My First Million: Michael Girdley: Why Fireworks Are A Cash Cow and How to Operate a Holdco Worth $100 Million

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 6/28/22 - 1h 2m - PDF Transcript

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Back to the show.

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
-----
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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