My First Million: Michael Girdley: Why Fireworks Are A Cash Cow and How to Operate a Holdco Worth $100 Million
Hubspot Podcast Network 6/28/22 - 1h 2m - PDF Transcript
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Which business is the best cash cow?
Is it like, you know, the fireworks company where it's like, well, it's open like three
months a year and it just prints, it prints profits for three months and then we like
don't have to think about it for the other nine.
Like, yeah.
That's true.
Which business is the best one and why is it fireworks?
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.
Michael, what up dog?
Sean, where are you?
You're in Tahoe?
I'm in Lake Tahoe.
Yeah.
How is it?
It's amazing.
Yeah.
This place is great.
Is it just a getaway from crypto?
No, it was a Father's Day trip.
So, you know, came out here with my wife's family and yeah, it's been cool.
It's been like at the lake in the pool, all that good stuff.
That's awesome.
So you, Sean, you want to introduce this guy?
Yeah.
Okay.
Great.
So we got Michael Girdley.
Is that the way you say it?
Yep.
Yeah.
Michael's here.
I've been following you on Twitter for a while and I think you almost bought our NFT
for the five minutes of fame, but you got outbid at the last minute.
Is that right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I had a whole plan about it.
I was actually going to shard it and then try to make profit from it and sell it in 15
second increments, but some really rich crypto person came in and swooped it out from under
me.
So.
Sam loves sharding.
I had a huge plan.
I had a huge plan.
And but it worked anyways.
You got on the pod anyways without it because you're a pretty interesting dude.
I've been following you on Twitter mostly because you tweet about Chili's a lot and
I'm a big Chili's guy, huge Chili's fan.
But you also, you kind of fit into this sort of like Andrew Wilkinson bucket, which is
like you run a holdco and you run like a pretty big holdco.
And so let's just give people kind of like your, your rundown.
Here's what I know about you.
You own a holdco, I think Girdly Enterprises is the name of it.
Within it, you have a bunch of different things.
So you will own stuff as funky as like a fireworks company called Alamo fireworks.
You own like a software rollup called Dura software.
You have like a coffee chain, I think.
Is that right?
You have like a drive through coffee chain that's got like three or four locations or
something like that.
And then you incubate a couple of projects.
One of which I used actually recently called near, which is like a way, a easy way to hire
people in Latin America.
And I found this awesome dude, you know, not a plug for near necessarily, but it did work.
It did work exactly as intended.
I found this awesome operations guy for my e-commerce business there, Nico.
So yeah, so that's what you do.
And I don't know, Sam, where do you want to start?
We can go into kind of high level or we could dive into any of the details.
Where do you want to start?
We put together this really good document that explains all the different businesses.
But to summarize, it looks like it's like eight or nine or 10 of them.
And so, so I understand the size.
It's over a hundred million in revenue, right?
And over 750 employees for all eight or 10 of these.
Yes.
Whenever I hear people be like, okay, yeah, my, my kind of the accumulation of the businesses
that I own some percentage ownership stake in is worth over a hundred million dollars
or like a real estate guy will be like, you know, I have a billion dollar real estate
portfolio in my head.
And I'm, I'm sure there's a bunch of listeners who are like this too, they're like, so what
does that mean?
Are you like, are you, are you super loaded?
Is this a, like, how do I think about that number?
Right?
Cause like, you know, if I get a salary, that's the money I keep.
If I run a business and I say top line revenue, that's not the money I get to keep.
So when you own a, you own a hundred percent of your holdco and your holdco owns businesses
that add up to over a hundred million in revenue.
Does that mean you're just big ball of a shot calling?
Are you paying yourself like $10 million a year or more out of, out of the profits of
these businesses or what does that really mean?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, part of the way I've set up the structure is like, I wanted to be very
flexible in terms of strategy.
So there's some stuff in here that's just like compounders, like Dura, for example,
like we want to be the next constellation software someday.
So like I don't, that's just compounding the money I put into that and the effort and
time and I put into it.
Like I don't, I don't get cash flow from that stuff.
But that's by design.
Like I'm just a long-term player and a long-term person on all this stuff, you know, the things
we went through, just kind of the 10 big holdings that I have.
Those are all things that I have 50, 60, 30, 40% of companies.
So it's not like, I told him with you, like I've, you know, I felt stressed being like,
okay, well, I don't want to be the guy coming in and bullshitting about a bunch of numbers.
But also like I'm from Texas and like, like I have a hard time like bragging and being
like, well, okay, here's, here's what my net worth is and here's how much money I make
and all that kind of stuff.
So I'm trying to balance it out to where we can actually get there without getting past
my comfort zone.
So generally, let's, let's not balance that out.
Let's just go to the other end and make it incredibly uncomfortable.
Tell me how your net worth, your checking account number and what it felt like when
you lost your virginity.
You can pick one and go now.
Really drunk for and yeah, let's, let's, let's really get into it.
And it's like, oh, you don't want to reveal, you don't want to reveal your penis size.
That's fine.
Just tell me about your net worth then.
I'll settle for that.
But seriously, there's like a mental model for these businesses, right?
Like some business, like you call it a compound, right?
It's like, if you go into a business like this, you're going to put up, it only takes
X dollars to start and then it takes Y years to kind of get to some good outcome.
Like, I'll just give you like a venture startup, right?
Like I come from the Silicon Valley venture world.
Silicon Valley venture world is you put zero dollars of your own money up, but you're going
to raise likely somewhere between three and 300 million from venture capitalist over time.
You shouldn't expect to see any big money until you exit, which is on average seven
to 10 years.
And so like that's the profile of that versus my e-commerce business took, I don't know,
I put in 600K to start it.
Like that was my first kind of year commitment that I had to put in.
But we can take quarterly profits now, you know, a year or two, we could take quarterly
profits if we wanted to.
We decided to roll that into growth, but we think that by three or three or four, we should
be seeing pretty healthy, you know, quarterly profits that will pay for a sweet lifestyle,
right?
So that's like, just to paint a picture of what type of business you're getting into.
Most people don't know how the hold code business works.
So give me those sorts of like, what does it take to start?
How long do you have to wait to get a payday?
How big are those paid?
You know, are you playing a software game like a VC software game, you can make a billion
dollars.
Ecommerce unlikely to happen, but you can pretty safely make tens of millions of dollars
if you do it right.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think my theory on stuff is it's been incredibly difficult to find good
opportunities over the past five years.
So I've structured stuff that I want to be able to do any opportunity that comes through
the door, right?
