My First Million: Million $ Quilting Empire, Babyville, USA, And Rapid Fire Business Ideas

I go, what do you want me to say?

He goes, I want you to say what's on your mind.

Well, what you really feeling?

And I go, I'm feeling nervous.

He goes, why?

I go, because I want you to like me.

The truth came out.

I was like, I want you to like me.

And I'm like, oh my god, what did I just say?

And he pauses and he goes, that's no truth.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like the days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

All right, what up?

We got Ben Levy here.

Sam is out today, but my business partner Ben.

So we got producer Ben, who's Ben Wilson.

And then we got business partner Ben, Ben Levy.

And Ben is here today.

We got a bunch of topics that we want to talk about.

But first, welcome to the pod.

Yo, what's up, Sean?

How's it going, man?

I'm good.

Your dad, who's a regular listener,

is going to be pleased because he's going to hear you on here.

And I'm sure he always sends you a huge text message of notes

every time you come on.

Is that right?

Yeah, it's more like six emails.

He'll be like, hey, did you hear Sean say this thing?

Or did you hear Sam say this?

Or did Sue Lee say this?

And I'm like, love the notes, dad.

So you were just in San Francisco last week.

And we did a bunch of meetings.

We hung out, worked a bunch.

And then we hosted a meetup.

We hosted a private dinner.

I wanted to start with that.

So I wanted to start with, give me as many nuggets

of interesting things that came up, people you met,

stories you heard, products you heard about,

whatever you got from your trip to San Francisco.

I'll let you take it away.

Yeah, so the first thing that comes to mind

is when San Francisco is awesome.

But two, went to the Warriors game.

So we went to the Warriors game on last Monday

with this guy named Al Doad.

I think he's been on the pod.

So for people that don't know,

Al is the founder of a quilt company.

And he said one thing.

Sean, I'm sure you could talk more about Al.

But I think the one thing that he said,

that was pretty interesting.

By the way, Ben just said quilt.

So because you said it in passing,

I think people wouldn't even register what you just said.

And actually, the way we met Al was pretty interesting.

Patrick Campbell came on the pod.

And Patrick Campbell runs like a,

he had ProfitWell, which like does like SaaS payments,

analytics and all that good shit.

So he has data on what companies are crushing it

in terms of their subscribers and their payments.

And he had told us that quilting is a huge niche.

And he came on the pod, he mentioned quilting.

And from that, we found Al Doad,

who basically runs a multi-hundred million dollar

quilting business that he co-founded with his mom.

So that's the setup, but continue.

Yeah, I think his mom and like his four brothers and sisters.

So it's a family, it's a family affair.

So we hung out with him.

The last time we hung out with him was camp MFM.

And I think Al's an interesting dude.

One, he's like six, seven.

So he like skies over you at every time I see him,

I think he could have played in the NBA.

But he said one thing that really,

one, his business is doing great,

but two, the thing that he said

that really raised an eyebrow for me was

he's in the Harvard Executive NBA program.

So most people, when I hear the word NBA,

I think immediately that it's stupid.

I just think it's a waste of money

and you should go build something

instead of they'll get an NBA.

But he was like, yeah, I just hung out

with the air of crystal geyser water.

So the place of the water,

basically every water bottle you ever see

in the airport or convenience store.

And Sean and I were both like, wait, how do you know them?

And he said, like the woman is like, you know,

basically it's an old French couple or something like that.

Like he's like, yeah, I was hanging out with my friend.

She's French, she's older and blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, how do you have this like old lady French friend?

Where did that come from?

He's like, oh, I did this Harvard NBA thing.

And Al's like personality

is not what you would connect with Harvard NBA.

First of all, he does a quilting e-commerce business.

So that's like not like a fancy pants, you know, Harvard thing.

Second, he's this big dude with a beard

who lives in the Midwest and he's like super funny.

He's basically like, you know, Will Ferrell slash Vince Vaughn.

And so you just don't see him as a, you know, as a suit.

But he did this suit thing.

And we were like, wait, is that a good idea?

Should I be doing that?

That was my takeaway from it.

Yeah, I was like, we should definitely be doing that.

I looked it up.

I think it's like a $50,000 a year program.

They take like 30 people and everyone in there

has a really successful business.

So definitely should be doing that.

I think he said it's all people who's business.

Yeah, I think like the minimum bars,

like your business does 10 million a year.

So like, you know, that's like the minimum sort of like norm.

He goes, it's people from all around the world

because international people like value brands higher.

Like if you ever seen a Louis Vuitton store

that's just full of Chinese people,

it's like international people really love American luxury

brands and Harvard is an American luxury brand.

And he's like, you know, it's, I think he said

it's three weeks a year for three years or something like that.

He's like, but dude, you make the best friends.

Like, you know, the people who I, you know, not everybody,

but he's like, I made a bunch of amazing friends through that.

And he's like, dude, I'm in the middle of nowhere, Missouri.

So I gotta do things that will connect me with other people.

And then even this trip to SF, we're like, oh,

what are you in town for?

He's like, well, I live on a farm in the Midwest.

So my wife is, you know, down for me to just like,

take three days a month and just go to wherever,

SF, New York, LA, just meet up with friends

and hear what's going on in the world.

So I don't stay like totally disconnected in my bubble.

A quick break to let you know that today's episode

is brought to you by the Side Hustle Pro Podcast,

a podcast hosted by Nikela Matthews Akome,

which is also on the HubSpot Podcast Network.

So the Side Hustle Podcast has focused on people

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All right, everyone, on the podcast about last year,

one of the best guests we ever had

was this guy named Neil Patel.

It was kind of controversial because he said

that he was spending $200,000 a month,

which is a ton of money.

And the truth is, even though it was controversial,

everyone was asking about him, and if we can get him on again,

well, I've got good news because he has a podcast.

And today's episode is brought to you by his podcast.

It's called Marketing School,

and it's a daily marketing podcast brought to you

by Neil Patel, the guy we had, and his partner Eric Sue.

So they share all types of stuff

about marketing, business, investing,

and your friends will think you are a marketing genius.

So check it out.

You can just search Marketing School

on your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube.

So search Marketing School on YouTube and check it out.

Yeah, I think that was awesome that he does that.

And the thing that you didn't mention earlier about Al

is the way that we met him is Patrick Campbell mentioned him.

And then I think I just DM'd him and I said,

hey, do you poop and no other context?

And that was it.

And I was like, I've never met you,

but do you want to come hang out in North Carolina?

That's a weird question.

Why did you ask that?

Did you know he was tall or did you just take a random shot?

Like, do you play basketball?

Come to our basketball camp?

I think I watched a YouTube video.

Like, I heard of him.

I looked on YouTube, watched like a minute video,

and I was like, he looks tall.

Seems like he has a good personality

in this one minute clip I found on YouTube.

So, hey, let's just get to business.

Do you play basketball?

And then he was like, yeah, I'll come.

And he was like, I have no idea who you,

I could barely know who you guys are,

but sure, I'll guess I'll fly there and see what's up.

Yeah, and he was amazing.

But his story is pretty cool.

So basically, I think that the short version,

the thing you wrote in the newsletter yesterday,

if people go to, it's just my name.com.

So SeanPurri.com, you can sign up for the newsletter.

You'll get this, it'll send you the story

after a couple of emails.

