, the reviews, I think, no, no, it's a sale.

So like, for example, live intentionally 90 day self-improvement program.

It's I think it costs $89 and it says 9,506 sales, how much is that?

That's half a million.

That's half a million bucks.

I don't know how long.

Right.

So maybe this has been out for years.

I'm not sure.

I think he's only been doing it for two years.

And then there's like, you know, his crypto one, there's his Build Your Twitter audience.

How much is that?

How many?

How many did that sell?

That has 5,400 sales.

So.

Oh, how much dollars?

Let's see.

I want like a hundred bucks.

How much is it?

$179.

So.

Golly.

So his Twitter one has generated a million dollars.

His next one has generated $500,000.

So I think pretty safe to say he's doing at least half a million a year, probably closer

to a million.

Isn't that funny?

Is this, is this hilarious?

This little guy and his name is Harsh Strongman.

I believe his name is.

So it's like an anonymous name and his blog is called LifeMathMoney.com.

And if you go to and look up who is Harsh Strongman and he says, I'm a certified financial

planner in India and I guess he, he just has this blog and he talks about this stuff and

I think it's cool.

I think there's this anonymous blogger who only uses some type of like free ish looking

website builder and Gumroad is just killing it.

And I think it's awesome.

That's amazing.

That is.

This is hilarious.

It's awesome, right?

When I think about a Harsh Strongman, a man who just embodies life, math and money, I

think of an Indian mid twenties, independent Indian certified financial planner.

No, like, dude, this is my cousin Vikram.

Like, this is my cousin Vikram.

I just found out what Vikram does for a living.

There's a reason alpha and accountant both start with a, this guy's, this guy's as alpha

as they can get the alpha accountant is going to be his new thing and he's going to have

it.

He's going to have a Twitter handle on like Excel courses, make taxes your bitch.

Yeah.

That's hilarious.

The Andrew Tate of Excel.

Dude, I on air, I need you to help me make a decision.

All right.

All right.

I am in the process of I stopped in St. Louis, so I'm recording this from St. Louis, but

I'm driving from New York to Austin.

I always stop in St. Louis for five days to see family.

I'm going to drive back to Austin.

I miss New York.

I miss Brooklyn already.

I absolutely you missed the energy.

There's something about this city.

This city.

You have to go romantic when you talk about New York for some reason.

That's why I refuse to go there.

I love it.

I love it.

I like I'm in grind mode.

I love being there.

But there's one thing that I'm currently doing that is it is it is something that I told

myself I'm not going to do it.

And that is bitch about taxes and let taxes decide where I live.

I'm 100% doing that right now.

So I want to tell you some numbers.

So I currently live in Texas, which has no state income.

I think the federal what's the federal tax rate for the highest income is what's it?

36% or 37 36 ish.

Yeah.

All right.

So I think it's a little above 36%.

So hypothetically, on a million dollars of income, I'm spending three hundred and seventy

thousand dollars a year on taxes or around thirty thirty one thousand.

Yeah, federal because Texas doesn't have income.

So thirty one thousand dollars a month in tax.

Sorry.

Thirty one thousand a month.

Yeah.

Which adds up to about thirty three hundred seventy a year in New York.

If I move there, I would basically be giving away fifty one to fifty two percent of my

income because the city of New York has like a three point eight percent tax rate.

And then the state of New York has a nine point seven percent tax rate.

And so that means I'm I would have to be spending an additional eleven thousand five

hundred dollars a month in income taxes.

Plus, if I were to live there, New York rent, that's the New York state rent.

That's not even the actual rent of your place.

Yeah.

Yes.

Plus the rent of a place.

My current mortgage right now in Austin is around four thousand to five thousand dollars

a month.

I would not want to purchase a place in Brooklyn.

I would want to rent a place in my budget to renting to have a family there would be

around nine thousand to fourteen thousand dollars a month in rent.

Probably thirteen, probably probably eleven to twelve.

I could probably get a place that I would want and that's what I would spend.

So I'd be spending just and then let's say my income.

This is all hypothetical.

I'm not saying what I do or don't make.

If my income is two million, I'm going to be spending around two hundred eighty thousand

dollars a year in extra income taxes, plus an additional hundred and fifty thousand

dollars a year in rent, meaning my costs are going to be like four hundred to five hundred

thousand dollars a year in additional costs just to live there.

