My First Million: My First Million's Origin Story, How to Find Winners, and More

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell.

And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

We pre-sold this $1,000 thing for Trends and we were going to charge 10 grand for it when

it came out.

We pre-sold, I think we got $100,000, so we got $1,000 from 100 different people to launch

it.

And so if it's under $1,000, my first step is selling it and giving me myself one month

to pull it off.

Let me tell you about a cool company that I just discovered.

And the guy told me to tell you, hey, so I don't know if you know, I don't know if that

was like, he's a fan or if he actually knows you.

It's called, so I'm linking to it in here in the doc, I'm highlighting it right now.

It's called GetCyberleads.com, have you ever seen this?

No.

So who's the guy?

I don't know.

I don't even know his name.

I just DM'd him with Alex, Alex Westco.

Okay.

Yeah.

I don't think I know this person.

He said, tell Sean.

I said, hey, Alex West is his name.

I didn't know if he was saying it as like a way that he knows you.

He must just be a fan.

All right.

So let's get Cyberleads.

The reason it's cool is it's just him and basically what it is is you pay, let's see,

how much is it?

So you pay between $100 and $1,000 a month for a different, a bunch of different versions.

But basically you, every month, just one time, every month, he sends you a thousand plus hand

picked companies that just raised a lot of money and are highly likely to go and look

to outsource, whether it's technology or design, they're looking to outsource stuff.

And if you're an agency owner, you sign up to this and every month you just get a bunch

of new leads.

In the lead list, it includes the CEO's name, the CEO's contact information, what this person

is likely to outsource, where they're located, how big they are and how much money they just

raised.

And the reason why this is cool is because it's so freaking simple, very clear value.

It's just one person.

It's making $300,000 a year.

So, or sorry, yeah, $300,000 a year.

So it's making, in March, he said he did $20,000 a month with a net profit of $17,000

a month.

It's now gone up to like $30,000 a month.

But I just thought this was unique and I love these types of businesses because the value

proposition is so clear.

If you just, one of these things closes a deal, it's worth it.

And I actually think that you could do this for a bunch of different verticals.

You've never seen this before?

No, I've never, never seen this.

How does he do the like, what they're likely to outsource?

Is he just guessing based on industry or is it something?

Are you doing this hand-picked?

He goes, yeah, every report takes me out $100.

To do the whole leads list.

And he sends one email per month.

And if you go to the website and you click live demo, you can basically see what he sends

you.

It's just like an air table, an air table, table.

And you can kind of see all the information.

Wow.

That's kind of cool.

All right.

I like this.

This is pretty cool, right?

Yeah, good for him.

And I, it's just him and he's like, as I can this scale, he goes, I think I can get a million

dollars a year pretty soon and I'm not sure what I can do after that, but I think just

me, this could get a million dollars.

And honestly, I totally agree.

I think this is a beautiful business.

I think this is really, really cool.

So he said, okay, let's just look at his March numbers.

All right.

So he said, March revenue, 20,000 costs, 3,000 a month, net profit, 17K profit margin, 85%.

Last March, for example, he was basically five times less.

So revenue was 4,000 and now it's 20,000.

And so this is pretty good.

I mean, this is basically one guy and a VA can run this, yeah, one guy and a VA can run

this thing.

And it's providing, like you said, it's providing clear value in the sense that like, if I pay

for this, I'm likely to get more customers and make more money.

So it's like, it pays for itself.

I'm like, it pays for itself is actually like a pretty valuable thing, which is like, there's

a bunch of things in my businesses that I'm like, oh yeah, I want to do that.

But, you know, I kind of have these other priorities and was like, well, I really do

just need to look at all these things as like, can I hire somebody and it be immediately

value like, you know, a creative in the next six to 12 months because that job that I'm

hiring them for is not to just make my life easier.

It's to literally generate revenue and profits.

And so like, there is no way that if I hire this person, if they are competent, this has

to be an ROI positive thing to do.

And you know, the only thing I need to consider is like, do I have the bandwidth to hire this

person?

And so, and so to me, you know, like that's, and then there's products like that too.

This is a product like that where it's like, yeah, I paid $99 or whatever, $199 a month,

whatever this thing costs.

And like, if I can't make more than $199 off this, like that's just my own incompetence

at that point.

It's sick, man.

It's really sick.