So the story is his mom takes up quilting as a hobby

and she's just having fun, she's quilting,

and then she wants to do, I guess,

like whatever is a more advanced quilt where you like,

you gotta like send your thing into a machine quilting

company, is that right?

Like, how does that work?

Do you have certain quilts you gotta send in?

Yeah, I think there's like certain things

that just need machinery.

And I was like, I believe there was a six month wait

to get some machine built quilt made.

And he was like, oh, shit, there's a business here.

How is it a six month wait?

And it was just like, there's too much demand.

And so he's like, mom, forget this quilt.

Like you need to like, and they bought the machine.

They're like, let's create a service company

where we do this.

Cause it sounds like there's too much demand.

So they bought the machine and then they make the website

where they're like, oh yeah, send us your stuff.

And we'll do the machine quilting thing for you.

And then people started asking them for fabrics.

And so they started selling fabrics.

And people started asking them for patterns.

They started selling patterns.

Fast forward, they've built this company.

It's called Missouri Star Quilting Company.

And again, does nine figures a year in revenue,

profitable bootstrapped family business,

co-founded with his mom.

They sell, they have like 30,000 fabrics for sale now

on the website.

And I was like, dude, what was the turning point?

Did this work right away?

And what did he tell you?

He's like, well, I started, he like posted on Facebook,

like, hey guys, made this quilt website for my mom.

Check it out.

Yeah.

Like two likes.

And I went back and looked at all of his Facebook posts

yesterday and it's like, I started a quilt company, buddy.

And that was like his milestone in his life 15 years ago.

And they must have figured something out.

Well, it sounded like the thing that made it take off was

he got his mom to start making YouTube content.

So he was like, oh, YouTube was like,

still pretty early at that time.

He's like, all right, mom, record videos,

teaching people like how to be better at quilting.

And they now have the number one quilting channel,

almost a million subscribers.

And Jenny, who's his mom is like, beloved.

Like the comments are just like, Jenny is the best.

She's still wholesome.

Oh my God, I love her.

She's a, she's a star.

So the YouTube thing took off.

And then he went and stole the idea from Woot.com

about having one crazy daily deal.

So something that's like 50 to a hundred percent off,

but it's limited quantity, limited time.

And they call it the quilter daily deal

or something like that.

And that trained people to just keep coming back

to the website to see like, you know,

what amazing deal could they get for some new pattern?

And those two things were like pretty major, you know,

like growth hacks that they pulled off to grow this thing.

And he might just be the most successful

like daily deal site ever, right?

Like in terms of profitability at least.

Yeah, I don't know how big Groupon is now,

but like, you know, it's, it's,

what he did is bigger than Woot.

So, you know, that, that kind of worked.

And then the other thing he told us about was his town.

So explain this town and what he told us like,

he's thinking, how he thinks about this town things.

Yeah. So basically when we, when we discovered out,

we realized that he had a town.

It was written about an NPO or a few other places.

And essentially what it is he had,

he needed a bunch of production done.

So he needed a manufacturing facility

for all the clothes they were selling.

So they bought a town basically that,

which means they own a few restaurants.

I think they own a few gas stations

and they own a few manufacturing facilities

and they made it the quilting capital of the world.

So basically it's where people go

and they want to learn and seek, learn and use quilts.

And they also, so he's basically like really,

basically I think he's the pioneer of towns.

I think he talked about this in the pod a while back,

but he's all into towns.

And he, yesterday he was texting us even more ideas

about towns.

Well, it started off simple.

So he was like, I need a building

where they had like kind of a warehouse or production.

It's about one building.

Okay, I'll grew that, bought a second building.

And he's from this very small town,

Hamilton, Missouri, I think it is.

So he buys two buildings

and then at some point they kind of realize,

all right, why do this with like nameless,

faceless warehouses?

What if we could turn this into content or marketing?

Like the YouTube channel is working.

So what if we do kind of YouTube behind the scenes?

And what if we make this more interesting?

So instead of just buying two warehouses

and just like operating in stealth,

what if we just bought all this land

and we bought all the buildings that are in this area

and we turn this into a tourist destination,

a vacation basically.

So like it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere,

but it's like the quilting Mecca

or like the people call it like the Disneyland for quilters.

And there's like Main Street, it's all about quilts.

This is like quilt shop, quilt shop, quilt shop.

And then they have like the Missouri Star one,

which is the biggest store.

So that's their retail flagship store.

They use this to create content, to create interest.

People then like take a pilgrimage,

a trip to go visit here, if that's their main hobby,

if that's their big hobby, it's like,

oh, here's the vacation I want to go on.

And when they're there, they also have a man,

what is it called, mans land?

It's basically like, if you're the dude who got dragged

to this quilting vacation,

they have one area called mans land,

which is like really comfy recliner chairs, TVs,

food, and it's just like,

yeah, you hang out over here and watch football

and let grandma go crazy at the quilt shops.

And so creating that town, I think is kind of amazing.

He said that they have 100,000 tourists

come there every year, which is still kind of relatively

small, but he's like, yeah, dude,

we just need like a developer to build a hotel.

There's just no place to stay.

And he's like, nobody knows about this area,

but he's really bullish on turning the sort of,

the cost center into a marketing tool.

And I think that was really, really smart.

Wanted to tell everyone about the town

you were thinking about yesterday.

Well, we asked him, we were like, dude, that's genius.

What else would you do?

He goes, got it.

Babyville, USA.

I was like, what?

And he's like, so he's got four kids

or he's about to have his fourth, I think.

And he's like, yeah, basically,

I think you could make a town for all things baby.

So let's say you're a pregnant mom

or you just delivered,

you're in your, maybe you have a newborn,

a one year old, a two year old.

So most, traveling is hard, first of all,

for either late pregnancy or early kids.

Nothing is optimized for them.

Like even places like Disneyland

and like places that are like kid friendly,

it's like ages three and up.

Really is like what's acceptable and useful.

And so he's like, dude, if we made this town

where you could come and it's like some combination of like

just a crazy spa for mom, mom deserves it.

Like she is, her body's going through a lot.

She's not sleeping, all this stuff.

Let's take care of her.

Let's have the best sort of most baby friendly places,

whether it's restaurants, retail, whatever it is.

Let's basically let you try any baby products.

So like there's like the mass stroller store

where it's like, you're gonna get the best stroller.

We're gonna, it's like, you have the consultants there,

you have a testing, you know,

this is where you're gonna find the best products

and you get to test them.

You get to learn about them.

And it's like an expo for all things baby.

So you're gonna sell a ton of product.

You're gonna provide a vacation or a rest.

You're gonna be the most baby-proofed and baby friendly.

Everything is gonna be optimized

for that type of clientele.

And you could also do a bunch of fun things.

So he's like, dude, stroller races.

You know, he's like, you know, we could,

he's like, this would be such amazing,

like funny content that you could do around

this whole thing, baby.

He's like, babyville.

And it's kind of true cause like we just hired a guy

and he's like, oh yeah, can I start after this date

because I bought my wife a push present.

And a push present for those who don't know is like,

you know, after you deliver, you basically,

it's like, here's a gift or a vacation, you know,

to celebrate, you know, putting yourself

through one of the hardest things ever,

which is like, you know, labor.

And so I think baby moons are a thing.

Push presents are a thing.