Not including the fact that like I'm in St. Louis right now, I just went out to eat for

three people's fifty one dollars.

If I'm in New York for three people for breakfast, it's going to be like a hundred bucks, two

times the cost.

So how would you justify making the move or not move?

Well, I kind of did myself because I live in California and California has the same

problems that New York has high cost of living, high state tax, that sort of deal.

And now I work remote, I can live anywhere at this point.

And so, you know, it is very tempting, especially when you hear like you meet people who live

in Texas, then you meet people who live in Puerto Rico.

They're like, you pay federal thirty seven percent, I pay four percent, I pay zero percent

on capital gains.

Like, wow.

All right.

I guess that's also an option.

So there's sort of like no end to it.

And I used to live in Indonesia and, you know, for two grand a month or three grand a month,

like, you know, you're living large out there.

So like, you know, you could have a, I had a cook and a maid that lived in my house.

I had a driver that drove me everywhere and like, you know, didn't have to think about

anything.

So there really is no end to this idea of like optimizing cost of living versus, you know,

like what you want to do.

There is no end to it, but maybe there are thresholds.

Yeah.

There's there's more rungs to the ladder than even what you presented is, I guess, what

I'm trying to say.

You could even take it even further.

I think that I've always thought I sort of like goes back to that.

What, you know, what advice would my 18 year old self give me my 18 year old self, which

was like a more simple minded version of myself would say this, doesn't mean the right, but

they would say this, wait, I thought you're rich, like, oh, wait, you're, wait, so you're

moving to where you don't want to live to save money.

That sounds not very rich, right?

So if it's all the same, if it's all the same in terms of where you enjoy living, cool,

then obviously pick the pick the difference.

If you enjoy one more, I would go to it.

Now it's the hard part is how do you price that enjoyment, how do you price that energy

of New York?

How do you put a dollar number on it?

We're going to put a dollar on it.

We're going to price it.

We're going to say it's around four or 500,000.

But dude, for the same price, I can live in Texas six months and in New York six months

and fly private back and forth twice actually, like two round trips and it's still be cheaper.

But that's yeah, but it would also add hassle to your life, right?

So there's there's some situations where the variety adds what you want, right?

It's like a win-win.

It's like, oh, yeah, I don't want to be in one place all year anyways.

I like the weather this time of year in one place and this time in another place.

So I'm just going to move around the weather and that happens to coincide well with my

tax situation.

But basically my thought my simple thought process is this, if you're rich, you can do

tax optimizations, but make sure it's not driving the car, right?

So it gets to be in the car, but it doesn't drive the car.

So I would do some things that are no sweat that are going to save you tax money.

Oh, great.

I would do that.

I would not move, which is like one of the biggest things that changes your like day-to-day

quality of life.

I would not move to a different place just based on taxes as the primary reason.

I would have to have another primary reason.

So for example, my reason for being in California is that me and my wife's family is all here

and I just want to see them more often and have that be like, I prefer that lifestyle.

I don't know how many years we all have left where we're all healthy or my kids are little

and they get to have this experience with the grandparents around.

But that matters more to me than than anything on the tax side.

So that's my decisive reason I made that one reason, the priority, and then I'll live with

the rest.

So I think that's what you should do.

You should come up with your one decisive reason about where you're going to live.

And I would guess if you're rich, that reason should not be taxes.

I got to do it, unfortunately, but golly, it sucks.

In the back of my head, it's that famous Michael Jordan quote, f*****s.

You know what I mean?

That's not the great quote.

The great quote from Jordan is Republicans buy shoes too.

That is in my first million worthy quote.

But also, you know, you also got a factor in how much more are you going to make?

How much more is maybe the connections you'll make in New York, one investment you make?

It's easier to make more for a guy like us than it is to adjust your lifestyle to try

to save more.

I find it, I would rather work harder to make more money than change my lifestyle in a way

that I feel like I'm making some compromise in order to save money.

Well, I think I'm going to do it.

If I could do this again, for some reason, I think Miami is just like hell on earth.

It's not for some reason.

I could name about 50 reasons why I think that.

I think Miami is horrible.

But at the same time, if I could do it again, I almost wish I would have done it.

So right now I live in Austin, Texas, it's because I got a bunch of friends there.

