My First Million: From Quirkiest Biz Ideas to Favorite "Creatorpreneurs" - MFM Q&A

So I went to school at Belmont University

and it was like a Southern Christian university

that had low standards.

Yeah, that is what it says on their website too.

It says it like a home of mediocrity.

Mediocre people, exceptional prices.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like the days off.

All right, we're live.

We're doing a Q and A session.

We decided this kind of last minute.

It's like when a substitute teacher comes in

and they roll out the TV on the trolley

and they're like, hey guys, today you know what?

I decided I want a day off.

Oh, no, no, no, sorry.

I wanted you guys to watch this movie.

No, it works out because frankly,

I think people like this.

And we like the movie too.

It works.

It's a win-win.

Yeah, we have to do very little work and people like it.

Let's just get right into it.

We're gonna keep each question at around three minutes,

which is not, you don't have to worry about me going over.

It's Sean.

Let's do it.

Ben, what do you got?

Let's do a little Q and A.

So basically the background is,

we both tweeted out what questions do you have?

And we got a bunch of them on the tweets

and we'll see where we go.

I think we have like 100s of them

and we selected maybe 10-ish from each of our Twitter's

and we'll see which ones are interesting.

All right, go.

Okay, from someone named Newbet, a pretty basic one.

What is your opinion on sweaty startups?

All right, here's my opinion.

I think it's cool.

I think any way you can get your nut, you get it.

That said, that sounds...

Is that a philosophy you've had since you were a teenager?

Or what?

Yeah, get that nut.

I think if you can get it,

it doesn't matter which way you get it, get it.

And there's lots of examples of everyone succeeding

in all different types of industry.

Personally, I think making money digitally

is significantly better

because it requires close to no capital in some cases.

You can work from anywhere.

There's been times I've sent an email from my phone

and it's made a whole bunch of money.

And I think that it's way harder

to make a million dollars a year from a brick and mortar

business than it does digitally.

I also think that the laptop class,

I saw Elon Musk call Tesla headquarters employees

the laptop class.

I think those types of people,

of which most of you are, including myself,

we wanna do stuff with our hands.

And I think it's significantly better

just to make money on the internet

and then all your free time, go get a hobby.

Because if you go and talk to a blue collar worker,

they sure as hell don't wanna be there.

So I'd rather be in the situation of being able to choose

to spend my time doing it the other way versus switch.

So in this question, the guy said,

sweaty startup makes great,

this is our buddy Nick Huber.

So Nick makes great points about

not wanting to compete with Stanford grads,

generating real cash flow and getting rich the slow way.

I agree, this might be the best way to go.

What do you guys think?

So I think this whole, Nick is great.

And I think you're totally right

that however you wanna win, win.

And there are many, many ways to win.

If this podcast needs to do one thing,

it's how many different ways there are to win.

But given that,

given that there are many ways to win,

you better choose the one you really want.

And for me, I'm like, I might as well choose

the one that is most ideal,

the most intuitive of the lifestyle I want.

I don't wanna go worry about the roof damage

at my self-storage facility

or that the $15 an hour employee called out sick

and there's nobody at the front door now

to take customers today.

I don't want those issues.

I'm happy bearing a different set of issues.

And so that, you know,

I think you gotta choose how you wanna win.

And I also think this whole idea of like,

you don't wanna compete against Stanford kids.

This is like a great sound bite, but it doesn't matter.

It's one of these true, but not important.

I used to say this all the time

and it pissed everybody off in the office.

I'd say, that's so true and it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

It's like, dude, I just wanna win

like my high school conference championship.

I don't need to worry about you saying both.

Exactly.

You know what I mean?

If I get there, I'll get there.

Nobody who's doing digital, like an internet company

is like, God, these wretched Stanford kids keep beating me.

It's like, dude, I haven't seen a Stanford kid.

Even if I did see a Stanford kid,

you've seen those dorks, that's not a problem.

Yeah, give them a wedgie and push them out the way, nerd.

Like you don't have to worry about these guys

in most cases.

Dude, knuckles still work.

Nuggets are very effective, but like,

it's not the Stanford kids that are the problem.

If you fail in the internet,

it's because it's a noisy place

that you couldn't get anyone's attention, right?

You die of starvation, not murder,

when it comes to startups, internet startups.

And so if you're failing,

it's not cause the Stanford kids beat you.

It's cause the market didn't want what you had to offer.

And I don't know, I like sitting behind my laptop.

I haven't worn pants in, you know, 450 days.

This is the way to live.

And by the way, you have or had, you know,

you could talk about it, whatever you want,

but you've had an e-commerce business, which is-

Have?

20% brick and mortar.

As in you have like people you got to go see.

We have physical products, we have a warehouse.

We have things like that, more than 20%, yeah.

Whatever it is.

And then you also did Milk Road, which one was better?

The newsletter that someone else wrote

that we pushed one button to send to, you know,

300,000 people and just printed profits from month one.

Yeah, that's the one.

I think that was the one I liked the best.

The one that after a year we were able to sell just like that

because there was no, none of that sweat, right?

They call it sweaty startups for a reason.

So I've done both.

The one thing I will say though,

real estate has some amazing tax perks.

So that he does have that going for it.

And we'll wrap it up by saying,

and this sounds like I'm making fun of Nick and Cody,

both of whom are my great friends, Cody's saying on chat.

So I'm not, but ask them which one's making more money.

The digital stuff or the brick and mortar stuff.

Right.

I don't actually know the truth.

For these sweaty startup guys,

you guys are pretty active on Twitter

and you can sell them courses and these online courses, huh?

Which I am too.

Cody has that digital revenue versus that laundromat revenue.

Right.

So I would ask them which one they think is better,

but who knows?

All right, what do we got?

All right, next up, we'll take it from the top.

Someone named Blockmates asks,

what's the most interesting business you've seen

that didn't take off and why do you think that was?

Go for it.

So there was this app back in the day that I saw.

And when I saw it, I was like, this is gonna hit.

It was made by these Russian dudes and it's called Povio.

And what Povio used to do was every other social network

was like, I post photos.

So Facebook was like, I go to a party,

I post an album of photos.

Then Instagram was like, yo, I'm on the go,

I'm at a cafe, I'll take a photo of my cappuccino.

And it all had this kind of like, look at me,

I'm kind of bragging about my life thing.

And I've always said that social networks,

when a social network hits, it's not because of a feature,

it's because of a change in the privacy policy, right?

So like Facebook was the first time you used your real name

on the internet because you would do it

with other college kids who went to your same school.

That's why Facebook got your real name,

your real relationship status, your real courses,

get you to put it online.

Twitter was like, hey, you don't have to be my friend,

you could just follow me.

I can't even, I don't even have to prove you,

just follow me, that's a change in privacy policy.

Snapchat, change in privacy policy.

It was like, yo, this is a disappearing photo,

that's private.

So every great social network has a change

in the privacy policy.

And Povio had a genius one, which was,

you would request a photo from someone else.

So I would ping you and it would open up your phone

and it would go three, two, one,

and it would take a picture of whatever you're doing

or wherever you're at.

And so you could kind of be like,

it's a way of saying, what's up?

But the person would default reply with a photo

and I was like, this is genius, they're giving people

even more excuses to take random useless pictures,

this shit's gonna fly.

And sure enough, on the first college campus,

it started to work and it was growing.

And then it just kind of faded away.

It never really made it.

And I still believe in this mechanic of,

if somebody made this app where you would basically be,

you're basically saying, what's up?

And they're replying with a photo

and you're basically pulling the photo from them

rather than pushing it online.

I think that's kind of a game changer,

but I was wrong and never worked.

I'm looking at their app description

and their app page in iTunes.

And it says that it only has like five reviews.

So it never took off.

But the funny part is, is that,

you know how there's like screenshots of the app?

It's a very clearly, it looks like a kid

on the Stanford campus taking a picture.

And the, wait, Stanford's in Palo Alto.

This says Santa Clara.

I don't know what's there.

But like, you don't gotta worry about those Stanford kids.

See, it's no big deal.

It doesn't work.

But mine is Dorsey.

So it didn't work out.

It's Dor, the word Dor than S-E-Y.

But I've always wanted,

I've been looking to invest in companies

that have a good chance of making buying a home online possible.