And so it says, it says there's a thousand leads.

If you go to pricing for the prices range from $200 to $2,000.

And it says, let's see, it says you get a thousand leads.

Maybe that includes like all the past months.

It's pretty, this is pretty cool.

By the way, check out this tweet I put in the chat.

This is a good example of like content that's not like, it's like, this is the easy, easy

mode of creating content that people resonate with.

So this is just like a beautiful tweet.

All right.

So this guy tweeted out December 21st.

He goes, one year ago, one year ago today, I was fired for my job, making $2,000 a month.

Today I'm making $6,000 a month with my own business.

And they post more importantly, post a screenshot of his like calendars planner.

And it says fired expansion point.

Last day at work.

That's like on the 21st, on the 22nd, day one, a self-employed man, expansion point.

And it's just like, you kind of root for the person.

And you know, what's in this content, it's nothing, but it's like by showing the raw

like planner and like what I wrote to myself that day.

Like these are like, these, these have like an emotional impact on people.

And I think that's one thing that most people get wrong in content is that content is about

emotion, not information.

And something like that, it generates like a feeling of like rooting for the person

that is like, most of you I know are really smart.

And so they try to like outsmart everybody on content.

And it's like, you don't need to outsmart everybody.

You need to trigger an emotional response, whether it's outrage, it's like compassion,

it's like, you know, awe inspiring, whatever it is.

And this is a great simple example of how you can make somebody root for you is, you

know, a little sweet like this.

This guy's a good find.

I think he kind of, so there's this guy that for context where the listener, there's a

guy named Peter Lovells, who I've been begging to get on the pod and he keeps like saying

yes and then ghost and yes.

So, but anyway, this guy, Peter Lovells, he's not exactly a one man operation.

I think now he's got contractors, but he's got like four or five different businesses.

They're basically all the same thing, like job boards, collectively doing like four

million or so in revenue.

And he posts like cute, cool, insightful content on Twitter and blogs.

This guy, Alex West is kind of like in the same ballpark as that, as that guy, Peter

Lovells.

Right.

Like he's like, it's like cool, well designed.

It looks like he's like a, like a nomad as well.

Yeah, by the way, somebody needs to make the list.

I feel like Steph Smith needs to do this.

She needs to make the definitive list of these like solopreneur, freelancer, digital nomad.

Basically it's like the Peter Lovells, this guy where it's like, yeah, this person's on

some journey.

They're trying to get to a hundred K a month in like personal revenue, but they have these

principles.

Like they're not trying to raise money.

They're not trying to build a big team.

They live nomadically.

They're like just good enough engineer and just good enough designer and just a good

enough copywriter to make it happen and they're like doing it all in public.

And like there's like 20 of these people that I found on Twitter, all of them are entertaining

to me.

And I feel like most people just don't know who those people are.

And like actually like a good service would be to just aggregate them and put it in a

newsletter.

Like, hey, I'm following all these people doing this thing.

Check this out.

This guy posted an update about this thing and like you can just make a newsletter following

their work and probably like, you know, build an audience of 50 to 100,000 people following

you following them, which is sort of, you know, meta.

Do you ever read Indie Hackers?

I don't personally go there much, but I have for sure in the past.

Indie Hackers is awesome.

It started by these two guys, Cortland and Channing.

I'm twins, right?

They're twins.

Yeah.

I've become friends with Channing over the years.

Basically it was like a forum for this weird genre of entrepreneurs called Indie Hackers,

but they sold it to Stripe.

And I have a feeling that each brother will make in the world of $20 million when Stripe

goes public.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were a little more, but I can't, I actually think it's above

20.

They've never told me.

I just am guessing because of when they sold to them.

And if they sold for a million dollars, it would have gone up by like that much.

So anyway, I, on their website, they list interviews and they list all the revenue of the companies

and it's pretty amazing.

And you could sort by revenue and you just find like a list of companies that basically

you want to like get inspired by or copy.

Right.

Yeah, that's cool.

And by the way, just look at their traffic.

Like their traffic shows about a million, million to a million and a half monthly visitors.

So you know, good job by them of like, this is like real scale.

And in fact, this is probably like, like for Milk Road, I should go tell our story on Indie

Hackers and Productant.

I could probably add 10,000 new subscribers with one day of, one day of like just crafting

a story that goes on, but that's just posting on both of these.