My best friends are there and we had an office there.

If I could have done it again, I would have done Florida though and New York because Texas

doesn't have nice enough weather that I'm just going just for the weather during winter

time.

Florida, I feel like I'm in the Caribbean sometimes in certain parts of it.

I wish I would have done Florida and New York.

If I could do it again, that's what I wish I would have done.

I'm surprised the best friends being in Austin thing is not a bigger pull for you.

I feel like that's huge.

It is.

And that's why I don't actually mean if I could do it again.

I wish the stars would have aligned so that could have happened is kind of what I mean.

What a slap in the face.

I'm just glad I'm not your friend.

I'm not Neville who lives right next door to you at Austin who's like, oh, the energy

in New York?

That's what's going to get you.

You're going to move away from me for the the energy to New York's happening, man.

It is quite fun.

It is fun.

Whenever I walk around there, I get pumped.

I do get pumped, but I also like also I also want to kill like I want to kill someone at

the time.

Dude, like every time I'm in line at Whole Foods or some grocery store, I see a fight.

There's always a commo.

There's always commotions.

It's always something's always happening.

It always raises my blood pressure and I want to like I get in my protector mode.

That's hilarious.

All right.

What else we got?

Want to do some more?

Yeah.

I have one thing.

So I think we've talked about this and we've just you and I have hired this guy, but go

to dreamstudiocourse.com.

Have you ever seen that?

Yeah.

We talked about it before.

I don't think we went up in depth on it.

Did we go in depth on it?

I like forgot his name or I said his name wrong or something.

So you know.

You make them because he's named Kevin Chen and I went and looked at his landing page.

This guy's landing page for a course A is awesome and B, he's selling a course that

I never in a million years would have thought would work.

But then I look at it and I think 100% you've nailed it and I understand how you could potentially

make a million dollars a year.

So it's called dreamstudiocourse and it's a $1500 course.

I don't know why he didn't just go 2000, but it's a $1500 course all on setting up your

zoom setup basically because I don't even think it's for a podcaster, but crazy cool

looking landing page.

And whenever I, when I saw his landing page, I thought, wow, I really want this, but how

sick is that landing page?

It's a great landing page for a bunch of different reasons.

Like first to start with headline.

So headline is not a course about setting up your zoom.

It says make your home video setup look like Hollywood, right?

Dream outcome.

So sells the dream outcome right away.

Then there's a picture of him that's, you know, that shows a really awesome video setup.

So you know, show, don't tell.

And then he basically says build your studio with expert help.

It's a six week course that'll do whatever.

Okay.

Enroll here.

So good call to action.

And then he's got a bunch of before and afters, right?

Here's Tiago Forte.

Look, he looked like shit before and now he looks great, right?

You know, look, here's this person.

Now they look great.

They just keep showing, you know, basically success stories of transformations because

fundamentally when people buy a course, they're buying transformation of some kind.

They want to walk in one way and walk out another.

And most courses, I've struggled with this myself.

Most courses struggle to even understand that you're selling change.

You're selling a transformation, not content, not information.

And secondly, they don't know how to show that I can actually provide this for you.

And with something that like the visual like this, you're going to get a before and after,

which is like before and after is my favorite sales pitch of all time.

I think a before and after is the most compelling sales pitch.

Do you have like a file or something that has all your, you're saying this as if you

have like a, like categories of headlines of headlines or well, you're like, you're like,

oh, he's doing the before and after style headline.

I love that style.

Yeah.

I have the, so in my course, I teach these, I'm like, here's a bunch of frames you can

use to like sell your product.

If you can do it.

Do you send that to me?

Yeah.

Well, if it's visual like this, you use before and after.

If it's not visual, there's another one I call stop the struggle.

So stop the struggle.

You sent me this landing page actually abstract ops used to have this landing page.

I think you invest in those guys.

They, it was like a stick figure running away from a tornado.

And it just said, stop putting off your back office, your back, back office tasks or like

stop running away from your, your, your to-do list or whatever.

And that, that's what I call a stop the struggle pitch, which is basically saying, instead

of saying what we do for you, we'll say, we can put you out of your pain.

Is that pain hurting you?

I can stop the pain for you.

I can stop the struggle that you're having, right?

He could do the same thing.

So he does dream outcome before and after, right?

Like make your home video set up look like Hollywood.