I'm a firm believer that people will end up buying

close to everything online.

And there's only a few categories where that's not the case.

It's like hardware.

So like Home Depot still crushes it

because like you don't buy a screw on the internet.

And then homes, it's another things that people don't buy online.

No one's figured it out yet.

This company has not worked yet.

And I still think there's an opportunity

for a company to work in the space where you can buy,

like you'll make hundreds of thousands of dollars

or millions of dollar purchase on the internet.

I think that's gonna be a thing.

Do you remember when Mark Cuban bought a jet on eBay

and it was like all the rage that people freaked out?

I didn't even know this.

Yeah. So when he sold his company, broadcast.com,

he became a billionaire and he bought a $50 million

golf stream jet on eBay and people were freaking out,

which it's not even that like,

that's not even that interesting if you ask me.

What's only interesting that it's a big purchase,

but like, you know, a jet, like if it's the same model,

you kind of know what you're gonna get

and like the condition is like fair, excellent.

You know what I mean?

I just asked Google's AI, I think I said,

what percentage of Home Depot sales are online?

And it said 20 to 62, 60% of its sales were online.

So even Hope Depot is selling the majority

of products online versus.

Well, if it's revenue, then yeah, I believe that.

Cause people order grills, but like when you want

like a $5 like Bolt, you usually just go there

and you'll buy like 10 of all different sizes.

You know what I mean?

And see like which one's actually fit.

But yeah, I'm into like things that can't be sold

or aren't being sold online yet, that should be.

And I think that Holmes are one of them.

What else you got Ben?

All right, here we go.

This is something we've talked a lot about recently,

but what does enough look like for you?

You've got a much better answer than I do.

Just for reference, I put a bullet point in

and I wrote out what my answer might be, like a blurb.

And mine's this like long thoughtful thing.

And then Sam's like, Sam, I'll just answer yours for you.

It just says, I don't think there's ever enough.

Maybe you explain your point of view

that I'll sound like it to you.

Well, here's why.

I thought that there was like,

there's been multiple times in my life.

It was like $100,000, $500,000, where I thought,

I won't worry.

And I've hit a lot of different of these targets.

And I still worry.

There's times where I worry less for a little while,

but it like, have you ever heard the idea of like,

have you ever seen, you probably haven't,

but there's like stories and studies of people

who lose a limb and they're pretty bummed for like six,

yeah, they're bummed for like six or 12 months.

And then they go right back to being like,

okay, I'm back at it.

I feel fine.

I think it's the same with like a lot of money stuff

where it's like, you make it the amount that you thought

and then you go back to like where you were.

And I believe that to be true.

That's why I said never enough about yours.

Well, I'll say a couple of other ways I think about this.

So, yeah, come on, Indian guru.

Let me just, I mean, do you got your wisdom cups out,

everybody?

Cause I'm about to fill you up.

Yeah.

Are you gonna, do you need to sit like a Indian style

to tell the story?

Yeah, exactly.

Let's just take a deep breath in first before I do this.

All right, so Vipassana.

So Paul Graham did this thing where he created Y Combinator,

which is basically the most successful company

in Silicon Valley besides like Google and Facebook.

And then he just retired and he just left

and he moved to like the woods in England.

And he just writes code in his cabin with his kids

and writes, you know, poetry and paints

and what goes for walks.

And I was like, this motherfucker thinks he's got enough,

and I was like, you know, how dare he leave the rat race?

All of the rats, we were shaking our fists

being like, you get your ass back in here.

And I got inspired by that.

And I was like, okay, so what is the like,

what's the enough state?

Not money, but like, what would I, what is my version?

So instead of thinking what number would I feel like

is enough?

Cause I think that's a trap.

I just thought about like, if I felt like I had enough

or what I want to go do, and then I thought,

maybe I could just go do that thing.

So here's what I came up with.

Two things, I said, I heard this Naval quote,

which was, retirement is when you stop sacrificing today

for an imagined tomorrow.

And that hit home.

And he was like, you know, what that means is that

the moment you do things in your day,

that the act of doing them is the reward.

Not like you're doing them today,

sacrificing for some future payoffs that are gonna come.

At that moment, you are free.

And I was like, okay, that's the goal.

The goal is to be free, meaning the goal is to,

on a daily basis, do things that the act of doing them

is the reward.

I'm not doing them for some future rewards.

And I said, if I did that, what types of things

would I want to do?

What types of things is the act of doing them,

the reward itself?

And here's what I came up with.

I said, I think that having a big podcast is actually

the best job in the world.

And I'm obviously biased here, but I've also tried

a bunch of things and this is the best.

If you have a big podcast, that means you're famous,

but you're only famous amongst nerds,

which is kind of the not annoying way to be famous.

It's like all the good parts of being famous

without the bad.

You also get rich, but you didn't have to chase money.

You get to create content, but you're not like

the annoying 24 seven vlogger who's got their phone out

and ruins like their actual life,

trying to create content for some audience.

Cause with the podcast, like we sit here

for like two hours a week and record

or three hours a week and record.

And that's it.

The other 165 hours in a week, we get to do whatever we want.

We don't have to think about creating content.

And we don't have to get hurt while we're doing it.

Like if you watch some of these guys stuff.

I don't want to constantly water myself

and like, like the dumb ass YouTuber

who crashed a plane on purpose for views

and now is going to jail.

You're not competing on an algorithm like TikTok

where you get this hit of fame

and then you're forever chasing it.

Podcast is great.

You just talk, you're unscripted, you're unedited.

You're talking to a friend or somebody you admire,

like if it's a guest,

that seems like the best job in the world.

And then for fun, I would basically coach a basketball team

like Mighty Duck style.

And I would want to just chill out

and just shoot the shit in a writer's room

for like a TV show or a comedian

or teach at stand for twice a week.

I think those are the things that I would just do

for the pure joy of doing them, not for some future rewards.

And to me, I'll have enough

when my day is mostly shit like that.

Why haven't you tried to get a teaching job or a coaching job?

I haven't put enough attention on it.

Like this question made me think about it

and made me think, oh, why don't I just go do that now?

And often life is that simple.

Like it's not that there's actually any barrier in the way.

It's just I didn't put my attention on,

what do I actually want?

Oh yeah.

Okay, I can probably just go get that now.

One good excuse is you have young kids.

So it's like once they go to school,

maybe that would be a possibility.

Yeah, but I'm not a believer in that.

I think it's really just a matter of like,

I didn't put my focus on, that's what I really want.

Okay, then go get it.

By the way, there was a good Paul Graham thing.

So this guy tweeted out,

there are very few second times founders

because anyone's smart enough to succeed the first time.

Is it dumb enough to do it all over again?

Paul replied, he goes,

anyone's smart enough to succeed the first time

is still running that company.

And then our friend Akita go,

yeah, wonder what happened with that washed up

via web founder and what he's doing these days.

That was Paul Graham's first thing.

And he goes to Shay Paul.

So like, you know, even the smart guys like Paul

can get things wrong once in a while.

So he says he's got enough,

but who knows, I actually do believe that he does,

but I think your answer is better than mine.

It is about enjoying the experience more.

And whenever I was like running my old company,

the hustle, I look back at it and I'm like,

I wish I would have enjoyed that more during the process,

but it's a very challenging thing to do.

Well, I'll just ask you one thing.

Are you okay with knowing that you'll never have enough?

Before you answer that,

let me just put it the other way,

which is if you feel like you'll never have enough,

that sort of is, to me, that means you're never really free.

Like the most fun interactions you know,

this is like when you meet with somebody

and you want nothing from them

and you need nothing from them.

Like those are the best interactions with people.

There is no more freeing feeling

that just literally I don't need you

and I don't want anything from you.

I can just be here and just have whatever experience

I'm gonna have versus the opposite

when you want someone's approval

or you need them to like you

or you need them to hire you.

Those are the most stressful interactions.

And so to me, I think if you wanna be free,

you gotta believe that there is such a thing as enough.

I think you're thinking about it differently than I am.

So let's say that you're an athlete,

let's say that you're a weightlifter,

or let's say that you're a comedian,

you're Hasan Minhaj, you're buddy.

Is he ever gonna be like, I'm funny enough,

I don't need to improve my craft anymore?