I completely agree.

I've done it both times.

We did it for trends.

We made a lot of money.

I like it.

Okay.

What else you got?

I don't know.

You tell me what you got.

I see what it is.

Wait.

I have a question.

All right.

Yeah.

Let me ask that.

I think I see this question.

You're about to ask me.

All right.

You ever seen those movies where they are?

It's about like drug lords and shit and you find and you see just like a normal guy

in a boat off the coast of Florida and he finds like a brick of cocaine.

Yeah.

Like maybe we're like seeing that like premise.

My question to you is if you, because I'm reading this book, have you seen the movie

No Country for Old Men?

No.

So it's like a movie.

I know.

I've heard of it, but you know what is that name to me sounds so boring that I will never

click on that.

No.

It's not a boring one at all.

It's like a thriller, but I'm reading the book and basically the premise is this guy

like comes across a drug deal gone bad, everyone's dead at the scene and there's two and a half

million dollars as well as a truck full of cocaine.

He takes the two million dollars.

The drug guys look for him and that's the, that's the book.

And my question is if I came across that cocaine, what would I do?

And what would you do if you came across like, I have no idea how cocaine is measured.

But like that movie scene where you come across like a brick or many bricks, I guess.

What do you do with it?

Take a picture, put it on Instagram, be like, oh my God, get the social cloud and get the

hell out of there.

I am not picking up the cocaine.

I'm not becoming a drug dealer.

I'm not going to figure out how to flip this.

You could also replace that with like, oh, I find a, you know, a large supply of copper

wires, which have a decent market value.

I don't know.

I've actually been down this path before once.

I think I talked about this on the pod where we met a guy who had this giant comic book

card collection.

Yes.

And like, we had this opportunity to buy it for like, probably like 10 cents on the

dollar of what it was like, what the individual, like some of all the parts would have been.

But we had to like, figure out like, what the hell to do is like, here's a warehouse.

You now have the cost of this warehouse and then you have all this stuff and none of it's

graded and none of it's like categorized, none of it's inventoried.

It's like, you know, you got to go do that, like, you know, American picker style, like

junkyard flip type thing for this stuff.

And when I kind of like, I got excited at first because it was like, it would have been

a like multi-million dollar flip if we had done it.

How did that end?

It ended with me realizing this is not worth the time and energy to go do this.

Like this is so much energy.

So the story was basically, you came across a guy who owned a warehouse and then you said

that he had like, really old guy, really old guy who was like finally ready to like sell

his thing he'd been collecting for 30 years, like 10s of millions of like baseball cards

or something.

Yeah.

Like he had millions of cards.

Most of which are useless.

But for sure some of it is valuable and like the question is like, and you had to buy the

whole lot, you had to buy the whole like thing and then deal with it.

I think you didn't know nobody bought it because again, nobody wants this headache and like

even the discount.

Like I was like, okay, let's say this is discounted, you know, based on our estimates as things

discounted like 90% even at a 90% discount, the like mental overhead, the literal overhead

and like some people out there like, dude, I would have done it and like you should go

do it.

There are options.

You should go do this.

But for me, I was like, wow, this is a lot of work.

So I would not, I wouldn't do it in the legal case, let alone the illegal case of figuring

out how to flip these bricks of cocaine is kind of my answer.

What's your answer to that?

It depends what stage of life I'm in.

Like, all right, so let's let's take it by decade.

You're 20.

I'm 20 and like one of these bricks, if could they be worth like $2 million?

Let's say the whole thing is worth, you know, $6 million if you, if you, you know, sold

it all at like street value.

So let's start at the end of you having all this cash.

Let's say you as you know, we do, we do move straight to the end.

I'm moving straight to the end, assuming that I had $6 million in cash.

I wouldn't even know what to do with that.

If you buy a, if you buy a, if you buy property with $6 million in cash, can you even do that

or even allowed to do that?

I mean, where would you keep that money?

Yeah, I don't know what you would do.

You'd have to like figure out how to like launder it basically to like legitimately own it.

Or you'd have to figure out a way to like do some, you know, off, off over the counter

transaction of like gold bars or something else.

Or do you just live like a cash life forever?

Yeah.

You go under the mattress.

You just pay for everything with 10s to 20s.

This is breaking bad, right?