He could also have a stop the struggle, which is like, you know, basically a stop showing

up to work looking like this.

And it's like the up the nose camera shot, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, instead you could look like this after.

And so, you know, so basically I have these different frames that I'm like, this is a

way that you can present your product, your information.

And so, because I have a, one of my sessions in my course is a landing page one.

And so that's where I'm like, you, this is where you need to use this is on your landing

page because your landing page is your 24 seven salesman that will always deliver the

pitch exactly as they were trained to do 24 seven anywhere in the world, never have a

sick day and take no commission on sales.

And so like a landing page is the greatest salesman ever.

And so I think you should train your salesman to like be able to sell your product effectively,

essentially.

I'm writing a new landing page now for my thing and it is daunting.

Like it no matter how many landing pages I've written, it is always hard.

Well, because your bar keeps going up because you're like, Oh, I know what great looks like.

I know I want it to be great.

And so what would have otherwise been sufficient five years ago?

Now you look at that.

You're like, no, I'm sure it can be better.

I know it can be better.

Right.

Because you're already really, you're really good.

If I was going to get somebody to write a landing page, I would hire you.

And so you're already very good at it.

So the fact that you're feeling daunted is like, I don't know, like a musician going

back into the studio to record their new album.

And it's like, they know that they're good, but it's like, I got to do it again.

I got to make magic again.

I got to make a hit again.

That's exactly how I feel.

I'm staring at this landing page and I'm like, no, this is lame.

This isn't up to my standard.

This sucks.

This sucks.

And I'm just like looking for it.

And what I usually do is, what I like to do is find, the way that I've been getting inspiration

now is I find competitors that exist now or that used to offer a similar service.

And I go to newspapers.com and I find old articles written about them.

And I see how reporters used to explain this.

And if I see a catchy sentence, I go, boom, got it.

I'm still in that angle.

And so that's how I've been using, that's how I've been getting inspiration is I just

use newspapers.com to find old, just articles in New York Times written about a certain

company that's in the same space.

There was this guy and we hired once.

And I actually don't think it was a smart hire.

I made a bunch of mistakes.

Now I think about looking back at my business career, I'm like, man, we hired a firm to

do that.

Like, you know, we hired this person to do this.

We paid this.

Like I remember out of the Indy 500 like was doing their race or whatever.

And it was like, hey, there's free billboard space.

We can give it to you for your app.

And then I was like, oh, wow, that's cool.

Indy 500.

They're giving us free space.

And we spent the next 48 hours like filming this fucking video that was going to go on

this billboard or this like video billboard.

And I was like, looking back, I'm like, oh my God, how cheap was my attention that I

let this random cold email divert me and my marketing teams like focus for 48 hours to

do what?

Like, did we really think this billboard was going to like Indy 500 drive downloads?

It was a beer app.

So yeah, it was on point, but like, they're just not trying to download apps in that moment.

And like, it was no way to track it.

It was it was awful.

And so like, and that's happened to me a thousand times, I've made a thousand dumb decisions

like that.

I'm like, wow, we really like spent time and energy doing that.

That's like kind of embarrassing now that I know what I know now.

So similarly, we had hired a naming agency.

Like I hired an agency, I don't think that's a horrible idea.

I don't think that's the worst idea.

I think it was 15 or 25 grand.

It was a lot of money.

And it took like six weeks, which was also more expensive, like if you just had the name,

we would have just moved faster.

What was the name that they came up with?

I don't even remember.

It was like the first dating app that we were building up is that they just came back with

like Jersey Shore characters.

Your app is called the situation.

So we were thinking, what's sophisticated, but also fun party at the front.

Yeah.

So we're thinking Polly D, say it with me, Polly D, the latest and greatest dating.

It was like, so anyways, it wasn't even that they did a bad job.

They actually did a good job with their thing, but it was just unnecessary, unnecessary thing

to do.

But I do respect the craft because I remember I went to this, to the meeting room, is got

Eli was sitting there.

I think Eli Altman is his name, I think.

And he was like, okay, so tell me about it.

And I was like, so here's the screenshot and he's like, no, no, just like, tell me about

it.

So it's an app that lets you do this.

It has these features.

You're like, no, no, no.

Why'd you make that?