I don't think so.

I think he could find a bit of contentment

of being like, I'm on top of my game, I'm doing awesome,

and I can always get better.

And that's kind of when I say it's never enough,

that's what I mean.

If my craft is building companies,

that means that there's always more

that I can do to be better,

but that doesn't mean that I'm unhappy

or not satisfied with where I am.

Fair enough, fair enough.

All right, Ben, let's go to the next one.

If you go back to your college days,

what is the one thing you would have done differently,

knowing what you know now?

That's from Sam Faber.

So I was a huge idiot in college

and not even like the cool idiot that was like,

man, I was just being dumb,

just going to parties, having fun with my friends late nights.

It's like, wait, did you love it?

Or are you saying it was bad?

It's like, for me, I was just doing nothing.

I was a do nothing idiot.

And that's the worst kind.

And to me now that I look back, I'm like, wow,

college is a gold mine.

You can make lifelong friends,

you can meet future business partners.

Even just, I'm a business junkie now.

I wish that when I was in college,

I had been launching businesses.

So I got a captive market of students

who I understand who I can reach

that are just literally living in this bubble,

waiting to be sold products.

And I could have been working on my skills then

versus I started working on my skills after college.

There was alumni that like,

I didn't realize how powerful it is just to be like,

hey, I'm also, I also go to Duke.

You went to Duke 35 years ago, I go there now

and they're like, cool, you wanna hang out?

And it's like, it's that easy to connect.

And so now I look back and I would say,

I would mine that gold mine.

I was just sitting there eating Chick-fil-A

on top of a gold mine.

I didn't even really look down

and realized what I was sitting on.

The only smart thing I did was I studied abroad,

which is kind of a thing you really wanna do

at that point in time.

I went to Australia.

What, you didn't go to Sydney, did you?

I did, yeah.

Yeah, man.

I think Sydney, Australia is the greatest city on earth.

It is the greatest city on earth.

It's the best place to be like a 19 year old.

It's the greatest place on earth.

My biggest regret is that I didn't take high school

seriously enough to get into some of these amazing schools.

So I went to school at Belmont University

and it was like a Southern Christian university

that had low standards.

Yeah, that is what it says on their website too.

It says it like home of mediocrity.

Mediocre people, exceptional prices.

Back then it was very expensive.

It was very expensive and it was such a mediocre thing.

When you say you went to Duke, I envy you so much

because at least you got, even the basketball guys

were the best.

And then a lot of your peers were very, very smart.

And I bet you met a lot of people from,

even though it was in the South,

I bet you still met tons of different foreigners,

people from New York City, people from California.

I didn't get to meet any of those people.

So I regret that.

The first Jewish person I met

was when I moved to San Francisco at the age of 22.

Like I didn't know, like it was just like,

pretty much just white people.

And so I wish I was like around more

of a like a global group of people.

And so that was one of my big regrets.

I also wish that I took seriously the idea

that the things that you do in college

aren't that important.

They don't have to be like the thing that you do.

But if you take your hobbies seriously,

it's a really fun time to try on different personalities

and things like that.

So I wish I had a little,

I wish I took that more seriously.

I totally agree with that last part,

which was I thought in college,

the thing is your classes and the result is your grades.

But actually that's completely backwards.

Like the thing is the people in the environment,

that's the one thing you're never getting it back.

And then if you really wanted a result,

you wanted to like, you know, take it seriously.

The way to take it seriously wasn't to get A pluses

or like, you know, be an amazing chemistry major.

It was actually like, Hey, this is four years.

And after this, I'm supposed to figure out,

I'm supposed to be like doing a job and pick a career.

I should dabble.

I should go and like sample like it's Costco and it's noon.

And I should go sample a bunch of different ways,

things that you could do,

meet a bunch of people who do that thing.

And I should take this time to figure out,

what do I actually like to do?

And I wish colleges were oriented like that

because colleges are oriented around

the opposite assumption.

It's like, pick what you want.

That means you must know.

And then put your head down and focus.

And it's like, that's the wrong time to focus.

You should be dabbling at that stage.

Do you have good credit?

I'm okay credit.

Like I have good enough credit.

Dude, I wish I would have,

so I didn't like get a credit card until I was like 24.

And then I started my company

and I would max it out constantly.

And then I would always like pay it off like before I had to.

So my credit card utilization was always like 100%.

And I didn't have a long credit history.

And so I wish I had, there's a very practical thing.

I wish I had a credit card at the age of 18

and I used it for everything and always paid it off.

So I could build credit history.

I don't have like the best credit because of that.

Did that come back to bite you?

Why do you need your credit so bad?

You're trying to get loans or something?

What are you trying to do?

When I tried to buy the house that I'm living in now,

I couldn't buy it.

My wife had to buy it.

One, because my credit history wasn't long enough,

which is crazy.

And it wasn't like fantastic.

Like everyone wants to want to send the 600s.

And then B, because you're a business owner buying a house

and getting a mortgage is really, really challenging.

So I couldn't buy it.

Fair enough.

All right, this next one is,

have you had a deal not go through

when close to finishing it?

If so, what did you learn to do better?

How did your mentality regroup to start the process over?

Not for sure, but I feel like the sellers

are trying to tank this business acquisition,

which is supposed to close on May 31st.

That's from Mackenzie Reed.

This is a great question.

And I accidentally interrupted you,

but he said, I feel like sellers are trying

to tank this biz acquisition,

which is supposed to close on 531.

I want to address that.

But first, I had a deal go through.

I think my NDA is up,

but there's a recent media company that went bankrupt

that tried to buy the hustle

and we got to a term sheet and it completely fell through,

or we got to an LOI and it completely fell through.

And there was like three others that I had lined up

and it also fell through and I was devastated.

So I changed my opinion to this,

like any deal that I have, it's going to happen to,

it will not happen, but I will act as if it's going to,

but just assume it's not going to.

And then if it does, I will be happy

because most fall through.

But to address that last question of,

I think the seller to try to tank this biz acquisition,

I had that exact same attitude when I sold the HubSpot.

And then one day I just told him,

I got to know the woman who was,

I was working with that HubSpot.

And she was like, look, you don't understand,

we're worth $20 billion.

This deal is really not a big deal to us.

Like this ain't going to do anything for us.

I mean, it'll do a little something.

But just so you know,

we already got like board approval to do it,

which means I told my boss and that boss told their boss.

And then that boss reported it to 12 people

who are like billionaires and shit.

And so if this deal doesn't go through,

that means all 12 of those people

have to like change something.

And then more so, I'm going to look stupid

and my boss is going to look stupid

and this other boss is going to look stupid.

So because we're a big public trade company,

if we say we're going to do something,

we're going to do it,

not necessarily because of it's a logical good deal,

but because I don't want to look dumb

in front of all my bosses.

So we're going to do this.

Versus when you sell to a smaller company

or like an individual who's got money,

I do feel they will always try or not always.

A lot of times they will nickel and dime you

or they will try to dock you.

But I don't necessarily think a lot of times

they're trying to ruin something,

but I do think they will have ulterior motives,

which is like I'm trying to learn a little bit of information

about this company so I can start on my own

or do all these other things.

But when you sell to a big publicly traded company,

I think nine out of 10 times,

it's not in their best interest to screw you.

That's a great answer.

I'm the same way.

I go into every single deal assuming

the deal is not going to go through

because as Emmett said to me, birds fly, fish swim

and deals fall through, that's what they do.

Deals fall through.

It is not a outlier or exception

or like disaster when that happened.

Oh, a deal did what it does.

Deals fall through, that's what they do, baby.

Like what you worry about?

Sit your ass down while you're crying.

That's how I talk to myself

when I get emotionally attached to a deal.

So the emotional detachment is key.

All right, well, how do you do that?

Part of it, you need to be having a bulletproof mindset

before you get into an M&A transaction.

It's too late when you're in the M&A transaction

to be like, all right guys,

I'm gonna toughen up this here brain

to be able to operate in a very tricky circumstance

where I might get life changing money

or it might all fall through.

And that's hard to do then.

You gotta train before that.

That's the first thing.

Second thing is not only do they fall through,

that's also not fatal when they do.

In fact, every deal I've done

has had a fall through moment, if not two.