This is the plot of breaking bad basically.

So what would I do if, all right, if I was 20 and I found it, I, I don't even think I

would take in it.

I don't even know what I would do.

I would not be, maybe when I was 20, maybe I wouldn't be opposed to trying something,

but I literally would have no idea where to start.

Where would you even start?

I don't know people who do.

I don't even know.

I don't know people who do cocaine.

I don't hang out with anyone.

But you're in the moment.

You have to make a split decision.

In the heat of the moment.

I would have that.

I would have to.

We'll figure it out.

No, I'd have to call the cops.

I think I would call the police.

I wouldn't know what to do.

I wouldn't even know how to execute this.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's one.

You're not going to do it in your 30s.

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't think it matters the stages of life you're in.

There is a couple other, you know, methods here, right?

So like, let's say you're in this, what was that, the old white country for old men or

something like that?

Like, you know, basically the guy finds the briefcase.

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If I find that briefcase, I'm taking 15% of the cash out.

I'm leaving the rest there.

This one's really going to chase me down for the 15%.

So I think I get like, you know, I get like some of the work, none of the work.

Why is the easiest?

So I did the math.

So the book was set in 1979 and it was two and a half million dollars, which is the equivalent

of like eight million dollars today.

So finding eight million dollars today and this is set in El Paso, Texas, and the guy

lives in a trailer, like a mobile home.

So seven million dollars might as well be seven hundred million dollars.

It's just a world changing thing.

If I'm that guy, like that's easy.

You just find it, you get the car and you just never go back home and you just, you're

just gone.

Yeah.

But what am I going to do?

Sleep, you know, with one eye open every night wondering what's going to happen.

If I see that two million, I'm taking 247,000 now.

No way.

They're never going to, they're going to not even understand why 247, it was 247,000

short.

I'm living a happy, calm lifestyle just as my life was, but with an extra 247,000, that's

my, that's my move.

That's so funny.

I don't think I could take 15%.

I would, yeah, I would definitely take the whole thing.

I was thinking about this the other day, this came up, I watched Survivor, yeah, I'm like

still watching, you know, season 48 of whatever Survivor that's, that's going on and shout

out to the Survivor casting directors.

I'm, I'm getting in shape so that I can go on Survivor soon.

But they have this new twist where they have this thing you find, normally it's like Survivor

you go out in the wild and they have this, this little prize called the immunity idol.

If you find this thing, you're safe from the vote.

You won't get voted out this week.

So people always want that thing and they, when they find it, it's this joyous moment.

They unroll, un-scroll the scroll and they're like, yes, I found the thing, but they added

a twist this time, which it says on the top of the scroll, it says beware.

Like this is called a beware advantage, like, you know, there could be something good.

This comes with power, but also, you know, some drawbacks and they say, you could just

put this down right now and you can go on with the game as it is.

Or if you open this, you have to, you know, you get the power, but you get the disadvantage

as well.

You get the advantage and disadvantage.

100% of the time they open up the scroll and I'm just thinking there, I'm like, you

know, the game theory here is that this is going to put me in a sticky spot.

They're not giving me something that's going to give me like, it's mostly great with a

tiny downside.

It's going to be like potentially great later with a downside today, right?

Like if I'm the game, that's how I'm organizing this game, but everybody picks it up and

everybody opens it.

And I thought, what are the things in life that are like this, which is like, you pick

it up, you know, you shouldn't do this.

You know, this has like drawbacks, but you can't resist.

You just do it anyways because, you know, yellow.

And like, I started thinking about like what that is in real life, right?

Like there's that with food, like most junk food is that way, you know, pleasure now,

pain later.

Um, you know, what are the other areas of life that, you know, what is the career version

of this?

This is like that.

You got that really great job, um, but like now, but like, you know, you were thinking

about maybe you wanted to start your own business or do your own thing, but then you get this

like, you know, job at McKinsey and you're tempted to take it because it has the prestige

and it has the money, but it also comes with the sticky trap of like, this is for sure going

to set you on a path for multiple years in a direction that you don't think you want

to be your end goal, but you do it anyways.

And so I'm now looking out for these, what I'm calling the beware, the beware advantages

of life.

The big takeaway here though is with you wanting to go on survivor.

So let me tell you about something.

So there's this podcast called dead eyes.