I think there's already a whole bunch of like

the culture around this stuff.

And so if you made the Instagram worthy town for that,

I think that could be big.

I'm really hoping he does this cause I want this.

You know, and I want the baby combine.

I feel like I'm so competitive and so many of my friends

are like, you know, I don't care about how I stack up

the people my age, but I care like, you know,

what percentile is my son and height and weight

and how fast is he and is he crawling?

I remember when my son was like one,

we would just watch other kids on Instagram

and decide who looks like they're in better shape.

Yeah, just compare.

Yeah.

I want to, I think that's a great idea.

And I still, yeah.

A baby vocabulary contest, baby crawling contest.

Yeah.

Like crazy horoscope thing where we,

we give you a scroll that tells you the future

of your baby for $100.

I could think of a million things to sell in this town.

Yeah, I love that.

All right, what else?

So we had Al, we go to the game.

What else did you got?

Another guy that I met up with was this guy,

Justin called Beck.

So for people that don't know, Justin called Beck,

I think is one of the best angel investors of all time.

He led the Snapchat seed deal, Pinterest seed deal.

He does have kind of a checkered past.

So he was at white speed,

was basically canceled three to four years ago.

And now he's writing seed checks as a GP.

So I basically met up with this guy,

had talked to him a bunch on Twitter,

and he said a few things about investing

that I thought were particularly interesting

and particularly worth thinking about.

The first was a question, which was like,

are you a good investor?

And what's your answer to that, Sean?

Like, do you think you're a good investor?

I think I, I think two things.

You can't know yet.

So I can't say with anything definitive

because you only get measured, I don't know,

seven years after you started investing.

So the honest answer is, I don't actually know.

I do think I will do well with investing

because I have a good network.

I have good judgment when it comes to what startups

have legs and what don't.

And like, you know, I'm aggressive.

So like, you know, I, when I make,

when I lack in IQ, I make up four in like guts.

So I think those three will result in

and a great outcome for me.

And then the other question that he kind of asked

is like, can you defend?

What did you say when he said that?

By the way, that's a great question to ask somebody

to be like, are you even good at what you do?

Is a, is a fantastic question.

What did you say, did your butt clench

and did you know what to say in that moment?

I said, I don't think I'm great.

I think I could be great if I try.

And he said, that's what everyone says.

And I said, yeah, but I think I could.

And then he was like, well, okay, answer me these questions.

Then can you defend every deal

that you've kind of pushed the table for

without saying these two words?

Great founder.

He was basically like, I hate when someone tells me

they're investing because it's a great founder

because that's the, that's something

that nobody can argue you on,

even if they know the person

because they're just like, I can argue you on market.

I can argue you on product.

I can argue you on, you know, 10 other things

but I can't argue you on great founders.

So can you defend every deal you've done recently

without saying those two words?

What's your answer to that question?

Can I defend every deal?

Yes, I can explain why we did every deal.

Would I defend every deal?

No, because I think we've made mistakes along the way

and we did deals or deal sizes or add valuations

that knowing what I know today,

I could say, you know, that, that wasn't a good decision.

You know, going back with the benefit of hindsight,

I would think about that differently now.

But I think that's natural.

Like there's no way that you could get into anything,

start a new activity, new job, new hobby, whatever it is.

And from day one, be flawless.

Hell no, right?

Now, but should you have a line of thinking

on everything you did?

Yeah, here was my line of thinking.

Was my line of thinking always correct?

No, here's some errors I made.

And I could say specifically like three errors I made.

One, I would say is the, oh, but I love this business.

I hate the valuation, but I love this business.

I think that is a, is a pretty common mistake.

And even though it sometimes works out,

yeah, we invested in a company that was valued at 200 million.

I invested because I had been trying to invest

since the seed round, but hadn't gotten in.

So I kind of had, I was like, you know,

anchored to this lower price.

And now it's a multi-billion dollar company.

So our investment's still up, I don't know, 40X.

So it's a great investment from a return point of view.

But honestly, it was a pretty dumb investment.

Like my only out was that this thing would,

this company would go from 200 million

to a multi-billion dollar company,

even though at the 200 million,

I thought it was overvalued based on where the revenue was.

And I think even, I think I got lucky on that more so

than that was the correct decision.

And I think that's the case for like a bunch of things I did

where the difference in your outcome

would you invest at a $8 million valuation versus 18,

versus 50, versus 80 is just really, really profound.

And the better move is to stay disciplined.

Don't chase the higher valuations.

Just pass even on a good deal

because you just want to deploy all your dollars in

at the lower valuations so that you can have,

when you hit, you hit super, super big.

You know, we did another investment

that was at a $5 million valuation.

And now it's at, I don't know, 300, 300, 400 million.

And it may end up at the same multiple

as the first deal I talked about,

but the second one was actually using

sound logic and judgment.

And the first one was chasing something that I wanted.

And I only had one possible way

to get a good outcome out of that.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

And I think he thinks similarly,

like I think the other thing that he said,

that I intuitively knew, but never really thought about

is how many deals he looks at a week.

He's talking to 100 to 150 founders every single week,

which I think is just like a,

to do maybe one deal a month at most.

So maybe he's doing one out of 600 things he talks to.

And the thing that he said

that I thought was interesting about that was,

you know, you kind of notice what good and great is.

You know, most, there's a ton of people you meet

that are in the good category in terms of founders, right?

It's like really smart people

building interesting things, great backgrounds,

but there's very, very few people you meet that are great.

So I think that was like a learning for me,

which is like really being disciplined

to only do deals when you think they're great,

which I think applies to more than just angel investing.

Kind of applies to everything.

It's like most of the time you know what great is,

but you just get impatient and you go for good.

Right.

And I think his portfolio is pretty nuts, by the way.

Grubhub, Snap, Open Door, Stitch Fix, whatnot,

Imperfect Foods, Bloom Aerospace, you know,

these are some pretty solid ones,

especially if we got in there.

Yeah, and I think, you know,

I think obviously he was canceled.

They were me too for a reason.

So like, I can't say he's like the best dude personally,

but obviously he's a great investor.

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's hard to know

what happened in certain situations.

And I don't know, I try to, for better or for worse,

my thought when I meet people is

when somebody tells me how great somebody is,

I don't assume that they're perfect.

And when somebody tells me how horrible somebody is,

I don't think that they're evil and terrible.

I sort of take people at face value.

So I meet them.

I, you know, ask them about the situation.

I hear the story.

And then I see how they treat me.

And I observe how they treat the other people around them.

And I kind of just use that as my filter

rather than getting caught up in this sort of stuff.

And I also have friends that I think are like, you know,

great in one area of their life.

And I can learn a lot from them in that area.

You know, whether it's investing or business

or fitness or whatever.

And they're not so great in other areas of their life.

Rather than sit there and judge them,

I just tried to, if I find somebody

who that's great at one area of their life,

I just focus on that.

And I try to learn from them on that.

And I move on, you know,

I don't really get too caught up in the full picture.

Yeah, 100%.

And then in terms of, you know,

other thing I took away from San Francisco

was there was one other thing that we did

that I took a lot away from,

which was we had a small dinner with about 10 people.

I had no idea really what to expect.

Like I went in cold, basically,

knowing none of these people.

So Sean, you want to set the table

for what that dinner was like?