And so like, so the danger is say, for example, I run across a fun idea to work on that, you
know, maybe is in the rollup space.
Well, like, like that's going to require outside capital, right?
Dura required outside capital.
My partner and I, who started the business, he's former head of support for Rackspace.
He's a CEO of the business now.
We put up our own money to do the first acquisition.
And then we started when we ran out of money, right after a couple million dollars, we had
to go out and raise money.
And so that's playing that kind of VC compounding game that I talked about, you know, other
stuff like the coding bootcamp that we start, like that pays me money every month.
It's similar to what you're talking about.
So you know, those, the thing I like about those kind of cash flowy LLCs and stuff like
that is like, you know, the upside isn't as good.
Like you can't have a billion dollar exit in that stuff 20 years from now, but you could
start cash flowing really quickly.
So I like to have a blend of all those things because you can't, you can't live on appreciation.
Which business is the best cash cow?
Is it like, you know, the fireworks company where it's like, well, yeah, open like three
months a year and it just prints, prints profits for three months and then we like don't have
to think about it for the other nine.
Like, yeah, that's true.
I'm just saying that out loud.
Which business is the best one and why is it fireworks?
Dude, fireworks.
Here's why I love fireworks.
It was the first business that started my whole platform and I was the CEO of it and
it is the hardest business in the world to run.
Like it, the cash flow sucks.
Like we, we aren't even open yet for 4th of July.
We open in two more days and we've been spending money to get ready for it all the way through
the, through since January the second and you have to predict what's going to happen
in six to 12 months ahead of time and then you have to put up all the cash for it by
all the fireworks, get all the locations out of, we have 200 locations across the state
of Texas and then open them all up and then we really don't break even until about seven
or eight PM on the night of the 4th of July.
So it is, when I ran that business, that was where I cut my teeth as a CEO.
Like it was the hardest business to run to where I went to these other businesses and
people would like pay you before you delivered the service or like, like when we started
the coding bootcamp was the second business and I was like, you mean they pay us before
we teach them the classes?
Like this is amazing.
I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
So every other business feels like it.
How much revenue does the fire one do, fireworks?
It's multiple tens of millions.
Yeah.
No shit.
That makes let's say 20, 30, 40 million dollars selling fireworks for two weeks.
We do it twice a year for the 4th of July and then we do it again for New Year's.
In Texas it's warm enough that actually New Year's is more pleasant than any place else.
Really?
That's amazing.
And that's quite profitable if you do well for the remaining like three hours and not
three hours you make all your profit.
All your profit because everybody shows up at the last minute.
That's the other part.
I didn't tell you.
Yeah.
Nobody buys anything until the last day because consumers have this habit of not doing things
ahead of time.
So that business is actually kind of an ugly business then because it's like you have to
predict things.
And I don't know.
The world is very unpredictable the last few years.
So you have to predict demand.
You have to operate really well in a very tight time crunch like all your demand gets squeezed
into this tiny pipe.
You're putting up all the cash up front.
So you're taking some risk there.
Did you, your clever guy, did you come up with any clever operating hacks to like make
that business suck less that other fireworks people don't really do?
Yes.
We have a bunch of those.
I didn't come up with any of them.
The thing I realized, and this was about 14, 15 years ago, actually really suck at optimizations.
Like I want to live at like 80,000 feet with big ideas and strategy and do what we're doing
right here at RAID.
Like I want to live in an idea space.
And what I realized about six years into running that business was I am precisely the wrong
person to run this business because what you're talking about is just like game of inches
where you have to be like optimizing stuff all the time.
And like I find that incredibly boring.
Like that is the most like that in accounting and HR are like the three most boring things
you'd ask me to do in my life.
And what we've done is a ton of those kind of optimizations like that business has exploded
in the past five years, no pun intended through just getting the right people on the field.
And it means me not doing it because I absolutely in the wrong perfect wrong person to run that
business.
But we do a bunch of different stuff like we brought digital point of sale to that business.
It used to be handwritten for a long number of years.
So some pretty basic stuff that you're like really took that long.
But yeah, we we've done all that kind of stuff.
And it's the it's the royal we it's not me.
How much money did you you said you started this thing with two million dollars of you
and your partner's money and then is the rest like a fund that you raised?
So so Dura was something I started we started with our own money.
The fireworks business I got that the old fashioned way.
It's a family business.
I inherited it.
So that's why you're like how this kind of with the fireworks business I was told I have
a fireworks business now and it's great.
What about the other things that you it's like is each one like its own you raise money
for each one.
If you need to raise money or you just use your own money.
Yep.
Just if if I need to syndicate the deal, I syndicate the deal with other people.
You know what I've learned and I only do is I hate raising money for stuff unless I'm
putting my own money in it.
So I'll put a substantial amount of my net worth and new stuff.
And then when I go out to raise money, I feel like not yucky.
Because I feel yucky, but yeah.
Which of the business.
Okay.
So we thought maybe the fireworks business is the best one.
Turns out that's kind of a pretty, pretty gnarly business.
Which of your businesses would you say is like the most in the cash flow category?
Like it's just so beautiful because it works.
It's just it just worked right away didn't take a ton of money.
It's you know, it's profitable.
It's not like this brutal business to operate.
Which one do you like the best?
Yeah.
The coding bootcamp is the best one.
It's all services, low cap X.
And then I mean the thing I like the most about it like it actually like helps people
like it changes their lives and that's not bullshit by the way.
Like you'll notice a theme like and all this stuff I really like enjoy helping people and
it it's a life transformation thing when people go through that and get a better job.
Clearly you've never had a bottle rocket fight man because those are pretty amazing too.
How big is the.
That is that is low eight figures.
That's amazing and very profitable.
That runs kind of consistent with what we're talking about that 15 to 20% even emergence.
And so so you got a bunch of these so I like your Twitter because you talk about a bunch
of things that I think most people aren't talking about.
My feed is very like I don't know my Twitter feed is just like the same crypto people the
same Silicon Valley people and then there's like five people that are like just you know
different and I think your friends with all of them like that guy Molson I think is like
a total nut.
I find him his feed to be hilarious.
You're kind of a nut.
You're hilarious.
There's this guy Jay Vasa I don't know how to say his last name exactly long Indian last
name.
He's super smart and like you know people just don't follow you guys in the same like to
the same level as I think you should like I'll make a list of these people tweeted out
because I think you guys are all way more entertaining on Twitter than most but I want
to read you a couple of tweets and I want you to just kind of riff on like kind of explain
it but riff on what you what you mean they're like what was the kind of the golden thing
there.