And so that is my rule of thumb,

which is that every deal that does close,

there's gonna be two walkaways along the way.

You're gonna walk away or they're gonna walk away.

That's gonna probably happen twice.

You're gonna hit a wall twice

before this deal actually happens

where it feels like this deal is dead

or it's simply not happening

or there's just a very, very low chance

that we get over this hurdle.

Have you announced or have you said,

have you ever mentioned, I'm not sure if it's an NDA,

the other two people you almost sold to

but instead of Twitch?

I think I said before,

like we got pretty far down the road with Facebook

and that we also had a couple others

that were Facebook we had that were like one hour away

from accepting the deal and finishing it.

And one of the good things that they did tell me

was the same thing you just said about HubSpot.

So Twitch is owned by Amazon

and the corp dev guy was like,

look, I'm sorry we've been so slow

and I'm sorry we're not the like,

we can't just give you everything you want

in terms of price, but here's the good news.

We will not retrade this deal,

which is what it's called when you come back

and you try to get that second negotiation.

Once everybody's fully emotionally invested

and you're like, but actually now I wanna change this.

But then you think like, oh, you're just a doctor

and you tell everyone that their kids

are like doing great or like they look cute.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like you're bullshitting me.

I had my deal doler who's helping me get through it

and he confirmed that he was an investment baker.

He'd done a hundred plus transaction.

He's like, yeah, these guys are,

both of them, Facebook and Amazon,

if they give you an offer, they're solid on that.

That will be the deal that goes through.

There will be, if they doesn't close this

because you didn't disclose something

that you then come out later with or you change your mind.

It's not gonna be because of them.

That's the good news of these big companies.

The bad news is deals get hung up

or delayed for all kinds of terrible reasons.

So, you know, I just sort of expect

a deal is always gonna go slower than you want.

It is most likely gonna fall through.

And even when a deal happens,

it's gonna break up twice before it happens.

That is the rule of thumb.

And so I got some great advice from Bollogy

when I was doing the milk road sale.

We had a couple of offers

and one offer was higher on the money

and the other offer was a little lower on the,

or like, you know, I would say,

what was it like 25% lower on money or something like that?

And he goes, okay, well, you're saying you're,

you know, you want to take the higher deal.

That makes sense.

But let me ask you one question.

And he goes, are both of these deals at the same point?

Meaning have they both been,

have you been talking to them about the same amount of time?

Have they done the same amount of diligence so far?

Have you gone back and forth the same amount of times

with them?

I said, no, no, no, the lower deal

we've gone all the way through.

And this higher deal where it,

he just came on super, you know,

they came on super fast and they were really eager

and we got the deal done fast.

I was kind of excited.

Like, these guys seem really committed

because they're moving really quickly here.

And he goes, okay, so you need to apply a discount then.

He goes, the offer is not 25% higher.

In fact, it's probably half as high.

Once you apply the discount of this deal doesn't close

or falls through, you're going to turn down an offer

that's solid for an offer that might be a slightly higher,

but hasn't done the two fall throughs yet.

And so he's like, you need to apply a discount.

He's like, if I'm honest, if I'm discounted this,

it's at least 50% based off of just the normal way

that M&A deals work.

This deal will not be the exact deal that closes.

If it closes at all.

And that was very sage advice.

And it ended up playing exactly out.

We tried to go with the higher offer

and then sure enough, more stuff came out of the woodwork

that gave us hesitation.

And then we were like, look,

this is not as solid as we initially thought.

Or like, you know, we can't just take the headline numbers.

We have to take into consideration the ability to close

and the credibility to close.

And that changed the calculus.

And the way you get around that is you say

the bad things upfront, I think.

As best as you can, you say anything that will ruin it

as early in the process versus as late in the process.

This was great advice.

You gave me, you gave me this advice

when we were going through the Milk Road process,

you go, here's what you're going to do,

because I was going to dinner with them and I said,

you said, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to go there

and you're going to say the following.

You're going to say, awesome.

Sounds like we're all excited.

Now I'm going to tell you every reason

you should not buy this company.

I'm going to show you every skeleton in the closet now

to save ourselves some pain later.

And if anything in here scares you,

I'm happy to either explain it

or if it just doesn't work, then, you know,

we can know now.

And I was like, well, that's the opposite

of how I would have naturally approached it.

So tell me more.

And then I did exactly that.

And after the deal went, so we did that.

And then after the deal went through,

we did a post mortem, like, hey,

that's how you know these buyers are smart.

They're like, what could we have done differently

in our buy?

And I said, same, what could we have done

differently in the sale?

And they were like, one of the best things you did

was at that dinner when you just told us

anything that was bad about the company

and you just proactively said,

here's all the skeletons in our closet

or anything that might look ugly to you.

He goes, that built so much trust for us.

And he's like, from there, we weren't even like,

we weren't worried about those things

because it built so much trust.

And it's a very selfish thing to say.

You gotta do it in a non-manipulative way.

You can't actually do that

and then leave out the real skeletons.

That's it.

It's like the opposite of trust.

So that definitely worked and got confirmed on the other.

But it's a win-win scenario,

which is you get the deal done hopefully faster

than slower and also it makes them trust you,

which you should be a trusted person.

Or the third option, which is you find out earlier

that it's not gonna work and you move on.

You don't waste three months of time dragging it out

when you could have known that up front

if those hasn't been more honest.

I agree.

All right, Ben, what do you say?

All right, next question is,

do you have any updates to Sarah's list

or any new additions?

So Sarah's list is this list is standard for my wife

because at this point it's just its own name.

But basically we made a list of companies

where you could join and have a safe job,

meaning you're hopefully not gonna get laid off

like you would at a 10-person startup

or go out of business.

You can still get paid a lot in salary

and then still have maternity leave

and have a lot of these perks and benefits.

And also your stock, I think,

our requirement is could 10X, is it 10X?

So basically, it's based off your real story.

Sarah joined Facebook, she joined Airbnb

and she joined them not super early

when they were just still in their apartment

trying to figure it out.

It was like, it was working.

This was a business that was already valued at,

let's say a billion dollars or more.

And so it was a multi-billion dollar company already.

You get the fat salary,

you get the unlimited oat milk on tap in the break room,

you get the maternity leave,

you get everything you would want,

but also you get a stock package

that even if you're not even like a AI engineer,

like let's say you're getting 70K a year of stock.

If that thing 5X is,

you could become a millionaire

without ever having done the startup route

just in a four-year vest cycle.

And so, and that was your wife's story.

It was inspiring to me and to you as like,

I feel like nobody talks about this,

but you have to correctly identify the companies

that can 4 or 5X in the next four years.

And so we have this list.

So anyways, they want an update on that list.

But there's a YouTube video of the last time

we did Sarah's list.

I think we've done it twice.

We've done it twice and we actually updated that,

hey, a bunch of the companies we said the first time,

sure enough, I think the average multiple was like,

in exactly the range that we had talked about.

So now I actually think it's the opposite.

I'm calling it Sarah's Exodus.

Basically, there's a whole bunch of companies

that raised money in 2020, 2021

that were at valuations that worked

when the economy was different,

the stock market was different, inflation was different,

interest rates were different.

And now those companies,

it'll take years to get back to that same valuation, if that.

And so now I think it's Sarah's Exodus,

which is what are the companies

where you just have zombie equity?

You are so far underwater on the value of your shares

that not only will it not 4 or 5X,

it's not even good at 1X.

You won't even get what you think it's worth today.

You're gonna sit there for four years

earning that useless stock.

And so I actually think you have to make the opposite list.

What companies raised too much at the wrong time,

at the wrong valuation that are basically upside down.

And you basically will go to TechCrunch

and you put your, when did the bull market start?

You basically say 2020 and 2021 as the peak,

maybe even a little 2019.

And go through TechCrunch and do sort by like year.

Search.

Unicorn.

Yeah, yeah.

And anything that became a unicorn in that era,

assume that the likelihood is slim that it's gonna work.

Until proven otherwise.

Like go to your CEO and say,

hey, what is the fair market value?

What is the actual fair market value

of this company right now?

What is the last money we raised at?

How much total money have we raised?

Oh, we've raised $600 million.