Yeah, we hosted a dinner at f.inc,

which has a great office in Fort Mason

in San Francisco.

We invited about 12, 13 people,

something like that.

I would say some of them knew each other,

but most people didn't.

So it's one of these very San Francisco things.

It's like one person curates the guest list

and they're basically saying,

trust me, these people are cool.

And then everybody else just goes on that assumption.

And if you ever violate that,

it's like, dude, I went to this one dinner,

this guy hosted and people were not cool.

You're like, all right, they're out.

But as long as you can successfully curate this,

you can sort of build a really cool community

and brand around it.

So we invited some people.

The conversation was basically,

I think, you know, I saw your face at one point

because in the most San Francisco thing possible,

the conversation quickly shifted to like drugs,

but like, not like party drugs,

but like, you know, people in San Francisco love this,

like, you know, sort of like, oh, I microdosed this thing

or I do ayahuasca or I do DMT

or I do mushrooms, you know, for productivity

and like all this other stuff.

Like I do this instead of therapy.

I do this in addition to therapy.

I do this in addition to, or to help my productivity.

And it's like, bro, could you just drink coffee?

Like, why do we have to do all this?

Are you sure?

That's like, you know, my feeling

because I'm like a more straight arrow guy.

Like I just, I don't do, I don't do any of the stuff.

But that was, you know, that was pretty heavy part

of the conversation at the beginning.

And then there was, you know, it transitioned from there.

But what was your take on the drug convo?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been someone that's always,

I haven't done anything,

but I'm not like incredibly opposed to it.

You know, my take was just seem like

that's what most people were focused on.

Like most of the people in that room were really successful

and the thing they were focused on was figuring out

in some ways how to be happier.

Like that's kind of what it boiled down to is like,

how do I be happier and how do I have better relationships

with the people that matter?

I always find it kind of odd to be in those rooms

where everyone seems like they have everything

they possibly want, right?

Like I'm probably the least wealthy person in that room.

The least well-known person in that room.

And so I find that interesting

that people are resorting to that type of thing.

And maybe there's a lot of trade to be had.

The other thing that I took away from it is

everyone talked about this thing called touchy feely,

which is a thing that happened.

I think it's like a Stanford class

where basically you boil down.

A leadership class.

Yes, everyone's talking about how to be a better leader

and how to really connect with people.

And the one thing I wrote down in my phone was,

I'm an asshole.

So I remember like basically the,

their take was this is like really

when all these things boil down to

is recognizing that you're the asshole in every situation.

And then I remember afterwards I was like,

I don't know, maybe I'm just an asshole to everyone

for these 10 reasons.

I think the line was every great marriage

comes down to one realization.

I am an asshole.

And once you realize that and you accept that

it humbles you, but it also,

it's sort of like you understand the other person's side.

Cause damn, they're dealing with this asshole.

And I thought that was like a really,

I don't know if I believe that,

but I thought it was a great line.

There was one part on the,

so the drugs part I thought was interesting

cause it was like some of these things that are taboo today

become very normal 10 years from now

and Silicon Valley is usually at the front of that curve.

And you're right, it was stunning.

I mean, this is a very successful group of people.

There wasn't a person in that room

who wasn't wealthy, successful, all that stuff.

And I would say what, 40% of the people at that table

had experimented with some version of a like,

I don't know what you would call it,

hallucinogenic type of drug

in order to try to be happier,

happier, less anxious or better in their relationships.

And that's just a crazy ratio to me.

That's a wild ratio.

That's a very San Francisco ratio that you get.

And sometimes San Francisco is just off the reservation

and sometimes they're ahead of the curve.

And that's pretty hard to figure out which ones, which,

you know, these are the same people that in,

you know, 2012 we're talking about Bitcoin.

And this is the same group of people that, you know,

whatever, they're like, you know,

experimenting with AI four or five years ago.

You know, so they are, the hard part is you can't write it off

because often these are people that are right

in a bunch of areas.

The touchy-feely thing I thought was cool

because they said that one framework for communication.

I think that's probably worth saying, which was,

so they're talking about how great

this touchy-feely thing is.

And of course, my natural question was like, wait,

so like, what?

Like, what did you, like, what's an example?

You're saying how great this was

and how it changed everything for you.

Like, what's an example?

And a friend, Siki Chen, who now runs Runway,

gave this great framework.

He goes, they teach you that there's,

what was it, five layers of communication?

The first one, when you deal with people,

you're gonna be at one of these five layers.

So it's like level one or layer one is ritual.

This is like, you know, you walked,

you're walking to the office, hi, hey, hi, you know,

hey, what's up, what's up?

You know, like, just like, it's automated.

It's not like, it's just a ritualistic thing.

You're just a quick, quick hello.

Then there's number two, which is extended ritual,

which is, hey, how's it going?

How's your day?

You know, what's new?

These things that you, you say,

it's an extended version of the ritual.

You don't really care, or you're not really asking

the question, you're not really expecting anything,

nor are they really telling you

what's going on in their life.

It's sort of this, like, just this dance we do.

The third level is, you're talking about some content,

but it's surface content.

So at the third level, surface content is

you're talking about a project.

You're talking about something you're working on

or something you're doing, something that's happening.

You're talking about the game.

You're talking about the project, whatever it is.

And what he basically said was like, you know,

most of our communication just happens

at these three levels every day.

But the problem with it is, imagine in every interaction,

there's two tracks.

So on the, on your left hand is the track of, like,

the content of the conversation.

And on the right is the relationship between the two people.

And at these first three layers,

the content might be moving,

but the relationship is not moving.

The relationship is not being invested in.

And so if you want to be somebody

who's better at building relationships, like,

you don't, you need to get out of just these first three layers

and get to number four, four and five.

Four is feelings about the content.

So how do you feel about what's going on?

Right?

I feel stressed about this project.

I feel worried about this thing.

I feel so excited about this game tonight, you know,

whatever it is.

And you're sharing a little bit about what's inside for you,

how you're feeling about the thing,

not just talking about the thing.

So that's, that's better.

That moves it forward

because you're, there's some vulnerability there.

And then the last one is feelings about each other,

which is, dude, you know, I felt disappointed

when I expected this was going to happen,

but actually this happened.

Or I felt annoyed or I felt frustrated

that we keep ending up in the same loop.

And being able to share that is obviously the,

the saying how you feel about the other person.

And I said negative ones,

but it could also be the other way.

Like, you know, I feel, you know, I love working with you.

I love, all right.

You know, I had so much fun.

I felt, you know, tons of joy when we were doing X, Y, Z.

So you can sharing how you actually feel

about the other person is the hardest one.

But when you do it, that's what moves that other track,

the furthest.

And then you talked about like the little nuances.

Like, instead of saying, I feel like blank, blank, blank.

Anytime you say like, you took it away

from how you actually feel.

It's just, I feel blank or I felt blank

is the right way to do it.

So I thought that was pretty cool

because that stuff, it's hard to learn anywhere,

like school or whatever.

And it sounded like that, you know,

you talked about the Harvard business school thing.

That was one note.

And the other one was this Stanford touchy-feely thing

as like, oh, that sounds pretty cool.

I should check that out or, you know,

I want to get better at that.

And you told a great story, basically,

about your experience doing that same thing

at the prison yard, you should tell that story.

Yeah, so once upon a time,

I get an email from my boss, Michael Burt.