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You had one about going to touristy places but doing non-touristy things you were tweeting
out like you were in China and you're tweeting out like what a paper recycling mill like
what is waste paper from the U.S. where does it go once we like where does the waste paper
go and you like found where it goes in China it was this gnarly factory and so like I don't
know if you can talk about that or just this idea of going on vacation or going to a touristy
place but then hitting the non-touristy parts of that country.
Talk a little about that.
Yeah well that was a I mean that was a business trip like I was there training the team and
helping them go learn how to buy fireworks and like we were just driving down the road
and like literally so the process of going to buy fireworks is there is like a Silicon
Valley of fireworks and it's in China and it's about a two hour flight from Hong Kong
in the southeast of China and you go to this place and like it's the same thing every day
you go the Chinese take you to a fancy dinner and there's always the same restaurant the
same food and then they take you to a factory and then they shoot you some fireworks and
hopefully you buy them and that happens like for six days in a row and then and you have
to drink a bunch of nasty Bijou they just they have like Budweiser Chinese Budweiser
they serve you and it's pretty fun but yeah after like the fourth year doing that like
I was there with with the team and I was we were like driving along and I was just so
sick of going to yet another fireworks factory because they all look the same it's just like
the same little ladies like doing the same thing and all the fireworks workers by the
way are like 70 years old they can't hire young people to work in fireworks factories
it's just crazy and I was like what is that over there and and they're like oh that's
the box factory and I was like a box factory let's go over there and so they pull over
to the side of the road the driver goes in and the Chinese seller just like takes us
in for a tour of this box factory and for me it was just like an opportunity to kind
of push a little bit and like really get underneath and understand like how a culture like lives
and really functions and like he told us like look there they have a problem making boxes
now because they can't put the wastewater directly in the river anymore I was like oh
this is why things are so cheap at China but yeah that's it like just you just kind of
start wandering and then magic happens so that was one of those what type of trip was
that where you bring a bunch of Texas firework workers to China and like I just imagine like
just like what the fuck is this soy sauce shit you know what I mean just like imagine
that conversation that was you must have had a blast hanging out with a bunch of Texas
firework guys and then bunch of Chinese fireworks guys you guys that we really got brought together
there that one I love a blown shit up yeah well I mean I'm somewhat worldly the guy the
guy that we took on the trip actually the CEO for the business is a former a former senior
military officer who's Romanian and lives here in San Antonio now used to work for Aldi
and they didn't know what to make of him like they were just totally confused why we had
a Romanian with us like going through rural China so it's pretty good times have you had
any of these other like have you intentionally gone and sort of gone off the beaten path
to like because I feel like what you're when I look at your your Twitter feed you've sort
of accumulated a bunch of random disparate business knowledge and a lot of this comes
from like oh you see a guy selling something on the street you're like hey so what is this
where does this come from how do you do this right that sort of thing can you tell any
other stories of you know sort of like intentionally stumbling into interesting things because I
think more people should do that and I want to kind of like you know hear some of those
stories hmm it's a really good question I need to think of a good answer I'm glad we're
I'm glad this is being edited when have I done that the most yeah we went down one time
we went down this is super interesting you know our business Dura has some employees
in Medellin and Columbia you know where Pablo Escobar is from so we went down there to just
kind of like start wandering around and like meet our employees and like understand should
we outsource more here and we just started like going around with a guide and just like
asking people questions like what do you think of Americans what is it like here and like
you just start to see random stuff I mean the reason I started the coffee business by
the way is like I was riding my bike around Arkansas and I'm like just riding outside
the Walmart headquarters because like I'm a business nerd and staring at the Walmart
headquarters and like there's this like drive-thru coffee shop there and it was COVID and I
was bored and I so I just sat there for an hour and these guys were just printing money
and I came home and I called my buddy who I'd wanted to work with for years and I was
just like hey we should start a coffee business and he said why and I sent him the pictures
I was like look at all these people they're just like printing money so it's just kind
of this idea of just like for me like like the way I build ventures and the way I find
them is just kind of by like stumbling around like an idiot and then like you end up in
front of the Walmart headquarters and watch some guys sell on millions of dollars for
the coffee so yeah that's another story.
And does you went to the Berkshire Hathaway like summit which I think is kind of like
a pilgrimage for like business people slash entrepreneurs it's like you got to go visit
the Mecca and like you see the old kind of religious you know leader you know the 90
year old guru sitting there and is it worth it should I go?
You definitely got to go at least once I mean it was like so I'm 47 so like I always regret
it I didn't see Jared Garcia before he died and like that was the way I felt about C and
Charlie and Warren and you know it's like one of those things where I was kind of happy
to be there because it felt like a once in a lifetime thing and the people watching is
amazing like it's like it's like the combination of like cash like investing and like a NASCAR
race like it's perfect so that's so much fun doing it.
But it's also kind of you know I feel like going at this point like Charlie and Warren
are getting up there like they're 92 and 98 like the morning you know Warren spent a
lot of time just kind of trying to find his words and then he got into a rhythm and it
was like he was his old self again and it was pretty awesome but I mean I think if you're
a capitalist you got to go once you just got to go once because you're just like it's
just such it's just such an insane experience seeing these people so devoted to the company
dropping $250 on a pair of Roper boots or Justin boots and then walking over and drooling
over like how they can buy like a Sunbeam boat like it's just like just the coolest thing
so you got to go at least once.
Sam have you been?
No I was invited to go I think you and I were invited with Sieve and Suley and I didn't
go is I guess I I guess I would go just to see it dude those guys are old aren't they
like isn't Charlie Munger like 93?
98.
Oh my god yeah I got a good next year it would have to be that yeah I guess next year would
have to be like the last one maybe.
You got to go just to watch him and see how much peanut brittle he eats in a four hour
setting like it was unreal the guy ate like four pounds of peanut brittle and when I like
live tweeted the thing like it was like I can't believe he's still eating this much
peanut brittle I'm 47 there's no way I could do that he was just sitting there pounding
it the whole time.
That peanut brittle from Sieve is fire I feel that it is pretty amazing.