Okay, so we'd have to sell,

the first 600 million if we sold

would just go back to the investors.

It goes nothing to employees.

And how much secondary did you take?

And what type of GWAC and do you have?

What color is your GWAC?

Yeah, you figure out those things.

Did I ever tell you the,

so you were talking about like going to these big companies

and you can get like all you can eat food and shit like that.

Can I tell you about the craziest thing at Airbnb?

So if you go to their, they had like a cafeteria,

their whole shtick was that every single thing

from the ketchup and mayonnaise to the Coca-Cola

to the, all the condiments, the trail mix, everything

was made in-house on-premises when there was an office.

All the food was made right there in the spot.

And it was amazing.

There was a, that's amazing.

I remember the same thing happened at what's it called?

Zynga.

I went to Zynga, I met the head chef at Zynga.

The chef was a manager of like 40 people.

That was the culinary team,

the internal culinary team was 40 people at Zynga.

You show up at Zynga,

first of all, there's like 94 dogs running around.

Insane amount of dogs.

Their logo is a dog and there's two dogs

for every one employee there.

Secondly, 40 person shit.

There's like a dog fighting pit in the middle.

Like people like-

When times got a little rough, Facebook made

the outfit change.

Yeah, there was a little dog fighting ring

that brewed up on the second floor.

And I went into the kitchen and I was walking around

and he's like, yeah, we do our own butchering.

And he opens this fridge that was like a 40 foot fridge.

And there was just-

Like one of the dogs there.

There was just cows hanging upside down.

And I was like, you're gonna break that down?

He's like, yeah, I break that down every morning.

Oh, what's this on tap?

There's no label.

He's like, that's my homemade kombucha.

Like we make our own, we brew our own drinks.

We make our own food.

The veggies that you see, that mushroom,

it grows on the roof here.

And then during the tour, I got a little hungry,

reached out of the pocket, had some Cheez-Its.

I opened up the bag.

Dude, they heard the crinkling of a packaged good

in that kitchen.

The whole kitchen froze.

That's the best, right?

It was like, I said, bomb on a plane, dude.

I was like, I'm so sorry.

I don't know how this got here.

I don't know what this is.

Who put this in my pocket?

And do they still have it, you think?

Of course they don't now, but...

Oh, no.

They don't even have the building.

Dude.

The whole building got sold.

I think the building sold for more than the company

was worth at the time.

I think if you Google Zynga building,

they owned this building in San Francisco.

And I think they sold it for $250 million

at the time when the market cap of the company

was $200 million.

Yeah, it was either that or more profit

than they'd ever generated.

It was one of those two.

And yeah, now it's owned by Take Two,

makes Grand Theft Auto, and NBA 2K.

They own Zynga now.

Yeah, I like those chef companies.

So Sarah's List, I think you got to go get yourself one of these.

If you're not dating somebody who works at a tech company

with all you can eat food, what are you doing?

What's the point?

No perks, bro.

What are the perks?

Yeah, what are the attributes of this relationship?

You need to bring some attributes.

You better be the starving artist, extra hot,

or you have a company that has all you can eat.

You should have seen how many cliff bars.

I was the Pablo Escobar of smuggling cliff bars

out of tech companies for a three-year period.

I had free prosciutto for a year.

I used to like...

I used to call it prosciutto.

I didn't even know what it was.

I was like, find this prosciutto in all the land.

Dude, I used to center to work with Tupperware containers.

Make sure you stay till seven,

because I know there's room for dinner there.

Why are you home so early?

I know that that Facebook dinner didn't start until 5.30.

It takes you an hour to get home.

Where's my prosciutto?

Ben, what do you say?

What do we got?

Do you have any frameworks

for maintaining healthy friendships,

especially when you're separated by distance?

Mine's simple.

I'm in the phase of life right now.

I've got one simple phrase when it comes to friends.

No new friends.

If you're in, you're in.

It's a mental model for you.

Yeah.

Here's your mental model.

Say no to everything.

If you're in, you're in.

If you ain't, you ain't.

What's yours?

Yeah, I'm the same.

I suck at this.

I apologize to my friends.

I'm a shitty friend to them.

They know it.

I do feel bad about it.

But you can only try to be great

at so many things at once.

And okay, I got kids, so.

Ben, what are you still picking

which thing you're going to be great at?

Which one's you going to be?

Try to be a great dad.

Try to make a bunch of money.

And then try to get into incredible shape.

Those are the things I've prioritized right now.

And so friends had to take a little bit of a hit there.

All right, you loser.

What do you say, Ben?

What do we got?

If you were to start a business based on the quirkiest

or most ridiculous idea that you've ever had,

what would it be and why?

Yours is actually good, Sean.

Yeah, did you have an answer for this?

No, because I'm not like that quirky of a person.

Say yours.

The IQ test is actually a good idea.

All right, so I remember,

I met a guy who would sell stars like literally

like a star in the solar system for $25.

He would name it after you.

And I think he would just name it in his own database.

And then I saw this, there's this guy

who's just been crushing on TikTok.

I don't know if you've seen these TikTok ads

where you, they own a small piece of land

in like Dublin or something like that.

And you will officially be knighted as a sir.

Like you'll get official title as sir

and you will own a piece, like a plant on this land.

One foot by one foot, you know, like a plot of land.

So when I saw things like that, you know,

there's really two reactions.

There's most people who I roll

and say this is what's wrong with the world.

And then there's me who's like, man, what's wrong with me?

Why haven't I done this?

And that's kind of where I'm at.

So I would love to just take time

to do some of these stupid things.

Like I want to be the pet rock guy

or like the million dollar homepage guy.

I think that would just be a lot of fun as a challenge.

I have an idea, which is I want to create a new IQ test

because like who doesn't want to seem like they have high,

you know, like a high IQ.

So I think you can build like a D to C IQ test

that people would pay to see how they score

or just go all in on something super woo woo

like a horoscopes, crystals, something like that.

I actually launched a D to C crystal brand

like an e-commerce brand for a month.

And now that I look back,

now that I know what actually how e-commerce works,

that brand was actually working.

I was just too big of a noob to even understand

like, is this good or bad?

Why is it good because people can't return it?

No, no, I just mean like it was working.

Like I was acquiring customers at a good rate.

Like the, I mean, all e-commerce is basically

CAC versus LTV.

It's just, what's the lifetime value of a customer,

the LTV compared to the CAC,

the cost of acquiring that customer.

And actually my LTV, the CAC was actually good.

I just didn't really understand it enough at the time.

I didn't trust it enough at the time.

But my first e-commerce before the one I made

was a crystal one.

Like in my garage right now,

I have like 4,000 rose quartz coasters still

just cause I didn't sell,

I didn't move that inventory, I shut it down.

How much do they cost for you to buy and to sell?

Oh, dude, these are very cheap to buy.

Like, you know, the gross margins are like 75, 80%.

So, you know, you buy it for two bucks, you sell for 10.

It's just like round math, right?

Like in reality, you're selling it for 24

and you're buying it for whatever that math turns out to.

Dude, that's wild.

But like, also you don't want to be a fraud,

which if you're selling crystals, I mean...

Fraud is in the eye of the believer, as I say.

And there are a lot of people who believe

that crystals are good and help them.

Like the reason I had this idea...

I'm not one of them, but I'll sell it to you.

I went and I read, I opened up a magazine like Cosmo

or one of these magazines,

and I was like, okay, I'm going to go look outside

of my normal box for new ideas.

So I went and opened up like Cosmo.

And there's like this two-page spread about crystals.

And it was basically like Adele will not go on stage

until she like uses her Rose Quartz crystal thing.

Kim Kardashian, after she got mugged

for her $4 million diamond ring,

I don't know if you remember this,

she claims that crystals are one of the like,

only things that kept her anxiety down and sooth her.

She keeps one in her bag at all times.

Gwyneth Paltrow from Goop, I mean, obviously,

huge into crystals, do I even need to explain?

So there was like this huge number

of like celebrity female influencers.

Well, and there's the Adam Sandler movie

with Kevin Garnett where he like buys

that, you know, million-dollar black crystal.

Yeah, that's right.

That came out late after I'd done that.