Do you know what dead eyes is?

No, never heard of it.

All right.

So years ago, Tom Hanks was the producer of band of brothers, you know, it was like a

TV show on HBO about world war two.

And there was this one comedian who was like an extra of one of the guys who was shooting

or something.

And Tom Hanks like looked at him and then whispered in the producer or whispered in

his assistant's ear and said, like, Hey, hey man, you got to go.

Tom Hanks apparently said that he had quote dead eyes and you wanted him off the set.

Like he just didn't like him as an extra, something that probably happens all the time.

He just thought it's just a flex.

Yeah.

It wasn't working out.

But this guy created a podcast called dead eyes and the whole podcast was questioning

why he got kicked off like that same guy.

Okay.

Yes.

And so the whole podcast, the whole premise is like, he's interviewing people on band

of brothers, like asking like, why do you think I got kicked off?

Like what?

Like let's talk through this.

Dude, how did you find this sounds like the most obscure of the obscure?

Well, eventually Tom Hanks goes on it.

Oh my God.

That's amazing.

It lands Tom Hanks and he comes on out again as a guest and he explains like what, what

was happening from his perspective and what we need to do with you.

But wait, hold on.

What was the explanation?

What did he say?

Or he was just like, I don't remember.

Yeah.

He was like, I don't like, I'm sorry.

It wasn't, let me see.

He's like, this is haunted you for 20, 40 years.

Yeah.

He was like this.

I guess it just, it just wasn't even like a, he didn't really think about it.

I believe.

And apparently he said that like it maybe even it was like a mistake.

Like maybe he said the wrong thing to the wrong person, but like it was just, it just

dismissed him.

Like it wasn't even like an issue in his life.

And this guy has this whole podcast called Dead Eyes.

You've not heard of this.

It's hilarious.

No, that's, that's hilarious.

What were you going to tie that in?

You said I should do something.

Well, so with you wanting to be on, on Survivor, we need to like have you go through the whole

process and you're likely going to get turned down at the audition, but we got to like do

like a whole series of episodes of you going through this process of getting on Survivor

and documenting it and getting that's a great idea.

That's a great idea.

And we, we like what you need to do is comment, get the person who does casting for Survivor

and act like you want them to come on as a guest and we could do it just to like humor

them.

But like on air, be like, so like, can Sean audition?

Yeah, I have auditioned before already, so I've been rejected once.

So I already got that out of my belt now.

Oh, no, we got to have them on air and we'll do it like funny.

Like, you know, I think I said this earlier, like, wouldn't it be funny if we just started

kissing right now?

Like, wouldn't it be hilarious?

Like, that's got to be, it's got to be.

If I was on.

Yeah.

Like just imagine that.

Can you imagine if I came on the Survivor and if I happen, yeah, is that allowed?

Yeah.

Like funny.

What is the exact line that wouldn't be funny if we were like, what happened, we just kissed

right now.

We'd be funny if we kissed.

That's so funny.

That tickles my funny bone at the like deepest, deepest level.

I don't know why it's so funny.

There's that.

There's that one.

And then there's the other one that gets me so bad is like, have you heard this joke

where it's like, and then everybody started clapping?

No.

Okay.

So basically this is like a recurring joke that comes in when like, if you tell a story,

yeah, it's like when somebody tells a story and by the end of the story, you're like,

you're sort of like, wait, what was the point of the story?

And then you realize the point of the story was them saying, them just saying how cool

they were in a way that was like, not even like the story's kind of exaggerated or not

really believed.

It's like, yeah, we're at the restaurant and then this guy was choking and then like,

but like nobody heard him.

But I just saw it.

I was on my way to the bathroom and I just kind of like, you know, whatever, just did

the Heimlich, but I'd only ever watched a video and like, you're like, what is this

story?

Where is this going?

Why are you telling me this?

And then, and then you basically like, it's an awkward silence at the end of that story.

And then they basically, they realized the story didn't do it.

And so they have to one up it and just say, then everybody started clapping.

And so it's this genre of stories.

And then everybody started clapping stories.

My version also cracked me up when that happened.

When I see someone get stuck in a story like that, I'm like, Oh, yes, it's happening.

They got themselves trapped in a, and then everybody started clapping story and they're

about to start exaggerating because the story itself didn't hit.

And now they're stuck.