These guys have like the most success and they do the opposite of what every like you
know success coach and like motivational entrepreneur does you know tells you to do it's like you
know they're like you know it's like if you go on Instagram it's like oh I need to you
know wake up at 5 a.m. I need to you know meditate I need to do my ice plunge then I need to
do my crossfit workout then I need to like you know do my daily gratitude journal then
I need to do my like hyper focused chamber where I go and I figure out my priorities
for the day then I need to like speed read and listen to my podcast on 2X speed and these
guys are basically like you know they somehow made it to the beginning of the richest people
in the world lived until they you know until they're about a hundred years old and they
wake up every day they eat McDonald's breakfast eat a bunch of M&M's Diet Cokes and then they
read and play bridge all day and like go for walks and you know that's where they get
their ideas from and so you know I think there's something to what they're doing I think it's
a you know I think they're still alive because they're low stress despite what they eat and
I think they're they're smart thinkers because they don't overload their brain with information
like I'm guilty of and I think a bunch of people are when you when you're hooked into
social media you're just constantly consuming info what of your of the things in your the
things in your portfolio which company besides the besides the boot camp are you like this
is just the greatest thing ever I'm so happy we own this I more people should know how
easy or not easy but how straightforward this business on it feels like I'm winning
an easy mode yeah well I think the near business so it's higher with near.com so it actually
this is a this is the this is the apex of what I want for girdly existence to be which
is I want I've gone from starting businesses myself and working in them then starting businesses
and having other people work in them and this is one that has started basically with me
doing no work but I have substantial amount on the cap table like it's the apex of girdly
automation like I'm always scaling stuff so the near business like we looked up and like
like I I'm in a CEO peer group and like none of my peers could like hire people like it
was the past couple years are just such a mess and then I'd ask them what have you considered
hiring overseas and they're like I don't know how to do that how would I do that so we we
basically I took one of my associates and I said hey we should go build in this direction
there's this huge wave and here's this problem let's go try some stuff and see what happens
and that business I like so much just because everything seems like it's on easy mode because
everybody's offshoring like everybody wants to do this it was that way when the economy
was going well now it's even more so when the economy is going poorly and I've hired
personally of my associates I have three of the six that work work overseas I've never
met a person it's like the best and you partnered with someone to make this according to the
about page right yeah so Hayden is started as an associate of mine so I hire these people
I call them associates and it's basically an entrepreneur in training program so I like
mentor them through I pay them a salary and then I help them like get out of the like
12 bad ideas that every entrepreneur has to get when they're 27 years old I help them
like think through all those and then we work on a good idea together and then at the end
of it they can either start a company with me or they can go take a job or whatever and
so Hayden and Franco were two of the guys in that program and like I'm on the cap table
with them like I put up the money and have been guiding them through it but they've done
all the work when you're hiring CEOs how much equity do you give them and how much how much
do you pay them and how do you incentivize them to want to stay with you for a long time
yeah so totally depends upon the situation you know obviously if a business is much more
established or demands somebody who's like much more like like mature that that makes
a situation where oftentimes you have to come up with more my best situations are when I
can partner with somebody so all this stuff I'm in while I have significant stakes in
it I have other people on the cap tables like that's one of my like I feel like superpowers
like I can just like maintain partnerships like I have 100% success rate on partnerships
with people so the absolute best way is if I can get somebody like Paul at Dura is to
be like a co-founder and the absolute best way of that is if they're a co-founder and
they put money in it like me and then they make that their job like that's the absolute
best skin in the game kind of outcome but you know you can have anywhere from a 27 year
old who will make 60 to 80k a year plus benefits to some of these people who are much more senior
like our coffee our coffee person you know he worked at 25 years at Circle K and he's
running this he's running that business he obviously needs to make much more money than
that and then the equity really depends totally depends on the opportunity depends on how
much skin in the game they want to have what level of commitment they have and how early
they're coming in the venture but it could be anywhere from 40% to 20% to 5% and why
does let's say for Dura why does your partner want to give you what it let's call it let's
pretend you have 30% I don't know what you have maybe it's 50 maybe it's a little less
let's just say 30% why does he want to give you 30% and he's day to day in it but you're
not right so how do you think about that like value exchange when you're not going to be
the operating person and then they are yeah well I mean so you're asking that question
from the same lens I have which is like being an operator isn't our dream most people their
dream is to be an operator they're excited when we're able to work together and create
an opportunity for them to be their best self right and that's what I see kind of as that
benefit and so and and so I think a situation like that where like you know often time I'm
part of the very early figuring out what the idea is going to be I'm putting up a substantial
amount of money I put up more money than than say the other partners dead we did some debt
to do the first deal like I personally guaranteed it and then the last thing is like like great
teams they have these complimentary things like how much money would you use to fund
a new business so that one was like a couple million and then some of these are like 50
to 100 wow okay so that's you put up a lot of money yeah so yeah it's getting in the
game matters then that also helps me not to try to do too many things like I could just
be like okay like I'm putting real money in this I better really believe in it but like
like the last thing with these operators is a lot of the things I feel like I bring to
the business where it's like strategy insights like best practices and connections like those
are things that they're happy to have somebody along on the journey with them who has the
same level of commitment and wants to be a board member like I don't want their job
and I'm not I wouldn't be good at it so you know I think that's that's the partnership
I end up having with these folks Sean have you heard of this guy named Kevin Ryan only
through you he's like a media right is that the same guy yeah so Michael have you heard
of this guy Kevin Ryan I'm googling him all right so I think they're Mike there's probably
a billion Kevin Ryan so like maybe a baseball that's a baseball player he's the alley four
guy might come up so yeah so listen to this guy so early in his career he worked like
in the newspaper business nothing particularly exciting and then he worked at this company
called double click and he was like the 30th employee there and then took over as CEO and
then double click was sold for like a billion or many billion and it eventually became adsense
for Google so like pretty big thing he told me that he had made like very low digit eight
eight figures he was like it was enough money that like I'm set but like I still wanted
to like create stuff and so him and this guy named Dwight who I think he worked with that
double click they started alley corp and their whole thing was we're going to fund companies
with 200 to $300,000 and all the ideas are going to come from us all the ideas are only
going to be back at the envelope math and we're going to hire someone to get it off
the ground and we're going to give it 300,000 and six months to prove if this is a good
idea or a bad idea and we're going to do it a bunch of times a few of their successes
that they've done this with are Mongo MongoDB which I don't know what it's at now but in
the range of like a 20 to 50 billion dollar market cap publicly traded software business
the second one is business insider which sold for 600 million I think but it's like a big
company now the third one is guilt guilt group which was a clothing company that was huge
it didn't actually work out but it was huge for a little while and I think the fourth