And it's like, oh, because I'm at the time I was single, I'm single, I've used dating

apps and I was like, they just, they all sucked.

And so that's why we want to make this great one.

And I was like, I was kept rushing into the, here's my answer.

Here's my solution.

He's like, but like you said, it sucked.

What sucked about him?

I was like, well, they're just like too hard to use again, generic.

And he's like, so like, what did you like, do you remember just getting really frustrated

about it one time?

And so he's asking me these good questions to like actually unfold the unpack the customer

stories, the words, the phrases that actually mean something.

He got beyond the jargon.

And then I was like, okay, so what happens now?

Now you guys, you know, have this crazy brainstorming exercise where you come up with a name.

He's like, no, just like, give me some time.

And he just took a whiteboard marker and he just sat down cross-legged, like, you know,

like Indian style in front of a whiteboard on the floor.

And I was like, a child at play, he was literally like a child at play.

And he like, he just like put his phone at silent and put it outside.

And I was like, whoa.

This guy, I mean, there's no bigger sign of seriousness than somebody who put turns their

phone off and like leaves it outside of the room.

And he's like, he just started writing and he started writing long form.

Like not, I was like, oh, he's got some names.

And I went there to get a look for names.

He's, no, he was like, you know, dating is like hard.

Actually it's not hard.

It's just kind of, it's frustrating.

The thing that's frustrating about it is like, I know that I'm a good catch, but I'm sitting

here trying to perform and he's just like writing out like the feelings that go through

the mind of the person that's doing this.

The way the story needs to end is it's the most like weirdest, horrible thing.

Like he's this thoughtful thing and it comes up with like dick butt, like, basically, that's

basically it.

So he, you know, so he did this long process.

And I actually think that there's some military phrase, which is like, slow is smooth and

smooth is fast.

And I've always tried to go fast when it comes to business stuff.

How do I go faster?

How do I speed this up?

And I paid the price many times where like, if I had just slowed down at the, on the appropriate

step, the whole thing would have gone faster, even though that step would have gone slower.

For example, figuring out what is the actual problem I'm solving?

What are the, what is the pain that the person is feeling here?

What are the words that they would use to describe it that they would resonate with

them and get them to nod their head and be like, yeah, I've had that.

And then how would I explain it in a way that's simple to them?

Like that's what he was ultimately trying to do.

He was trying to figure out, what's the problem?

What are the words that somebody would actually use that would resonate with them where they'd

nod and be like, you know, amen, preach, like, I feel that you, wow, you just, you put it

in words better than I even could how I was feeling about this situation.

And then, oh, you describe the solution, but instead of describing in terms of like the

features and the widgets and the gadgets around it, like, you tell me kind of like, how my

life is going to be different because I'm using this and this works this different way.

And it kind of makes sense that it would work that way, right?

Because, you know, let's use an analogy, imagine you ran a lemonade stand and blah, blah, blah.

And so that's what he did.

And I remember just walking out of that being like, wow, that was like an impressive thing.

This guy did and it looked so unimpressive.

He asked me some questions, he kept slowing me down, didn't want to jump to an answer.

Then he just sat with a marker alone in the room and wrote for a long time on this whiteboard,

like paragraphs of stuff.

And then through that, he came out with like, you know, a deep, a better understanding about

my product than I had to begin with.

And I think that that like, there's something cool about that process.

And like, yeah, when you go make this landing page, it's like, that's the thing you actually

want to do because slow and smooth and smooth as fast.

Did I show you that I hired a branding agency?

I saw that.

Yeah.

You sent me the, I think I spent 15 grand on it and they're based there in Hong Kong.

So like, I think there was a, like a, I think normally this would cost 30 grand in America.

And I was actually happy with the work.

And this is normally something I would never do.

And it took them 30 days and it's like, you just get this deck that like outlines and

like, I never would have done that.

And I think it was totally worth it.

This is not something I ever would have done it.

And I think it was totally, because whenever you like build shit and you make a website,

you slowly iterate and then like you hire new people and you're, and they like come

up with ideas and you're like, no, we already tried that.

Or like, no, that doesn't work because this page looks like this.

Like it's, I'm like, let's just get it all, do it all the right way the first time.

And that's something I never in a million years would have done.

And it was worth it.

Yeah, we did that for the milk road too.

We hired this guy, Jeremy, who did our initial branding.