So he was basically the main investor in our company.

And he was kind of like my mentor.

When I moved to Silicon Valley,

I moved here to work with Michael Burt.

She built multiple successful internet companies.

That's what I wanted to do.

So I was like, I want to learn from this guy.

And I always, I don't know how other people feel this way.

But whenever I'm around somebody who I really admire

or I really like, like, I feel an intense pressure

to just like do good in that, do good in that setting.

Like I just always wanted to like put my best foot forward.

If it was a meeting, I wanted to look smart.

If it was a social situation,

I wanted to be Mr. Charisma and like be the,

they brought me to this event.

I want to have the best conversation.

And sometimes that's okay.

That's natural, but often it felt forced.

And it was just a lot of stress.

So anyways, he emails me this thing says,

hey, come with me to this, I did this event

and I want you to come to it.

You know, don't ask too many questions, just come.

He's like, it's Friday at this time, just show up.

And so I show up and what he signed me up for

was this group called Inside Circle, I think it's called.

And basically they take a group of kind of like Silicon Valley

CEO type people, a group of men from the business world

and they bring them inside of Folsom Prison.

And they take you to meet inmates

who are in prison for life.

So they have a life sentence.

And so you go to this sort of like,

I don't know if it's maximum security or whatever,

but you go to this like intense prison

and you're going to meet with people who are in prison for life.

If you're in there for life, you did something that's,

you know, murder or, you know, sort of equivalence.

And so I'm like, oh shit.

And he's like, yeah, it's a two day event.

It's like an overnight event.

I was like, what the hell?

All right, thanks Michael.

So I go to this thing, we walk in and I don't,

I still don't really know what to expect.

I'm like, are we giving a talk?

Is this like an entrepreneurship talk?

Like what are we trying to do here?

So I'm prepared for like some presentation

or something like that.

But instead we walk in, the guys all get uncuffed.

We all walk in together and we all sit in a circle.

And I'm like, oh, this is a feelings thing.

Oh shit.

This is like, you know, this is like AA or something.

I don't know what I got myself into,

but my brain is racing.

And when the guys were walking in, you know,

I'm like, it's kind of like scoping everybody out.

And there was one guy who walked in that just stood out

right away.

He was wearing sunglasses and he had a cane,

but he wasn't blind.

So I was like, I don't know how this dude has this privilege

to like be able to have a stick that he walks around with

and sunglasses, but this guy's got clout.

Immediately you could tell.

And he was the only guy who was like not smiling,

not talking to anybody.

He had like two guys around him who like kind of escorted him

to see brought him a, a cup of water.

And I was like, oh, shit, this is the guy who like runs

the prison. Got it.

I've seen movies about this shit.

I know how to like spot the alpha.

This guy's the alpha.

And so the event basically starts as follows.

They go, break him into like smaller circles,

you know, groups of six.

And, you know, this guy who's been here,

he's the facilitator.

He'll, he'll begin.

So break him into groups of six.

Of course I get paired in a group with this,

the tough guy.

And I'm like, all right, what do I have to do here?

What do I need?

Again, what am I trying to, trying to do to like,

you know, do well in this situation?

And basically the group was sort of like,

the activity was sort of like, you just,

each person goes around, you just say what's on your mind.

First guy gets up and he tells this super intense situation

that he's in.

He's like, right now I'm feeling frustrated, man.

I'm feeling pissed, feeling angry.

I'm like, oh fuck.

He's like, I'm feeling angry because my daughter,

who's on the outside told me that, you know,

she had been sexually assaulted and I'm pissed that I'm not

there to beat that guy's ass and then, you know, protect her.

And so this guy tells us like really intense thing.

And then I'm like, oh shit.

And then the next guy says an even more intense thing.

And third guy says this really traumatic,

he's working through this really traumatic experience.

By the third person, I'm no longer listening.

I'm in my head and I'm doing the math.

I'm like, okay, I'm three people away.

What am I going to say?

And like, I mean, look at me.

I'm wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt right now.

I'm like, you know, my parents love me.

My life is pretty good.

I'm healthy.

I'm happy.

And all of a sudden I'm like, God damn it.

Parents, why did you have to love me?

I don't have shit to say here.

Like I couldn't you have just had a drug problem

and made this a little easier for me.

Like what am I supposed to say?

That's not going to stand out like a sore thumb.

Like I can't be like the biggest problem in my life right now

is we have this deadline for this thing we're trying to,

this new feature we're building by Friday.

And I just don't know if we're going to hit it guys.

Like, you know, that's it's not going to fly here.

So I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'm panicking and I'm not listening at this point.

It keeps going around the circle.

Finally it gets to me.

And I'm like, okay, I just got to tell this like,

it's kind of like this, the most traumatic thing

that's happened in my life, whatever.

I guess I'm going to say it to these strangers

and I'm going to hand it up a little bit

and really like, you know, just try to deliver this.

I essentially start performing.

And so I tell this thing about some family thing

that happened in my past.

And I'm like doing these dramatic pauses

and I'm like, you know, I'm not like pretending to cry,

but I'm definitely pretending to feel it a little more

than I was actually feeling it in that moment.

I tell the story and I told it good.

I'm a good storyteller.

And so I'm like, I brought my A game

because I was under pressure.

I told a great story.

And I'm like, all right, thanks, you know,

thanks girl for listening and onto the next.

And then the hard guy goes, man, that's some bullshit.

And I was like, oh no.

What's happening?

And I go, what?

And he goes, man, that's some bullshit, man.

You're just saying that shit.

I go, no, that really happened because I don't care

if that happened.

He goes, you ain't really feeling that.

And so this guy basically instantly sniffed me out

in a way that very few people can really tell,

you know, when I'm BSing like that.

And now I'm feeling like, am I going to get beat up?

Like what's going to happen here?

This is a worst case scenario.

The hard guy is like, just like out of nowhere.

He didn't say this to anybody else in the group.

He's like, that's some bullshit, man.

And he was like out.

He was like out on me.

I go, what do you want me to say?

He goes, I want you to say what's on your mind.

What you really feeling?

And I go, I'm feeling nervous.

He goes, why?

I go, because I want you to like me.

Like the truth came out.

I was like, I want you to like me.

It was the honest situation.

And I'm like, oh my God, what did I just say?

That lamest possible thing that one man can say to another.

And he paused and he just goes, that's your truth.

And he like accepted it.

He goes, that's your truth, man.

And he got up and he like came up to me, whatever.

And we like, whatever.

He's like, you know, I appreciate you for telling your truth.

He hugged me and he sat back down.

And I was like, what just happened?

He's laughing now.

This guy had it cracked a smile the whole time.

And he just thought it was so funny that obviously he scared me

shitless, which he did.

And he got me to break which he did.

But it also showed me like, you should just lead with the truth.

It's a lot easier than trying to perform.

But yeah, that was my touchy-feely, like intense experience.

Yeah.

That's basically what touchy-feely is, right?

It's just like trying to get to the core of what you're actually

feeling or thinking or sharing it.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

I haven't done it, but it does seem like it's about being a little

more, more honest, more authentic and less of the surface level

autopilot shit that like we get used to doing.

Kind of in the real world.

All right.

What else we got?

So that was your San Francisco trip.

Any other big ones?

Otherwise, let's do a couple of cool ideas.