But yeah, basically I saw, I was like,

oh, if Kardashian, Adele, and like whatever,

Jennifer Aniston or whoever these people are,

like if they're all into crystals, like, trust me,

you know, the perfect e-commerce customer,

a woman in the Midwest is going to buy this stuff.

And it was actually worth it.

Some chick named Kinsey.

Yeah, so, you know, Kinsey in Idaho,

she wants to buy that shit out of your rocks.

Like, if you have like a sign that says simplify

or I love us, you're gonna be one of my customers.

All right, Ben, what do you say?

Where are we at?

All right, that one was mostly for Sean.

This one is mostly for Sam,

which is what were the first five big boy moves

you made at Hampton?

The first thing I did was-

By the way, Ben, you gotta say these guys' names.

People who ask these questions, just Joe Watkins.

Yeah, Joe.

Joe Watkins, he asked about Hampton.

I don't know about the first five,

but I didn't buy a domain name.

It was just Hampton at hampton.squarespace.com.

And I sent the link to a bunch of friends,

and then they sent to a handful of other friends,

and then I just reached out to tons of people.

People would sign up on that page,

which was just a type form,

and then I called every single person,

and I interviewed them.

And me and Joe, Joe did like the back end stuff,

but I did the front end stuff of like calling

all the potential customers.

And I must have interviewed 100 to 200 people,

and I was the one that sold

and got us the first million dollars of sales.

And so I called it, I told,

I would, Joe can tell Sean my calendar looked like a zebra.

It was just like constant stripes

of like these 30 minute meetings with the 10 minute break.

30 minute meetings, 10 minute break,

and I did hundreds of them.

And I got us to a million dollars in sales.

What would you do in the 10 minute break?

That's a good question.

Probably just laid on the couch and think I hate this,

and I'm so excited when it'll be over one day.

Like, I mean, it's really hard work.

It's very challenging.

And then another big thing I did was I hired a CEO

because very early on I thought this thing

is gonna be bigger than I'm,

this thing will be exceed my personal capabilities

and skill sets very soon.

So I should hire a CEO,

but getting the first million dollars in sales

is what I did for like two months.

I would say the other thing you did is you,

you nailed the brand and the name,

which is just art, that's talent.

But I think that, you know,

a name won't break you, but it can make you.

I think Hampton is a perfect name

because you borrowed the prestige of the actual Hamptons

and you hired an agency to do like a nice job

with the branding or whatever.

So I think that was also.

That agency I hired was $15,000.

And basically what I did was I sent them

a whole bunch of really old Rolex ads.

And I also said my favorite color is British Racing Green

because that's like, I love that color.

It's like a lot of old cars.

The famous dating profile also.

No, it's British Racing Green.

I love, like I've had motorcycles in that color.

I have all types of like toys in that color.

I like that color.

I go, make it look like an old Rolex ad

and make it and use British Racing Green.

And that's kind of how it came to be.

And $15,000 for you to spend $15,000,

like give people a sense of like,

is that just nothing for you or you just like.

Let's just say this.

You sweat that?

Last Saturday, I drove 20 minutes to return a spatula

to Target for $7.

So yeah, I'm a tight one.

There was a kind of guy that licks his finger

before he, you know, gets out of one to the.

Make sure there's not a second one stuck on there.

That's hilarious.

All right, what do we got?

All right.

Next up is a, this is from Josh Redd who wants to know,

what are the three most common small boy boobs that you see?

All right.

So we have this phrase, no, no small boy stuff.

Okay, what, what is small boy stuff?

The first rule obviously is,

if you think it might be small little stuff, it is.

But besides that, I would say there's the three big ones,

the three big buckets are the three Ws.

Waiting, worrying and wanting.

Anytime you find yourself waiting

to do something that you actually want to do,

that's a small boy move.

That's a small boy mentality.

You're focused on the wrong things.

Worrying, same way.

Worrying hasn't done anyone a lot of good.

You got to know how to do worry.

I think Sam's worried time is a fantastic framework for that.

So go look up Sam worry time and wanting,

meaning like wanting what other people have.

And really like, people are their happiest

when they're grateful, meaning they want what they have

versus wanting what they don't have.

And so I think that if you find yourself in a state of mind

you don't want to be in and that small boy state of mind,

it's because you're probably waiting

to do the thing you actually want to do.

You're worrying about something that might happen,

that might be bad, or you're wanting something

that you don't have that other people have.

You're being bitter, you're being jealous,

or so on and so forth.

So to me, the three W's kind of capture

most of the things that are small boy activities.

Have you ever heard this phrase?

This is, we're gonna get a little Sigmund Freud on your ass.

External locust of control, do you know what that means?

I've heard this phrase many times

and I never have any idea what this means.

Locust is a bug, that's where I started.

And you tell me where to go from there.

Yeah, you're totally wrong.

But so internal locust of control means that,

well let's say an external locust of control

means the way that you feel

and the position that you are in your life,

it's because of everyone else.

So if you have an external locust of control,

you think I am in a bad mood because the traffic is bad

and it's their fault,

or I am, I'm poor because the government won't help me

or everyone's out to get me.

Internal is the opposite, which is I control how I feel

and what I do and where I am in life.

And so I think that there's a direct correlation

between what I consider a small boy thing

of that internal versus external locust of control.

So anything that is, when you say I am the way I am

because I choose to be or I put myself in this position,

I think oftentimes when you're more on that spectrum,

I think it's better than when you're focused on external.

So anything where it's like,

I have to wait until this is ready

or I have to please these types of people or whatever,

that's typically I think a loser mentality.

Yeah, 100%, I was actually telling somebody this yesterday

and I was like, where do you think the power lives

in this scenario?

Let's say there's a plant that's not growing.

Where's the problem?

And what do you suspect the problem is?

I was like, well, I mean, it could be the soil.

All right, soil, so it's the environment.

That's the reason that the plants aren't growing.

No, no, maybe it was just a bad seed.

Oh, so it was kind of like the genetics of the seed

that you would blame for the outcome.

No, no, no, it's just not getting enough sunlight

because there's other plants blocking it.

Oh, so it's others, it's competitors

that are taking the finite resource that you can't have.

What is it?

Where is the problem?

And the answer is really, there is no problem.

You are the plant, just fucking grow.

Like don't blame anything, don't feel lack

in any one of those areas.

Like you want to be, ultimately you want to be the plant

that can grow in any one of those under any conditions

from any seed in any soil with any sunlight

in any competition.

And so what I find is that I get along least

with people who really like over index on,

they always blame the soil.

It's always the city's fault.

It's always the school's fault.

It's always the environment's fault.

Or people who, oh, it's genetics, I'm fixed.

It is the way it is.

All right, or oh, it's the competition.

They're always taking my things, right?

It's like, those are the people I get along with the least.

And even in myself, when I find myself thinking that way,

I get along with myself the least.

I hate myself the most when I think that way.

See, you didn't know what it meant,

but you came to the same conclusion

that hundreds of years worth of psychologists,

took them to figure it out and we're already there.

It's been all the time.

Thousands of years of wisdom.

I just sort of on an afternoon,

can't just come up with a better version myself.

And then I find the words to describe it.

And use the better analogy.

All right, Ben, what do you say?

Where are we at?

All right, we got an emotional one.

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your tissues.

Sam, what is, in your opinion,

the greatest quality that Sean has?

Sean, same question.

What is the greatest quality that Sam has?

That's a question from Griffin Humphrey.

Griffin, good question.

Sean's greatest quality is,

I feel like I don't want to look you in the eye

when I'm talking right now.

Sam, just close his eyes.

Should I close my eyes too?

It's like, there's a ton of ways

that I can take this analogy.

I'm not even gonna touch it.

This is like when you're sitting on a table

and somebody puts their palms out like this

and then you're supposed to put your hands in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's weird.

You don't look people in the eye when you're doing that.

Complimenting each other and going to the bathroom.

Eye contact, it doesn't exist.

We need to sit side by side.

Oh, you're in a mode.

Here we go.

The conversation when you go,

have you ever noticed when you go to the bathroom

with someone, even if you're walking

to the bathroom together,

as soon as the fly goes down, the conversation stops.

The fly in your zipper is like the off button.

And then you shake and you go back and the fly goes up.

Oh, yeah.

You're just right back to the conversation.