one there's another oh the fourth one is Zola you guys know Zola it's like where you go
for wedding registries I believe that's a unicorn and there might actually be two or
three more of these companies that Ali corp has like founded and basically he was like
yeah so me and Dwight just sit around and we come up with like a cool idea like I go
to a wedding and I just ask people where they bought all the gifts and like he's like I
just had this idea so I knew someone who worked at guilt group who mentioned she liked this
type of business I hollered at her I go hey here's 300k if you can get this going and
you get a small portion but we get most of it you want to try it and that's how it works
it's a he's pretty amazing speechless that's impressive it's like yeah I was like yeah
those guys are really good there's this like hold co model is it's like in vogue right
because it's sort of like to me I worked at a startup studio for a while and that was
like the thing for a period of time probably still is a thing where you build one company
you run it for a while you sell it great now you got cash you still want to do more
entrepreneurial things and so you sell fun to studio we're like we're going to work on
a bunch of ideas and then you try to find like new winners out of those bunches bunches
of ideas and so like you know I worked out of one that's how I got into tech you know
Mark pink is the guy who created Zynga then he created one the guy who created Uber he
created one Kevin rose created one like it's just a bunch of serial entrepreneurs who create
these and they've actually had a pretty poor track record of success and then we see that
so like the hold co mafia is sort of the same where you get you know guys like Andrew Wilkinson
who's got tiny and then you have you know a bunch of other people who are doing their
own hold co versions of that whether they buy boring businesses they buy sweaty businesses
they buy software businesses they buy whatever and you're kind of in that boat you're in
that boat too what do you think is the I guess like how do you think about that you know
in terms of like who do you think should be the type of person who should do this and
what are some of the misconceptions or like traps that people fall into when they go down
this path because I'm sure you've seen a bunch yeah well I mean I think there's two there's
two bad things going on with holdco's right now I think there's a whole group of people
that are doing them and they actually think it's not that much work I talked to him like
so are you doing this to like it seems really easy I'm like this is really hard and the
reason number two that it's like super hard is because this is exactly the opposite of
operations like the everything that you do and all the habits and skills that you learn
when you are a CEO running a business which is where most of these people are coming from
or your senior executive company like everything you do in a holdco is exactly the opposite
like like when there's a problem you don't rush in and fix it for your company you actually
say man that really sucks what are you going to do about that two entirely different things
in terms of the way you approach it so you mean it'll be interesting to see what happens
with all these people who think holdco's are really hot as I talked to most of them I don't
think as many of them are wired to be holdco people as they really think they are like
the me's the Xavier Hulkinson's like like we're odd like we're different people and there's
a reason for that that we're not operators and so to be it'll be interesting to see
what happens with some of these people what's so hard about it you know I think it goes
against people's nature right so like like take me for example like I love to live in
this idea space right and I'm I have like a relatively crappy memory which is like why
I have to write stuff down like crazy but that's different for other people like a lot
of the people that I partner with as operators they look at like what I do as insanity because
they just couldn't imagine letting go of the vine of these particular things going on and
so you know it goes against this human nature where a lot of times like for example those
people like there's this problem going on in the business they want to sprint to that
problem right and they can't imagine even stepping away from it so it just goes against
in my opinion who you are as a person and makes it almost incredibly difficult or impossible
for the many people.
Yeah you say that but at the same time I'm like oh everybody I know is like oh I like
to operate at a high level you know the 10,000 foot view and I'm ideas guy I don't know anyone
that doesn't think they're an ideas guy maybe I'm just running the wrong circles but you
know I don't know a lot of people who are like you know what I like to grind the operating
likes to go grind the day to day optimizations versus I like to be the idea guy who helps
just get it started and someone else goes and does all the hard work you know that seems
like seems like there's a ratio of a hundred idea guys to every one guy who's just truly
loves executing.
You ever heard of Excel dog that's my jam.
Oh no I lived in the Silicon Valley bubble too like I was I fit right in I was great
there and then I came back here to the hinterlands of San Antonio and like I started to see these
people and like I've got buddies who for example are senior executives at the largest private
grocery chain in America HB have you guys heard of this company.
Yeah I love HB it's like my favorite grocery store.
It's insane you should see how optimized those guys are when they're running at three or
four percent even a margins and like they think it's great they think it's they think
it's the beasties.
Tell me everything.
About HB?
Yeah.
What do you want to know?
Like what what what makes it so great.
It all comes down to it all comes down to the philosophy of the family that owns it.
So you have Charles Butt who is the majority owner and then his his relatives are the other
rest of the owners and then they have a percentage that's owned by the employees but it's like
eighty five ninety percent owned by by these guys and so they'll just do crazy stuff like
when they heard when they heard that Trader Joe's was coming to San Antonio so HB is located
here there's an anecdote that they just packed up all the senior executives who were in charge
of product selection location selection interior store experience all this stuff they put them
on a private jet and they flew out to to California and said don't come back until you have the
best of every single one of their products because we need to up our game.
There's another anecdote when Walmart came to San Antonio that HB went and lowered their
profit targets because they're just like we're not losing a Walmart that's just the way it's
going to work and that all emanated from the ownership right.
You didn't have this like public stock people coming in and saying like oh like think quarter
by quarter.
Now you had these folks that were thinking like we've been here for seventy years how
are we going to be here for another seventy years and just go crush it and that goes all
the way down the culture.
My buddy works there and he said it took ten years before people stopped referring to him
as the new guy.
People just stay.
Yeah.
Imagine that in Silicon Valley of all the.
It sounds like to you that like HB is almost like a dream business or not a dream business
but it's one that like you look at and you're like damn that is cool.
That is well run.
I admire a few things about that.
What else do what other companies do admire that most people don't maybe know about or
think about when it's like oh that's actually really neat for these following reasons.
Really good question.
What other businesses are super sexy.
I feel like I've talked a lot about that.
But it's just like things where it's like man this is these guys got it made.
It's hard work but it seems like it's like a pretty fun and I think that what they're
doing has a lot of soul and they're doing it right.
Sam do you have one while he's thinking.
Yeah I mean it does seem like it's a lot of family guy stuff.
I would say do you guys do you guys know black black black rifle coffee.
I've heard of them but I don't know much about them.
I don't drink so I don't really drink too much of it.
I drink the black stuff because the other stuff has a lot of sugar.
They're typically drank by like conservatives like they've like do that they've done like
they advertise on Fox they've done like a good job of it like like this is made in America
it's all about freedom like that whole thing which is well you know whatever that's cool
and but they're like yeah let's sponsor rally dirt rally race cars and I asked them I was
like why and they're like because it's freaking awesome and like what's the point of like
having this company if we can't do dope shit like you know go to a go to a rally car and
give out our coffee and or they'll do it with like mountain biking races or they'll do it
with like they make all this all this cool content where they're just like doing like
the redneck version of Red Bull stunts you know like and I think that's awesome I love
that stuff.