The last one from Cisco is the other person that came to dinner

was this guy named Kendall.

So he bought the milk rude with Mike.

It's a milk.

It was a crypto newsletter that Sean and I started and sold.

And I think from, I worked with them for three months, pretty hands

on.

Every time I see him, it makes me think of this, which is, you know,

instead of asking you, what would Jesus do?

I ask, what would Mike and Kendall do?

And they do two things really well that I try to embody whenever I

ask that question, which is like one, one Kendall himself is

really good at spotting an opportunity.

So he's basically, he's thinking and fishing all day to find what

they should go attack.

And then Mike is really good at consistency.

So what I mean by that is let's say you're trying to figure out

Facebook ads every single day for 10 hours.

He'd be looking at it, try to see what's working, what's not,

and doubling down instead of being like, oh, Facebook's working.

I'm going to go work on Pinterest now.

I'm going to go stand up a Twitter ad.

So I think when I saw Kendall, it just reminded me like be Mordell

and Mike in anything, because that's a winning combination to be like

great at spotting things.

And then once you spot something that you want, like take incredible

intensity to get it done.

Yeah, so these guys each have basically, you know, Kendall's bills

and sold companies for something like just under a hundred million

dollars, two companies.

Mike's last company I think sold for nearly 200 million dollars.

So obviously very successful.

But when we met them, you know, I always look for, okay, what,

what was it about this person?

What, what contributed to their outsized outcome?

Because usually the shit ain't an accident.

You know, we always say you got to have some attributes.

So it's like, what are the attributes that this person had that

led them to that?

Some people, it's their amazing engineers.

Okay, great.

They built some crazy shit.

Some people, it's like they're amazing investors.

They are great at spotting opportunities and whatever.

For some people, they're great salespeople.

You know, oh, this guy could sell ice to an Eskimo.

I can see how they were able to grow their business really fast.

This person, you know, somebody's really high IQ.

They're just super, super smart.

They, you know, they built this thing that I could barely understand

half the words about, you know, but they understand that industry.

They navigated it with Mike and Kendall.

I felt like with Kendall, I was like, you wouldn't want to compete

with this guy because he's just going to figure out the loophole

in the game.

Like he's going to figure out the cheat code in the game.

He's going to figure out, oh, in Mario, you run onto this block

that you just hold down and then you fall behind the screen.

You run and then you get the magic flute that lets you skip nine levels.

And I feel like that's Kendall.

Kendall will find the magic flute that lets you skip levels.

Whereas you're sitting there trying to beat every single level.

And he, he was just like, no, that sounds painful.

I'm going to find, you know, I think I heard or, you know,

there's got to be this like solution where I can get ahead faster.

What is that?

Who's making the most money?

And then how do I do what they're doing?

So he's, he's good at sniffing out that thing.

Mike is smart, but he's not like, he's not like,

he's the smartest dude I've ever met.

But he is one of the most intense dudes I've ever met.

We'll have a meeting and then we'll go out for drinks.

But somehow in between he ships like a notion doc with all of the action items

tagged and like referenced.

Cause he's like, well, obviously that was a good plan.

We should write it down and then do it.

And I'm like, yeah, well, don't say it like it's common sense.

Like, you know, we're going to get a little distracted over here and we're going to,

you know, we'll stretch it out.

We'll procrastinate a little bit.

And he's like, well, why would you procrastinate?

Just do the whole thing right away.

It's like, I don't know, cause I'm not you.

I'm not a machine and he's a machine.

And so I think it's really useful to just be around somebody like that.

And I think we had this theory when we sold the milk road to them

cause we were considering different offers and it was like, I don't know, dude,

I think we're not like, it's hard to put a price on.

We're going to get to hang out with these guys who are going to make us better as entrepreneurs.

That's a factor.

And so yeah, I think we've noticed this in a bunch of people as we meet people,

me and Ben always call each other and debrief after meetings.

And I think one of the more common ones is they have this like an intensity is often

the most common trait that we're seeing in these successful people

cause they're so different in all these other ways.

But the one thing they have is like, once they see an opportunity,

they're pretty effing relentless and focused on doing it.

They don't procrastinate.

They don't wait around.

They don't half do things or quarter do things.

They like overdo things and they do it like the intensity knob is cranked past the 10.

They broke the knob and it's on 12.

I feel like that's been common for a bunch of people that we've,

we've hung out with over the last few years.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think like now that I see great, I'm like, okay, I wasn't great.

I can be great.

Yeah. He's great.

Right. Right.

That's true.

The other one that was funny was we bumped into Rahul Ligma at the Warriors game.

So if people don't remember this, when Elon bought Twitter,

there was this guy that went and he was standing outside the Twitter office with a giant cardboard

box and he was like, yeah, I'm a data science engineer at Twitter.

I fired on you.

Elon came in, he fired me.

And, you know, and then the reporters were like, oh, tell us, you know,

what are your thoughts on Elon?

And how does it feel to have this?

And he's like, you know, so this guy didn't work at Twitter.

It was a giant troll and he's friends with some friends that we have.

And he had sent a text like an hour earlier being like, dude,

there's hella people outside of Twitter.

I'm just going to take a box and pretend I got fired.

You want to come and him and his buddy went took an empty cardboard box

and tricked reporters from CNBC and all these places.

There's all these articles about what these guys featured.

He said his name was Rahul Ligma as in, you know, Ligma, these nuts.

And, you know, he's got Daniel Johnson.

So it was Ligma and Johnson who were pretending to be to be fired.

And so they kind of went viral in Silicon Valley as like,

Silicon Valley loves when people, you know, trick the media or beat the media

or point out that the media is stupid.

And the media loves the opposite.

They love to point out when Silicon Valley is stupid and overrated and overhyped

and overfunded and all this stuff.

It's like a little war that goes on.

And so Rahul was like, he won.

He won a key battle in that war.

And so we're at the game.

I'm like, dude, that's that's the guy.

That's like, again, he's a random engineer.

Start a founder that nobody knew, like, you know, a few months ago.

And now he was sitting courtside at the Warriors game with two,

like billionaires and he was just hanging out.

And I was like, you know, this guy probably went to college,

studied hard, spent 150 K getting a degree, you know,

was trying to make a startup successful.

And the thing that like catapulted like a random inflection point in his life

that catapulted him was this random troll he decided to do.

And I think that's just kind of amazing and very, I don't know,

there's a lesson to be learned in there.

What was your reaction to that?

Yeah, one, I thought the troll was incredible.

Like I think when, you know, I'm not an anti-big media guy,

but I have seen, you know, when you're on the inside of a story

and what they, you know, how they spin it to make a great headline.

By the way, the best part of the troll, he's holding up a Michelle Obama book.

It was a cardboard box and he had a Michelle Obama book and then they go,

what do you think about, you know, of getting fired or to Elon?

You know, was that right?

And he goes, this would have never happened under Michelle Obama,

which makes no sense.

That is so funny.

And they didn't somehow pick up on that, that this guy's just, you know,

this guy's lying.

Yeah, so good.

I think he's just like, do things that make no sense.

Like I think a lot of, a lot of stuff I try to do, like makes no sense

why you would ever do it.

You can't like map it to anything going forward.

You're just like, oh, it sounds fun and funny.

So fuck it.

Like let's do it.