And I'd never hired a branding agency like that for, for a startup that I was doing.

But I was like, all right, I told Ben, I said, we're not going to do it off the bat.

Like you're, you saying you're doing it up front.

I think that's okay.

I don't think that's necessarily bad, but I also don't think it's necessary.

And so usually for a startup, you just kind of want to do what's necessary.

When I say off the bat, I already had a quarter of a million in revenue.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I had told Ben, I said, he made a logo like in five minutes on Canva.

And I was like, all right, I like this.

I like the name milk road sounds fun, goofy, easy to say, easy to, I can get the domain

for $2,000.

Let's do it.

And he made this logo in like Fiverr or Canva or something like that.

And I was like, all right, let's run with it.

He's like, you know, don't you think we should blah, blah, blah?

And I was like, all right, here's the deal.

It seems like you want to spend more cycles on it because you think the brand is important.

And I agree.

The brand will be important.

I just don't think it's important for us to get our first 10,000 subscribers or even

100,000 subscribers.

So let's make a deal.

If we can get to 100,000 subscribers through our Genki thing, that will, will reward our

selves by investing in the brand.

Because I think ultimately the brand, this whole exercise of like having a cool brand,

it's really for our own pride.

More so than it's going to improve the like conversion of this right now or like it's

unproven how that's going to do.

So let's let's reward ourselves.

So we got to 100,000 and then we hired this guy.

And then he took us through these like cycles and, you know, like, you know, review after

review of these like decks and then both are good.

I have this guy in India who's like my designer for all my projects.

And to create that milkman character who I think is actually the best part of the brand.

He actually made it.

This guy in India made it in like one day.

And I was like, wow, perfect.

Thank you.

That's exactly what I wanted.

Thank you so much.

And so we just like ran with that.

Dude, I think the outcome was actually quite good.

I loved your brand.

No, I thought it was good.

I thought it was a win.

I told you the story, right?

When I went on vacation to Hawaii and the, the God Jeremy, he lives there.

He lives in Hawaii and he's like, Oh, you're here.

Like, let's hang out.

I was like, Oh yeah, great.

When he comes to the hotel, he walks out barefoot and I was like, something happened.

Like, okay.

And he's like, he's like, what do you mean?

I was like, you're not wearing shoes, dude.

And he's like, Oh, I don't wear shoes.

And I was like, you don't wear shoes.

And I was like, most fucking branding agency thing I've ever heard, the most creative.

Is he a white guy?

Respect for taking the, I'm a creative to the peak.

Like you thought the bean bags in the office was it.

You thought that, you know, having these like, is he like a white guy who moved to Hawaii

or is he born and raised?

White guy moved to Hawaii.

Australian guy moved to Hawaii.

When they moved there, they were like, Oh, we don't need shoes on the island.

Like we, we just live, we're part of the island.

And so they put their shoes in storage.

And so he's like, yeah, we had to go travel to Australia to go visit our family.

He's like, I had to go get my shoes out of storage.

I was like, you don't need shoes that much that you didn't even just chuck it in the

garage.

Just in case like you, you put them far away.

Like that's the equivalent of the guy, the branding agency, putting his phone on, turning

it off and leaving it outside.

Dude, just so, just so for the record, I'm on board with that.

I think shoes are stupid.

I walk around barefooted all the time.

When it gets above, if it's 80 above 85, no shirt, no shoes, just that's, that's just

the rule.

I'm always outside shirtless.

I'm wearing socks right now.

No, I hate where, no man, you got to get the calluses on there.

And then it's like you wearing shoes anyway, I dig it, but I'm happy you're back.

We went, I went, I had Ryan holiday on and we'll do a recap about that.

And then yeah, I leave for one day you guys do a podcast about how great Hitler is.

I was like, wow, all right, yeah, yeah, that, that we had to switch things up basically.

We did this pod on hit on Hitler and I was talking about how sad it was.

And then our freaking YouTube guy, I, he like put up this stupid thumbnail and it said like

things I learned from call things or something about like, it was about like, like, you know,

things you can learn from Hitler on business building.

And I was like, whoa, no, not a chance.

And I texted bed, I go, bed, you got to get rid of this.

This is, that's not at all what we talked about.

This is, you know, I, and I had my face on it.

We had my face next to it and I was like, dude, that's not even remotely what we talked

about.