And to me I imagine in their heads they're like yeah they're like we kind of care about
coffee but we really just care about living a really cool amazing life and letting people
have fun and it just so happens we're we're selling a bunch of coffee allows us to do
that.
So that's a good example of a business that I like and they took it public and it's worth
like six or seven hundred million dollars so it's like really successful.
Yeah they're located here in San Antonio have you seen it's it's super cool that that business
you think it's like a coffee chain and it's actually just a lifestyle brand.
It's all like you go into the stores and there's like a little coffee thing on the side and
then it's like all t-shirts and swag and it's good looking stuff like I'm not like they're
demographic obviously but like it's super fun to like go in there and be like man these
guys like I'd wear that even though it doesn't represent me.
I like them a lot.
Sean do you have one.
You know I do have I do have a couple I like to I kind of admire like oh shit that's simple
I like when it's really simple and the person has has like good life perspective.
So the guy came on the podcast Mike Brown I met him through you I met him I went to the
hustle office and he was he was just sitting there hanging out with you and and you were
like this guy's great you know you know what's great about this guy and I think Sam you probably
know the story a little better than I do but like what they did was they would go around
to families in Texas that that were like basically living on a gold mine right it's like they
were living on some valuable deposit of you know minerals or oil or whatever and they
would go knock on doors and they would say hey you know you you're living on this land
I'll like we'll pay you for the land rights in some way and they would go of those assets
and then they would never go do the oil mining or oil drilling themselves and then flip that
to the oil company and say hey look we got the title rights you know clear and easy that
are in the earth and they were making a killing so they were making you know I don't know
almost almost a hundred million dollars doing this is that right Sam yeah I believe it was
multiple eight figures in profit a year with like a team of like eight people and they're
like yeah so it was super profitable super small super simple it was like well basically
we go knock on doors we call people and we explain what we're doing and then we make
them an offer that they can't refuse like you know they're not going to do anything
sitting on that land and so you know it to me I'm like this is so simple you compete
with pretty much nobody and then you and then he was like I was like so you it looks like
your brother is working the business like how's that working with family you know some people
say different things about that and he was like no it's awesome he's like I love my brothers
he's like you know he's like my my philosophy is you you know you find the people that you
love and you do life with them and he said that they kind of changed the way I operated
I was like oh yeah who are the people I want to do life with and like you know just kind
of pick the five people who are the most awesome and then find excuses to do life with them
that sounded really simple I love Sam I'm gonna do a podcast with Sam and it's like
oh our buddy Ramon's awesome cool I'm gonna go on vacation with Ramon or you know like
you want and like you know hey this person is awesome why don't you come work in one
of my businesses right rather than just go work in your own job so I really liked I kind
of admired that philosophy and I admired just the like sheer profits of what they were doing
and how simple it was and how it didn't require you know genius or like honestly I'm sure
he felt like he was working hard but it's not that hard like it's not well he used to
say he was like everyone we hire we make him get the cycling because we all we like going
bike riding for two hours in the middle of the day he's like we all we all want to go
for we all want to go work out yeah yeah so I kind of admire people who are the anti-hard
work crowd because I'm more of that like you know can you work smarter not harder and then
can you even like not feel like you're working can you turn it into play by you know having
people who are awesome you know doing it with you so I like that example the other one is
Bill Simmons who started the ringer like I really don't think media companies are very
good business and you know ironically just started a media company but like Bill Simmons
is fucking awesome and he kind of changed the game for what he does like every sports journalist
did things one way he just did it differently and built his he built his following sort
of unapologetically and what does he do differently so he just like he wrote from the perspective
of a fan and that sounds actually that's actually giving it too much intellectual credit actually
what he did was he was like all right what are the rules if you're a journalist it's
like you need to be objective he's like how can I be objective dude I follow sports because
I love the Boston Red Sox I love the Celtics I'm from Boston I grew up my dad used to take
me to the games he's like I'm gonna write as like this diehard fan and when my team
wins I'm gonna be so happy when my team loses I'm the sky is falling he's like that of course
was super relatable to a reader because that's who your reader is it's like a diehard sports
fan so he like didn't pretend to be objective that was like the first part then he would
be like cool I'm also not just like this flat thing that like I can only like talk about
sports so he's like oh you know I love the diehard trilogy so he'll write a column that's
like you know if NBA players were characters in diehard here's who would be Bruce Willis
and diehard too and like you know he would do these crossovers that didn't nobody else
really took those risks it sounded crazy like Sam you know me you and me both watch the
MTV's the challenge he's like a huge challenge fan and he'll talk about it he'll do a separate
podcast about it even though the audience is kind of niche but it's so niche that when
it hits it hits in a very big way like it's a high like emotional score when he does talk
about something you get you that you're in on the joke like the trade value or the mail
bag one of your business heroes and anyways then he spun off did his own he was doing
podcasting before it was popular before it was like an obvious thing and so when he he
recently sold the whole company to Spotify for like 200 something million but you know
that I kind of admired that because it was like he deserves that he was podcasting before
podcasting was a thing and so yeah he now has the number one sports podcast and he can
cash out and all along the way there was never really any plan you could draw up how that
podcast was gonna make the guy 200 million dollars someday it was like that was an unfathomable
thing but he did it because he again it's kind of like your black rifle example it's
like yeah I'm just gonna do it because I think it's fun and it's cool shit and like I kind
of believe in this magic for this philosophy that if you take a bunch of cool shit you
put it in the in the hat you kind of mix up the hat like something really good comes of
that and you don't have to be able to draw it out you know ahead of time so I kind of
I tend to love examples like that because I want to live my life more like that where
I just do things without so much of a of a of a mind map of exactly how it's all gonna
pay off dude I love that I think I saw this amazing quote I'm trying to find it but it
was from Kanye and he was like saying I despise people who do things I can't find the exact
quote but he's like I despise people who do stuff and they don't want it to be dope he's
like I want to if I'm gonna do a clothing if I were to do a clothing company I'm making
it dope even if that means I lose money I'm making it dope I'm making it awesome he kept
using the word dope and he's like I'm just gonna do stuff because it's amazing and yeah
it'll probably make money but for all the people out there who just do stuff just to
get the money but they don't want to make it awesome in the process I think that's really
weak and not cool and not dope.
Have you heard that Dave Chappelle story he tells on like some late night show about
Kanye?
Yeah tell it my life is dope.
Yeah I don't remember the exact phrase he's like I was hanging out with Kanye then Kanye
got a call who was it somebody called them who was it?