That's what this is like.

Sean Best's attribute is that his attitude

is always positive.

So I don't think I've ever been able to,

not that I've done it on purpose,

but I've never gotten him rattled.

And he's very, very, very pleasant.

I think almost 100% of the time,

I've never seen him get upset about stuff.

And that is actually frustrating about him,

is that he doesn't get frustrated sometimes.

But at the same time, I would rather have that

because I'm fairly emotional and I get frustrated easily.

He never gets frustrated.

And so I would say that's his best characteristic.

Internal locus of control, baby.

Yeah, you control your mindset.

The locus is inside of you all the time.

It never goes outside of you.

It's in you.

So I would say that's easily your best attribute

is the ability to stay calm and happy no matter what.

Mine for you would be intensity.

I think you do a great job cranking the knob up

whenever you are into something.

I admire that.

And when I look at all the things that I admire about you,

like the way you're self-actualized in terms of fitness,

or the way you built the hustle,

or the way you're building Hampton right now,

the common denominator is the level of intensity

you bring to it.

So I don't think there's really anything else.

Like it's not like I'm like, oh, you know,

the reason, again, it's internal locus of control.

It's not like I'm like, Sam got lucky because of this.

He's got people helping him and that's why he's winning.

Or he's just born with some talents that others don't have.

It's like, I think you just have a better job

at cranking the intensity to 12 when it's time to.

If you're like, I'm gonna get in shape, you're like, great.

I inject my butt with TRT, build a home gym,

hire a personal trainer, hire a coach,

buy the best equipment, do the, wake up every day,

do the program.

When I'm doing the workout,

I'm pushing myself to my actual max.

And then I'm doing this, I'm measuring everything.

I'm posting publicly so I'm ashamed if I don't do it.

You go the full way.

And it's like the same thing with Hampton.

I told you this, like,

I had had a very similar idea for a peer group thing

years ago, I kind of dabbled with it, tried it, created one.

It was actually going pretty well.

And I was like, I have signed the object over here,

got kind of bored, decided,

didn't really think it was the right thing,

didn't really see the big picture.

To see you take that same idea

and do it at level 12 intensity is such a gift for me.

Cause it's like,

I get to see a without intensity approach to the same idea

and a with intensity approach to the same idea.

And it just shows what the difference is.

And like that is the difference.

And so to me that, and I also wrote,

Sam's got a code and he lives by it.

I think you're a lot more honorable than most

and definitely than me.

And so I kind of admire that too.

What code?

I don't view myself as having a code necessarily.

Do you feel like when you give someone your word

that it's done?

Yeah, it's for life.

Do you feel like that if someone's your friend,

they should fight for you and die for you?

And any small slight is like a loyal stab to the heart.

I feel like if we're in public

and you get in a fight with someone

and you throw a punch, even though it's your fault.

We got in a fight.

Yeah, the person's, it is over.

And then afterwards I'll be like, you're an idiot.

That was really inappropriate.

But yeah, I feel I disagree privately, publicly.

Like we die together.

Yeah, I'm afraid.

The same thing showing up on time.

Like I feel like you have a code.

I don't even agree with your whole code.

I think you're crazy with something

when you go chase down people that broke in

because you're like, no, you broke in.

Now we fight.

We duel.

I'm like, that's stupid, Sam.

You should not do that.

Or you're like, this guy's trying to charge me

an extra $100 because of whatever.

No, we're taking him to Petty Court.

And I'm like, Sam, it's not worth it, man.

Let it go.

So I disagree with your code,

but I love that you have a code.

Because I don't think I really have a code to live by.

All right, what do we got?

All right, really quick.

Let me just tell you guys the last questions

and you say what you want to do, what you don't.

So we got creative renewers you're paying attention to.

We got pros and cons of building in public.

Let's do a creative one really quick.

Who are the creative, creator,

preneurs, that's kind of a weird one.

Creator,preneurs you are paying attention to and why?

I like Isaac French because he's got an awesome name.

Creator,preneurs, someone who's like creating content,

but they're also an entrepreneur.

They're building a business around their podcast

or their YouTube or their Twitter, whatever.

That's what it is.

I like Isaac French.

I hung out with him and I was like,

why are you so purposeful with everything you do?

He goes, that's just part of our religion.

We feel that we just have to be excellent

and that's how we show that God's great.

And I was like, oh, okay.

So I'm not gonna bet against that.

Yeah, yeah.

I like Jasmine Starr, she's a woman who has a,

she's got a software company.

I've met her through Hampton

and whenever I hang out with her,

I feel like I'm gonna cry.

Like she's so intense and she's like,

she describes herself as like a Latino woman

from I think East LA and she's like,

so like I'm gonna like crush all these tech nerds

and I love that attitude.

And I like Jason Yanowitz and Austin Reef.

Jason Yanowitz runs Blockworks,

a crypto company that just raised some money.

I would never bet against him and then Austin Reef.

As I've gotten to know Austin Reef,

the founder of Morning Brew, do you agree with me?

That guy's a straight stone cold killer.

I would never bet against Austin.

I would never bet against him.

He's really impressive and actually my opinion

of Morning Brew, because I was friends with you,

so same, you know, the loyalty test,

I was friends with you,

therefore your enemies are my enemies.

And when you were doing the hustle,

I was like, okay, so who are the other newsletters?

Those are my enemies.

Someone go look up their founders

and they're on my shit list.

And now Austin is a friend

and I actually really think that guy's awesome

and he's super clever and there's a bunch of people

that are like successful, but stupid.

He's not one of them.

He's smart.

He is not one of them.

He's real.

So you see, I give him my-

And he's young.

I always forget this.

I think he's only 27 still.

I think he'll have North of $100 million

before he's 30 years old is my guess.

And he's got a mean lefty hook shot.

All right, so my creatorpreneurs that I'm looking at,

so I try to look at people that are in different bubbles

because I think if I just look at other business,

content creator, entrepreneur people,

I will become the lame Twitter thread boy copycat,

wannabe bitch boy.

That's what I tell myself in my head.

So where do I go look instead?

I look at creators in other categories.

So I'll give you a quick example.

We had Danny Austin on the pod recently

and actually a bunch of people who were listening to it.

I saw a bunch of feedback that was like,

oh, this episode wasn't for me,

Instagram influencer who cares.

And I was like, you guys are missing the point.

Yeah, she's way more sophisticated.

Yeah, I was like, there was golden nuggets there.

So at first I subscribed to her content

because when you look at what mommy influencers

on Instagram do, it's a whole different style of content

that you can kind of steal ideas from

and get inspiration from.

That's the first thing.

The second thing was every other mom influencer created

like, oh, my fashion brand is here,

buy my dresses for the summer, buy my swimsuits,

but whatever, same, same, same, same, same,

merch and fashion apparel.

She picked an incredible business,

which is this scalp care thing

that was perfectly aligned with her story

of why she's famous in the first place

and why people connect with her.

It's this high margin thing with only a couple of SKUs.

It doesn't have any of the headaches of fashion.

It's a beautiful business and it's crushing.

Doesn't, you know, $40 million last year in revenue

without even, you know, pretty significant

without even like a lot of ad spend.

And so to me, there was a nugget of gold,

which is what happens when you align

the perfect project selection.

Like that's an example of perfect project selection

paired with awesome content creator.

What could that business sell for?

That should be a multi-hundred million dollar business.

Like that should be a $250 million business

that they just carry on.

That is a perfect project selection.

I couldn't admire it more.

Perfectly aligned with her

and it's a beautiful business on its own.

All right, others that are more in our niche.

So Pomp, I'm inspired by his level of output.

The guy's a machine.

I'm super weak and inconsistent with output

and he is super regimented,

like I think he's ex-military too.

So like he is super regimented with output.

And I'm also interested in how he's like redefining himself.

He's rebranding himself outside of Bitcoin right now.

And that's something cool to watch.

So I wanna see what he does and what works

and what doesn't there.

Tim Ferriss also very different than me.

He's ultra thoughtful about his brand,

which is the opposite of me.

Like he's measured, he's thoughtful.

He cites his sources.

He is like, he does not say yes to a lot of things.

He's very picky and choosy.

He's the opposite of me in every way.

So I like to see what he does.