We talked about how horrible he was.

So yeah, we talked about Hitler and had a right holiday on just when, right when you

left.

Yeah.

So I decided to come back, I cut my emergency short to come back, I can't let you totally

throw our YouTube guy under the bus because he did contact me.

He was like, Hey, I think I'm going to do the Hitler angle.

I think it'll get tons of clicks, but obviously it'll be controversial.

Do you think that's cool?

And I was like, yeah, man, go for it.

Going for clicks.

More YouTube.

And you're like, and you're like, yeah, put Sam's face on it while you're at it.

Not my face.

Only Sam's face.

Can you brighten the image?

Turn down the color balance.

Yeah.

Sam doing like a heart shape with his hands.

It was the worst, man.

I saw that picture and I was like, Baron, I can't have this man.

You got to delete it immediately.

Please delete that.

I got to say, the reason I thought it was okay is because in the first 30 seconds of

the video, you say, Hitler's obviously a bad person, but I don't think it's wrong to like

study his life and learn lessons from it.

And so I was like, well, he says he's a bad person in the first eight seconds of the video.

I think it's okay.

You ever heard that phrase?

If you're explaining, you're losing.

Yeah.

If you're explaining, you're losing.

That is totally right.

I was like, it didn't work.

That was a, that was a, I understand.

People liked that episode.

Multiple people were like, my favorite episode, you know, I just shared, I don't know if you

saw those tweets.

There was a bunch of people who really liked that episode.

Yeah.

And they also liked the Ryan Holiday one.

So basically, you're welcome, you're welcome for carrying the load for a while.

I'm going to take a, this November, I'm thinking about doing a motorcycle trip and I'll be

gone for five days.

So you're going to have to see if you can carry the weight during that time.

Yeah.

You know, why Stalin is so misunderstood.

Dude, I, we can talk about this another time, but do you know that YouTube channel Ghost

Town Living?

Yeah.

That's those guys who bought that town, that abandoned town and they, they kind of vlog

about, you know, as, as they've been building it out or whatever.

So I invested in it and it's like me and Ryan, Nathan Barry and like three or four other

guys and I wrote a, I think I gave him 25 grand.

So I think I own like less than 1% of it, but I'm going to, I want to ride a motorcycle

there and check it out.

It's like four hours outside of LA, I think it'd be fun.

That's interesting.

Why do you invest in that?

Well, you can ride your motorcycle there anyways, right?

So what, what, do you think like this is going to become a valuable investment?

No, it was an emotional thing.

No, it's, it was an emotional thing.

My justification was it was like me, Ryan, Brent, the guy on there, my friend Brendan

and like three and Nathan Barry and like, and then only three other entrepreneurs.

So it was seven of us and I figure, well, if I can like somehow like get invited to

like a thing there or get to talk to them and I invested 25 grand, I bet I can make

that money back just off these relationships or just like a cool story.

Like, so that's kind of how I thought about it.

And I thought, and I asked Nathan, well, and so I did it for that reason.

And I also, I did the whole deal without seeing any documents and just talking to Nathan.

Nathan Barry wrote me a text.

He goes, just so you know, there's a little bit of room.

If you want to join this, here's the pros and here's the cons.

Here's why I did it.

And he, and I go, okay, cool.

I'm in then because you just said you're in, I'm in because you're, you know, I trust

him.

So that's, it was that simple.

That's great.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Yeah.

By the way, I have a couple banger topic.

I have a lot of research going on right now and I'm excited.

There's some that I'm like, I'm like, they're almost so good.

It might need to be its own episode.

Like I want to do one that's basically breaking down like what's actually going on with VR.

Like is VR kind of like dead in the water?

Why don't you?

Is it low-key killing it?

Like, you know, that sort of thing.

And so we've been doing a bunch of research on that.

All right.

Well, let's do a whole thing on VR on Monday and we'll talk about your investments.

Cool.

We should actually do a thing where we, yeah.

We could balance it.

We could be like, okay, I lost this much money in the stock market and we could do a more

wholesome, like a more holistic thing.

So it's not just, hey, here's some wins.

That means I have to log in and look though.

I don't even know.

Fuck that.

Never mind.

I got to go.

Yeah.

Let's plan ahead for Monday.

All right.

Sounds good.

All right.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.