So it was Kanye was backstage with Dave Chappelle and Jay-Z and Kanye was just coming up and
he was playing a Jay-Z song and Kanye's verse comes up and Kanye's like the noob in the
room and he goes wait stop that track rewind and that and listen to that guy and he like
made him rewind and then he's like they're like dude what are you doing man you're not
like the you're not the big shot here and then he gets a phone call and he goes oh hello
yeah yeah that's fine but uh can I call you back uh yeah well I'm backstage watching never
seen before clips with Dave Chappelle yeah because my life's dope and I do dope shit
and then hangs up and then that's yeah exactly I love that story that is the best and also
um like that philosophy is actually kind of amazing first of all to believe in your own
life being dope like how many people think that their life is dope that they are dope
and they do dope shit and therefore they have a dope life like most people don't give themselves
that credit and you know they're kind of waiting for dope stuff to happen for them to be able
to say that.
Kanye's the opposite right he's crazy in a bunch of ways but one of the good ways he's
crazy is that he just declares my life is dope and I do dope shit and guess what you'll
kind of live up to that reputation if you believe that about yourself right like if
you say you know um you know I take chances you know I'm bold I take to I take bold risk
well guess what you're gonna actually take the next bold risk when the opportunity presents
itself because you've kind of hardwired yourself to have that identity when we were Sam you'll
like this at Bebo when um we hired this guy Jason Hitchcock and Jason was Jason's the
best person you can hire because he will believe in you and to cause 150% like he'll believe
in you and the mission if you're like his boss and your manager or whatever like more
than you believe in yourself and he'll believe that the company's gonna work even more than
the CEO's gonna believe he's like I call him a Kool-Aid drinker like he drinks the Kool-Aid
and he's not ashamed to do it and so he because he's like an amazing person to have at a startup
when there's a actually a lot of people have a bunch of doubt and uncertainty in their mind
and so one day I was talking to Jason and we were like um the hustle con was coming
around around the corner and I was like I think I'd message you I was like I want to
talk at hustle con and I think you were kind of like yeah like I don't know we got a bunch
of speakers already kind of blew it off you're like you know we know and uh and I was like
alright fair enough but I asked and I was like I was like Jason next year we're gonna
talk at hustle con I was like in fact not just next year we're gonna talk at hustle
con in fact everything we do this year I want you to think about how it's gonna play at
your hustle con talk you're gonna give when you're gonna give this talk about how we grew
from one zero to a million users how we took over the game in our industry like I want
you to not just wake up and be like okay today I'm gonna send out a bunch of emails it's
like I want you to think about how this could be part of your talk like how I landed the
big fish through cold emails or how I you know growth hacked my way to do X and we used
to talk about that literally on a weekly basis like this is part of the hustle con talk and
it was just to hype ourselves up to like do the more dope version of the task we were
already gonna do because like imagine you're gonna talk about this on stage that means
it must have turned out pretty dope or you must have done a pretty dope attempt in order
to have that mindset and I still carry that to this day of like that's a pretty cool way
to work here's the here's here's the quote by the way so this is from Kanye he said
for me dopeness is what I like most people who want to make things as dope as possible
and by default make money from it the thing that I like least are people who want to make
money from things whether they're dope or not especially make money from making things
the least dope that's possible and I read that quote and I was like yeah we need to
make the intro of the podcast find a clip of Kanye saying that out loud and let's make
that the opening clip of the podcast the other thing we did by the way that's in this bucket
that I highly recommend people do is it's tempting to say we should do cool shit yeah
blah blah blah and then like fast forward a month every feeling tight about the budget
or the deadlines or the the the goal numbers are not being hit or whatever it's very what's
the first thing you cut is the stuff that doesn't easily map to this quarter's result
and and so we separate we created a separate do cool shit budget it was 15% of our total
budget we put into a do cool shit bucket which the outcome of it had to be where I lose that
bebo and then I try to do this also at twitch where which was like hey whatever the number
is that we have to spend 15% is going to be on cool shit that we cannot like it doesn't
have a measurable immediate payoff so that's like the criteria you can't it can't be used
in this much like like making a flamethrower like making a flamethrower or like you know
I don't know if you saw we did the milk red rebrand or whatever and I paid this guy to
make this little video that's like this mock apple commercial and like it doesn't do anything
it's not going to drive subscribers it's not going to like make revenue it's I mean in many
ways it is arguably a waste of time and money to just like pay the guy to do that and even
think about the concept and all that but I've always had this with my companies which is
like I need 15% I was like at the very least this is just to keep myself amused and engaged
and like a fan of my own business and because I know if I'm like the more if I'm just more
engaged in my own business I'm going to do that part will pay off and at the other side
it's like I think your consumers the customers of your business also pay attention to that
if they see you doing dope shit just for the sake of doing dope shit they kind of see you
as the cool kid in school in a way right like if you're always just begging for for customers
or users are doing a discounted sale or like saying please please please follow me please
please please subscribe like you're kind of our low status in a way and I think at the
hustle you guys did a good job at this too did you do you have any examples of this yeah
like we did stuff early on that we kind of like people got mad at and I was like they're
like you're gonna lose money lose customers I'm like yeah but it's hilarious like one
time we wrote in time we wrote entire email in Trump's voice and so we're like imagine
like if you read it and you were saying it out loud like that it was like you were Donald
Trump everybody loved it everybody's saying it's the best people saying that they're saying
it's the best yeah like that's how it that's how it that's like how it was written and
then another time this was like pretty vulgar but it was pretty funny we wrote the subject
was here's the only tip that you need to know for how to be productive today at work and
you open it up and it was just that picture of Johnny Cash where he flicks off the camera
and it just says close this browser and get back to work and that was that was that was
that was the e-mail we sent that to 120,000 people we didn't even like we didn't even
we didn't even send an email and then maybe one final thing this woman Lindsay worked for
me and she sent the Tuesday's email on Wednesday which is like a mistake she's like shit she's
freaking out and I was like here do this I wrote in Slack I was like hey you know I heard
you sent the wrong email she replied in Slack yeah my bad is really messed up I go we got
to talk but until then just like fix it and she replied with like well what should I do
I was like I don't know man just put the new email in and send it again just take a screenshot
of this and like put them on no understand I'm sure and he goes and she replied with
something like funny and that was just the screenshot that's one at the top of the email
there was no explainer right and so we would do like little things like that all the time
what about you Michael are there any companies that you look at that kind of fall in this
category it's super fun why did I did find one to talk about the have you guys done pop
sockets before you talk to that we have not talked about it now yeah it's a crazy story
so it's the it's the little like you take the the back of the case of your phone and