Cause I wanna like, you know,

I wanna learn from people with different play styles.

And then Steve Bartlett, same thing.

He's high style.

So everything Steve Bartlett does is cool.

I buy a hat, he buys a hat.

Mine looks shitty.

His looks awesome.

You know, he-

Well, he's also like a six one,

like pretty ripped looking black guy.

I mean, of course he looks awesome.

Everything he does in style.

The way he talks is in style.

The way his podcast trailers are done in style.

His live podcast show,

he's got a gospel choir singing as he's talking

or some shit like that.

I don't even understand it,

but I just know that what this guy does,

he does in style.

I think there's very few people,

just like I think there's very few people

in business who are funny.

I think there's very few people in business that have style.

And so I kind of,

I'm looking and watching what they're doing

and picking little pieces from their game.

Dude, I always look at Steve McQueen.

You know who Steve McQueen is?

He's like this actor that he's dead now,

but he called him like the king of cool.

And I like look at clothes that of he wore

and then everyone wants to dress like him.

And then you see like on Reddit, someone's like,

oh, I tried, I bought the Steve McQueen outfit

and you look at them and you're like,

oh, you look like,

you look like store brand Steve McQueen.

Like, you know, like that ain't good.

Sometimes people just look,

like I'll look at Brad Pitt and I'll look at his clothes.

And then I like see people try to dress like him.

I'm like, dude, you just don't got it.

You know what I mean?

Like no matter what I do, I will never,

you're just better looking than me.

You just, you got the, you got the bod.

That's, sometimes that's how I still feel

about some of these guys.

And I guess we'll put Steve in the category.

When you're, when you got that bod

and you got that face and you're that tall,

you know, you're gonna look good no matter what.

Here's a really quick one.

Someone said, they asked a different question,

but I'm gonna phrase it.

They asked one question I'm gonna phrase it differently,

which is, who do you want to live with?

Gary Vaynerchuk, Elon Musk and Mr. Beast.

And I wanted to say something.

I think they all would be horrible to live with.

Those all three of those guys would be the worst roommates.

Only, only Elon, cause he'll just never be there.

Actually, that's the best roommate.

The guy who's just got the empty room

and you actually got a, you're living in a double,

but it's all yours.

It's like, that's, that's actually a pretty good, good deal.

I've lived with a handful of highly successful people

and I've like hung out with them.

I hate going to their house.

Their homes are usually a wreck.

I hate it.

I wouldn't live with any of these guys.

If I turned the camera around in this office right now,

like, like people would unsubscribe.

The gentlemen agreement would be over.

People would be like,

I never want to hear from this guy again.

If somebody lives like this, like,

think of your worst episode of hoarders.

That's currently what my office looks like.

It's, it's an absolute mess.

That's disgusting to me.

How do you live that way?

I just do, bro.

I just do.

I don't know.

I don't know how I live with myself like this.

This is crazy.

I don't want to be my own roommate.

Your room's like a mullet, man.

It looks great like from this angle,

but you got all this party nonsense in the back.

Well, after I record this, I just leave this room.

And so I never come back and clean it.

I can't stand that.

That's filth to me.

I would not, I could not be around that.

Is that it?

Are we done, Ben?

Did we do a job?

I want to ask one more.

I want to ask one more.

All right.

Because why not?

Kevin Newman asked,

who are the three folks,

you know, who are the three three,

but who are the people that are having the most fun?

I love this question.

I think about it all the time

because you could ask like,

who's the most successful?

Who's the smartest?

Who's the most popular?

I'm interested in having a lot of fun with my life.

I only have so much time on this little planet.

I want to have fun with it.

I want to enjoy it.

And so I think this is a great question to ask.

I got a couple of answers,

but I would be really curious to hear yours.

Cause I think yours would be very different than mine.

Does anybody come to mine off top of your head?

And say a few more words about that.

Rob Deirdic, when I think of what I want my life to be,

it's basically to have a fantasy factory.

So Rob Deirdic, by the way,

he talked a lot about his wife.

Not only does she seem awesome,

former playmate model.

Not only does she seem awesome, she looks awesome.

No, Rob Deirdic, he, I think he has a ton of fun.

And I think that he, I think he views,

I like people who view business a little bit like an art

instead of like a McKinsey like spreadsheet dork.

And I think that this is his art.

This is how he expresses himself.

And I think he has a shitload of fun.

And the way that he's broke all,

he had an episode on fantasy factory

where you like broke nine world records

or something like that, just cause.

I love people who do just dumb stuff

just cause it seems fun.

So I think Rob Deirdic is up there.

You have Joe Rogan.

He seems like he's living his life

by his own chair.

If you take Joe Rogan, you're like, all right.

What are the five things you most enjoy doing?

He's like, I love comedy, love UFC.

I love talking to smart people and learning new shit.

I love hunting.

And then he's just like, cool, that's my life.

It built, he integrated his career,

his life and his friends to be the same thing.

Like his friends are other comedians.

And then it's like, and people in the UFC, his career,

he's like, oh, well, I'll just be the top broadcaster

in the UFC, the top podcaster.

And then I'll be one of the top touring comedians.

Like that sounds great.

Like if I don't make a bunch of money

and I'll get to do my art, like that sounds fun.

And then he drew boundaries.

He's like, yeah, I love the UFC,

but I'm not traveling to like Senegal for this pay-per-view.

Like I only do the ones that are like

within a two hour flight of me, that's it.

Like that's my rule and I'm just going to do that.

And I'm okay with not doing the rest.

And I love that you said, yeah, he's not divorced.

It seems like he's got his head on straight.

Like I really think he's having a lot of fun.

I admire that Bill Simmons is kind of the same way.

He's basically that for sports.

And then my uncle Vinny,

I got an uncle Vinny who's literally his nickname

that was given to him was Smiley.

So he signs all his signatures Vinny quote, Smiley.

And he's just, or he'll just sign it Smiley.

And then like this one, we just met in the banks.

Like, sir, I don't think you can do that.

He's, I don't know, 70 something years old.

And if you hear him, he's like, I'm getting younger every day.

He's like, I'm so excited.

He wakes up at four in the morning with no alarm

because he's so excited about the day.

And like, even though the things he's doing,

like he's like, I'm so excited I'm doing this webinar

about multifamily real estate right now.

It's like, it's not what I would enjoy doing.

And it's not even something that to the outside

sounds super glamorous.

But the point is he is excited about it.

He is having the most fun in his life.

Like he wears what he wants.

He dresses the way he wants.

He talks the way he wants.

He does what he wants with his time.

He travels the way he wants.

And I just feel like that guy, his joy meter

is like, you know, permanently stuck on, on like max.

And so I kind of admire that because with Joe Rogan,

it's easy to say, man, yeah, if I, if I also had

the best podcast and the UFC and all these hobbies

and great friends, like, yeah, I would be having

a lot of fun too.

And my uncle Vinny's a great example

because he doesn't have anything that like is the,

he doesn't have a lifestyle that's like, you know,

some celebrity or something like that.

And he's having all the fun like now.

And I think that's great because he's not waiting

to achieve all this shit to have fun.

He's having it now.

What type of Indian guy has the name of Vinny?

Is that a, are there any?

Well, his real name's Vinno.

Is it like Vinyasa?

His real name's Vinno.

And then he went Vinny to like make it more like

acceptable in America when he moved here.

And then they just were like, bro,

this guy's never stopped smiling.

So his whole company just called him Smiley.

And then, you know, that was like, that was the whole thing.

We, we named one time in Austin,

we had this really bad office that had rats.

And we nick, and we had them and we nicknamed Vinny.

And Vinny was an Italian guy.

Like, and they would come in at night like,

oh, hey, the fact guy left us some cheese.

And that was the name of our office rat was Vinny.

And he, Vinny, Vinny from New York.

And that's what I think of it.

If you haven't named an office rat or mouse,

you haven't grinded it.

Have you lived?

You're not on that grind.

All right, Q and A,

this is the easiest stuff ever to talk about.

So maybe we should just do this every time.

Now I know why Gary Vaynerchuk did that.

The whole show was asked of Gary Vee.

All you have to do is just like answer dumb questions.

Yeah, this was fun.

We should do more.

All right, that's the pod.

Yeah.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.