Yeah, we've talked about that before, the do cool shit budget,

which is, do you have a budget of both money and time

that you allocate towards things that don't have a clear ROI,

except for that sounds fun or like, dude, that would be hilarious

or that would be, that that's amusing or I don't know,

like I've never done that before.

And I think, you know, the way Google had, Google had 20% time

where basically if you worked at Google, you could spend 20% of your time

on anything that you thought would just be cool for Google.

So they, you know, they're like, hey, we're going to pay you

in one fifth of your time, you could spend not on any project

that we assigned you or that has ROI.

And like Gmail came out of that.

And Facebook had these hackathons that were the same thing.

It's like these late night hackathons to take away a bunch of productivity

from engineers, but they were like, you know, this is fun.

This is good for culture and good shit can come out of this

that we can't predict.

And like, you know, the like button was built during one of these hackathons,

for example, you know, with the like button is obviously, you know,

massive for Facebook.

And so I think that everybody should have this do cool shit budget.

So how do you put, take 10 to 20% of your time and your money

and put it towards things that are just for, you know, shits and giggles.

I know I do that.

I think we should do that with our companies.

I think everybody should really do that.

Yeah.

I mean, the one thing I try to do consistently is just talk to a bunch

of random people that, you know, there's no real ROI,

but a lot of interesting stuff comes out of all those conversations.

Yeah.

You should explain how you do that because I gave you access

to my Twitter and I was like, yeah, I don't know.

I get a bunch of DMs.

I can't keep up with all this.

And you kind of took that and turned it into an asset.

So like, what did you do?

And you basically just blocked off like what?

Thursdays or something where you just have back to back,

like four random meetings with people that you think are interesting

with no agenda.

Is that like, that's my read of it.

Yeah.

I think, you know, a long time ago I started by basically saying,

oh, people think Sean is awesome.

So how do we DM them and just get on calls and meet

interesting people and have no agenda and just shoot the shit.

So we just DM people and say, what's up?

This thing is awesome.

And you get like a 90% response rate.

Sometimes it is a little weird because people will be like, thanks.

And then you're like, all right, I don't know what to do with that.

But don't have people give you an opening.

They're like, oh, cool dude.

What's up?

And so I would be like, how do I parlor those into conversations?

Talk to as many random people as possible.

Over time, I started to do it from my own account.

And the main idea is just like no agenda.

Talk to someone about what they're working on.

Ask a bunch of questions almost every single time.

I learned something that I didn't think about before,

whether it be like, oh, wow, this company is huge

or this thing they're working on is actually way more interesting

than it appeared when I first saw it.

And then I try to send them interesting things

as I see them on Twitter.

One of my best skills is I'm always on Twitter

seeing interesting things.

Then I just send it to a bunch of people.

Over time, it tends to lead to good outcomes.

I think almost everything I can count to say in my life

is because I'm good at that on Twitter.

Yeah, when I think of, oh, this person is great at networking,

I think about some, I don't know, tall dude

is good at shaking hands and making small talk

and some smooth operator, politician type dude.

And you're an amazing networker,

but you do nothing like that.

And your method is, first of all, it's all online.

Secondly, I feel like you don't overthink it.

If I was to reverse engineer what I think is good,

what you do that's good is you find interesting people,

you compliment them on what they're doing that's interesting.

You then send them things that are kind of helpful.

Like, oh, did you see this?

Or check this out.

Or you might like this.

Or you'd have met this guy, you should talk to him.

And you just add little nugget one, two, three.

And by the third nugget, they're like, I like this Ben dude.

This Ben guy is all right.

He likes me and he's helpful to me.

And therefore you're interested in them

and therefore they're interested in you.

Whereas I think I always took the reverse approach

which had terrible results, which is, I want you to like me.

So I'm going to tell you all the interesting things about me.

And no matter how interesting I am,

I'm nowhere near as interesting to them as they are to themselves.

And I think you do an amazing job at just being interested in them

and being helpful, not asking for anything in return.

That's how we met.

And then that's how I feel like you've built.

For all the people I meet,

you end up with a better relationship with them.

And so there's something you're doing that's amazing.

And I'm still trying to figure it out.

I think the other thing is like introducing them to other gay people.

I think that's always an easy win to be like,

you're having this problem.

Meet this person who can help you.

That's like a great way to do it.

And in college, I used to be like,

oh, I just need to always check in and see how someone is doing

for them to like me and want to talk to me.

Now if someone did that with me, I'd be like,

bro, what do you want me to say?

Like, I'm good.

Or I'd be like, oh, you went to Duke.

I should write that in my notes and send you an email

when Duke wins a basketball game.

Then I kind of realized, like, what are you going to think?

You know, like, well, but if someone sent me a note

every time the sun's on a game,

or I'd be like, okay, like, what do you want me to say?

Like, thanks for like thinking to me that the sun's on a game.

So I was like, how do I just actually understand what they want?

And like, when I see interesting things, just send it.

And maybe it's useful.

Maybe it's not.

But they know I'm thinking about them in that moment in time.

Yeah.

I think that skill does a long way.

Julian Shapiro has an interesting version of this

that he does that I kind of love,

which is he'll just send you an email with one image in it.

No, no subject line, no text.

And the image is a random meme,

but it's like Julian sense of humor is really weird.

And so it'll be like a picture of a parrot.

And then on the, on the parrot's chest, it says,

look at the top right corner and you look at the top right corner

and it says, not this one, the left corner.

You go to the left corner and it says, not up here.

Idiot, down there.

You look down and it goes, go to the right corner.

You finally go to the bottom right corner and it says, I love you.

And it's like, he'll send you that and nothing else,

or he'll just send you like eight straight random images of like,

you know, I don't know, whatever grill is eating cake.

And you're like, Julian, what's going through your brain right now?

And I don't know what this is, but it makes me laugh.

And it's just different.

And it's like, it's really quick and easy for him to do this.

And it's like, I don't know who this guy is,

but he's interesting and he's fun and he makes me laugh.

And like, we talk about these things that like Sam does his, you know,

let's fuck when he gets into town and he,

he wants to meet somebody who he only knows online or he's friends with.

And that's just like a better, like more fun version of like, let's hang out.

Julian's like random meme thing is interesting.

Your thing where you send little helpful nuggets of, hey, did you see this?

I think that works too.

Everybody's got their own style, but you know, the style I think doesn't work is

me, me, me, me, me, which is the style that I had originally taken,

which was like, well, I'll just focus on what I want and what I think is cool.

And then people will be interested in that.

It's like, no, not really.

Yeah.

And for, and for a while I'd be like, you know, in college,

our number of people at TQ in college, like, oh, make a LinkedIn post about

your internship.

You're getting a lot of people are going to care or like send people updates on

what you're working on.

I'm like, I don't know who cares that I got an internship at Walgreens.

You know, and like, if someone sent me that, I'd be like,

instead send me something interesting or cool or ask me an interesting question

or send me something you found interesting about what I'm doing.

That's way more, I think that's way more valuable than like what the other person

wants.

Right.

Right.

We should add this on a few ideas.

We should do like five minutes of rapid fire ideas.

Okay.

You go first.

First idea I've been thinking about is something related to your DTC business,

which is wholesale.

Like one of the things I think been thinking about is wholesale.

So for people that don't know, basically you have a Shopify store.