you put the little ring on it well that's patented and they're called pop sockets and
they're very litigious so this is started in 2014 and they sold 30,000 of these things
so they're you know 10 or 12 bucks whatever but then they got really popular and people
the Chinese started trying to knock them off and sell them on Amazon all this stuff and
so it was a UC Boulder professor and by 2017 they sold 35 million of them in 2018 they sold
60 million of these things so all because they have a patent on this little way that
you know teenage young girls in Orange County want to grip their phone like they're just
printing money so supposedly in 2018 they had 200 million in revenue and 90 million in
profit all because of a patent it's one of the great one of the one of the greatest yes
I know this is true because I got it off of Wikipedia when I researched this a few months
ago yeah that's that's amazing got to be several hundred million at least I mean they got to
keep drawing every lady I know has one of those things fit your nails in there it's great
that's crazy man that I knew those were big I didn't realize they were that big Sam you
want to know a little realization I had today when Michael was coming on I was like alright
what do I know about Michael I was like he does that like Chili's little shtick where
he's always like you know you know the only thing I don't even I don't know how I would
explain it but you basically just find an excuse to name drop Chili's and say how great
Chili's is and like why it's the best place for a meeting and like you're just like you
know oh my god you know so happy for you know Mother's Day I love my mother but not as much
as I love Chili's right like you just like come up with some way to like integrate Chili's
in and so I don't know if you've seen this but I actually me and Ben talked about this
once we go when we were like trying to build up my brand it was like alright I got this
podcast brand to you I got a Twitter it was like you know a few thousand followers at the
time it was like what should we do to like build a brand so I we did this one like you
know two hour exercise we just looked at people who had good brands we're like what are what
are people what's some common things that they do and one of the things we found was
that a lot of people have early on in the tech industry like or like sorry like early
on not early on the tech industry that's like in the 70s or some shit but like early on
when I got into tech I was following some people on Twitter and and I saw this guy Ryan
Hoover and he seemed interested he was blogging he started this thing called product hunt but
Ryan would always it was always Phil's coffee and LaCroix like he would always talk about
Phil's coffee and LaCroix and in fact like LaCroix kind of became like a startup meme
I really give Ryan a lot of credit for it because he was always effort talking about
LaCroix and then when product hunt got popular it just like accelerated the like the LaCroix
meme in the community as like you know what's like low key great LaCroix and like and so
he had LaCroix and then I don't know so Pomp Pomp does this thing with Domino's all the
time where he's like he'll do like a Domino's Pizza he always says like Domino's is the
best I think and and he's just like and it's kind of this thing where you get this serious
business persona in one way but then you show this like human side and it's like oh I'm
just like I love this thing you know I don't know if yours would be like Topo Chico or
something like that like you used to like kind of pip those out Michael's got Chili's
we got to make ours Cheesecake Factory yeah like I was like Chick-fil-A Cheesecake Factory
we need something that's like our shtick that's like you can't just be false like you gotta
genuinely have that love for it the only part that's the shtick is that you talk about it
and you don't really talk about it's like you're serious serious serious Topo Chico
because it's like you know this makes the cut it's that important to me it's that good
it is I'm that big of a fan you're like Michael oh I had a great time you know what let me
know when you're when you're in Austin we'll go out sometime for some Cheesecake Factory
and maybe get the chicken piccata we'll have a great time is that a menu like page 14 of
the menu or 57 delicious menu so I think I think when you pick this thing the thing
I would recommend it's got to be something that's well okay so here's a story for you
so I'm 25 years old and I'm finally figuring out how to talk to women in my life like it's
like I had not figured it out at this point and so my buddy and I decided to start going
to parties and we would dress up in suits and this is like when everybody's like dressed
in like grunge like in San Francisco like so it didn't work so we show up dressed in these
fancy suits and it was just odd enough that the women would be like why are you guys doing
this like it's just it's just slightly odd right and so I think you need to figure out
what's it called peacocking yeah okay I could have been one of those like with the pickup
artists guys who needs to do this holtco stuff I could be a pickup artist I have I could not
do that anyway I don't I don't like hair gel enough but anyway the I think you got to figure
out something that's just a little bit odd you're like why does this like technology entrepreneur
in San Antonio like chili so much so if the cheesecake factory is that I think you're good
but whatever it is it's got to be just a little bit like that they're like why are they why why
are they wearing suits to this party like what's going on it can't be cool yeah that's the first
thing it can't be cool because if you're just trying to say some fad that like everybody
thinks is cool that now you're just hopping on a bandwagon you have to say something that's
actually not so cool like for me like the genuine one would be Cinnabon like I fucking love Cinnabon
nobody even thinks about Cinnabon so that's the corner for Cinnabon is open I could take that corner
you know that's a that's a piece on it's a piece of land on the on the board that that nobody's
touching right now I could just pick that up for cheap and but the people who but people do know
it it's kind of nostalgic and it gives people something to like something that they can gift you
someplace they can offer to take you someplace that every time they go there or see one they
will think of you like every time I drive by a chili's god damn and I think of Michael Girdley
right and it's like same thing with the LeCroix and Ryan Hoover it's like they own that mental
real estate in my mind and so Sam we could do that with Cheesecake Factory we could just
every time someone sees it they see us have you heard A2 milk whole milk
no no a lot of the parents are like feeding their kids called I think it's called A2 and I bought
it from Costco because my friends were saying how good it was it's this thick and I just love to
sit down and have a fat glass of that whole milk at night and it is nice and nice and thick I just
love that thing man so A2 whole milk from Costco Kirkland brand A2 milk that's the way to be
you definitely should do that that's a great idea best that in the milk thing yeah two best ideas
are all right thanks for coming on man wait wait he's got a problem to promote himself
what's his handle at Girdley on Twitter say well thank you thank you for coming on that was awesome
Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.
Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk to tech investor and entrepreneur Michael Girdley (@girdley), about selling fireworks, how to hire great CEOs, and what it takes to operate a successful holding company.
Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest.
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Links:
* Michael Girdley
* Near
* Alley Corp
* Zola
* Black Rifle Coffee
* Pop Sockets
* Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.
* Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter.
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Show Notes:
(05:00) - How rich are you?
(08:55) - Which business is the best cash cow?
(15:40) - Waste paper mill in China
(21:30) - The anti-advice of Berkshire Hathaway
(27:05) - Hiring great CEOs
(32:50) - What it takes to run a holdco
(56:40) - Unpopular opinions
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Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
* #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
• #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
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