You want to sell more in micro store, micro boutique.

So let's call it the local closed store in your city right now.

That's really hard to do.

So I've just been thinking about someone could build something in the space

that makes it really easy.

We talked to a company doing this that basically makes it really easy to

spin up and run your sales channel as we'll sell anything to add to that one.

That's a great idea and a no brainer.

We have a person in our for our Ecom brand who we have one person dedicated to kind

of doing this process.

It's very manual.

It's like find a list of all the mom and pop boutiques.

Great.

Now reach out cold in this script and it's all managed through Gmail and or,

you know, some sales tool.

And then, you know, so like sourcing, reaching out to them, managing the

payments and invoices, keeping track of your analytics, who's actually,

who's do, who's a big spender for you?

Who's a, who's falling off and churning.

You should reach back out to, you know, all that stuff, making it easy for

them to shop because they're buying in bulk, all that stuff.

I think I would love a tool that does this.

And by the way, we should reach back out to that company that we talked to

about this and be like, Hey, we got to do this.

Yeah.

All right.

Give me, give me one of your ideas.

All right.

You told me about NIL, which is the college name and likeness thing where basically

college athletes can now get paid.

So up until now they couldn't get paid.

Now they can get paid to do, you know, appearances or merch or different things

like that.

And there's a lot of cases that are built around rule changes or law changes because

it takes something that was impossible and now makes it very possible.

And there's great examples of this.

Like Oscar health was built as soon as Obamacare came out.

And so one, I think that somebody should do is if I'm like, you know, 21 years old

or whatever, I'm 18 years old right now, I would be like, all right, I now have

access to a bunch of influencers that are in college that want to get paid.

And the marketplace is not efficient yet, meaning they have more sway than

they're priced at just because people haven't abused this channel yet.

So I'm going to be the one to abuse this channel.

I'm going to be the one to grow like crazy off this.

The way that the movement watches guys built a luxury watch brand using kind of

cheap watches because they were like, yo, Instagram has these people who are popular

influencers, we should send them all watches and pay them to promote.

And they built a hundred million dollar watch brand before Instagram influencers

became a big deal.

So I think somebody should do this and it's like, all right, you should work

out the numbers from what do, who follows college athletes and what do they need?

So let's, let's assume for a second that it's other college students at that

college or fans of that college that follow them.

What could I sell?

And so what are the best products?

And so, you know, maybe it's financial services, credit card type stuff, or

maybe it's like a beverage brand, like an energy drink, because I remember in

college, like people would drink Red Bulls and five hour energy staying up late

studying, I think you could create a new five hour energy off the back of NIL or

you could create a new condom brand.

Like I don't know how big Trojan or Durex or these brands are, but you know,

they've been around for a while.

They're kind of stale and they don't, they're not that fun.

And I think somebody could build the college condom brand or the college energy

drink brand using these NIL.

Yeah.

I think in general NIL, like I tried to book someone before using like open

doors, which I think today is like kind of the waiter of the NIL marketplace,

basically the idea of I can book someone on demand for anything, whether it be

an appearance, autograph, et cetera.

I think there has to be a startup out there that is doing this now in a

really good way locally.

So we should find that startup too, that like is attacking the NIL marketplace

in a different way.

Right.

The other idea I have is around healthcare.

So basically one thing I noticed is I just knocked my tooth out recently and I

had about a $10,000 bill to get a new front tooth.

And I looked at the bill and I just saw a bunch of things I didn't understand

and I called and saved $2,000.

That was just like, what is this?

This doesn't make sense.

So a person or agency that just calls and negotiates your health bills for you

after you get billed for it and takes it cut based on what they say to you.

Yeah, that's a good one.

I like that.

All right.

I got one that's kind of similar.

I just booked a trip for my mom.

I bought her a ticket to go somewhere.

And travel booking is still like, even though it's like one of the first internet businesses,

it's actually still kind of a pain in the ass.

And we went from travel agents to these like booking marketplaces, but it gets complicated

because you're like, well, the smart people who do this, they know how to use points.

So I'm going to go to my credit card.

I'm going to try to redeem my points.

I'm going to do, but I can't click redeem because that's a loser move.

You have to first transfer to a travel partner.

So you transfer points out, which is this tiny button on the credit card website.

Then you transfer points.

You're like, well, which points flights should I do?

Like I got to search all these airlines.

I got to find a flight that works.

That's a good points deal.

How do I know if I'm getting a good deal or not?

So, you know, you use some website that does that.

And then, oh, you could have got it cheaper if you flew to this nearby airport and connected

or you did it one way and threw away the return.

There's all these like other little travel hacks.

I think we should go back to the travel agent thing, but using chat GPT.

So basically, I think you should be able to book your trial.

I think AI travel booker is going to be a big deal.

So I go to this thing.

I say, Hey, here's what I'm trying to go.

And they're like, awesome.

Do you want to fly economy or business?

Are you flexible?

I'm flexible.

Cool.

How about the dates?

Are you flexible or you really need to go on that date?

I really need to go on that date.

Okay.

Cool.

Let me go look.

Hey, do you mind like clicking this button so I can see what points you have?

Maybe I can find you a better deal.

Sure.

I'll kick this point.

I'll connect my, connect my rewards points to this.

All right.

Great.

Hey, I found you some options.

Here's option one, two, three.

Do any of these sound good to you?

Or would you like me to change it?

Yeah.

I like number two, right?

It's basically like I had my executive assistant book the travel and this is what she did.

And I actually think that in the near future, we're going to have AI that does that and

booking and booking.com.

These are huge businesses, Expedia, booking.com, all this stuff.

So I think if somebody brings an AI first angle to travel booking, that has the potential

to be a very, very, very large business.

All right.

That's going to be it for the pod.

Thanks, Ben, for coming on.

And actually, if you, if you like Ben, you want to see some of the stuff.

One thing he's working on right now is we took every episode of my first million.

So we've done 400 plus episodes now and we had somebody go through and pull out every

idea, every framework and every tool that's mentioned.

And we're categorizing it.

We put it all into a giant air table so that you could basically see like what are all

the ideas they had?

And you could sort by like, you know, the ideas that were, you know, all about AI or

all about crypto or all about SaaS or, you know, side hustles, right?

For example, and then I took the top 10 for each, both frameworks and ideas.

And I'm writing about them and expanding them and saying, you know, here's the idea, here's

what I would do for each of those.

And we're putting it together.

So this is going to be like, I don't know, some super PDF type thing.

So if you want that, go to my website, go to SeanPurie.com, drop your email in.

And, you know, I don't know how long it's going to take us to finish this, maybe another

week or so, but that's where I'm going to send it out.

So go there, sign up.

And if you want basically to take the best of from the pod and then kind of updates,

you know, I'm going to update and give my commentary on the sort of the best ones from

there.

So I think that's going to be an awesome resource for people.

If you're a fan of the pod, you know, I don't know, it's no brand or it's kind of a must

have if you've been listening all the way through, there's no way to keep track of all the different

ideas that we mentioned on here.

So I'm excited about that.

Thanks for coming on.

And again, I'll put the link in the description on YouTube and in the podcast, but it's just

SeanPurie.com.

And then you can put your email in there.

All right, guys.

Thank you for listening.

That's it.

I feel like a little girl, I feel like a little girl.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.