My version of that is, and then I found $5.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

So I have a crazy story like this.

Somebody tweeted this at us.

They loved your Orlando Bloom story, by the way.

Oh, that's, I mean, that's the one where I didn't want to get stuck in that spot.

But that story is all true.

So, so somebody tweeted at this, this at us and they go, this seems like it's up your

alley.

And that's when you know, you're winning when somebody sends you something really weird

and they say, I think this is up your alley and it's 100% up my alley.

My home ad or my PO boxes in this alley.

And so he sent me this post and it's like a forum post and he goes, what I'm doing is

insane.

So here's what it says.

I have a bot running 24 seven that is buying and selling for zero target profit just to

just to waste the IRS's manpower and money.

I print and send to the IRS all the documentation about every one of these trades in paper form

so that they can't automate it or like, you know, just like get through my report in an

easy way.

He goes, I will sometimes mix blank pages, double print, ghost print, use mark, use black

and white.

I will number the pages and put them in out of order.

I will have people randomly scribbling drawings of dicks into the into the pages.

I will send it as a whole palette of paper trades.

I even to send this palette, I have to hire a guy with a forklift just to send it.

And I want it to be in a palette so that is the maximum maximum leave like troublesome

for them.

And then it says like, you know, is this real?

Yeah.

I don't know if it's real.

This is like some forum policy.

He goes, this cost me thousands of dollars every year and I make sure to send them an

invoice so that they know that I'm paying real money on top of the palette that I've

sent them.

So whoever's in charge of this knows that I'm wasting the equivalents of two months

of their wage on this asinine behavior on top of wasting their time.

And I was just like, this needs to go to petty court.

It's like, who are you?

Why are you so troubled?

And like, okay, you know, if you just wasted a little bit of your own time, that's offensive

to me.

But if you waste all of your time and money at this point, it turns into respect from

my point of view.

And like, I don't know what your mission is.

I don't even really understand it, but I respect the mission drivenness of this, like

of this initiative.

There's no gain.

It's just mutually assured destruction on both parties.

It's like, have you seen our South Park where Cartman is dressed up like Steve Jobs at

the at the keynote and he's walking around and he goes, instead of saying thank you,

he just says, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

And the whole presentation is ways that they're wasting money.

And he's sitting around walking around the stage and he goes, but we didn't just stop

there.

You see, we moved the couch from the left part of the room to the right part of the

room.

And the whole presentation is just how they just reorganized the furniture in his office

that quarter.

That was all they did with all their money.

And this is a good example of that.

Dude, did you see this email I sent you?

So I forwarded you an investor update I got.

Did you see that email?

No, from who?

Well, I can't say because I was sort of like, you know, this person's smart.

They actually sold the company before.

Which address did you send it to?

I don't know.

Maybe you're like hustle one.

I don't know.

But just see if you see an email from me.

Anyways, I'll just explain to you.

You don't even need to read the email.

Basically this is like, I was like, this is so different than anything I would do.

And I was like, if this person wasn't already successful, like they built a cool company

before this.

They are a smart person.

I've met them before.

But they, you know, their company updates or their investor updates are highly like aspirational.

Like so they haven't launched yet.

The team is like, oh, the team is growing.

We have like, I don't know how many people they have like 30, 40 people now.

We did our, you know, a second offsite because remote work, you know, is hard to build our

bonds.

And on our offsite, we played these games and we did this mission statement thing.

And here's our values.

And then like on top of the values, we're thinking about like how to build a culture

that's really, you know, transparent and collaborative.

And like, again, haven't launched yet.

No revenue, no nothing.

But like professional photographer, professional photographer, the update is like super robust.

And like, again, on one hand, I'm like, when I read this, I'm just like, oh no, like this

is like, I just like watching a car drive off a cliff.

It's like, this is like all the parts of a startup, except for the important parts.

And like, I know they must be doing the important, they must be building the product too.

It's not like they're not.

But like, I would never prioritize these things in my own companies.

I know you're the same way where we're both a little bit like, you know, brash and like,

you know, you're like, no, the office doesn't have cups.

Like, we use these like,

Your hands.

Yeah.

Like, can you put your hand like this?

Yeah.

What do you think hands are for, dog?

Yeah.

Like, they don't call me Sam Hosewater for nothing.

Like, grab the hose and suck some down.

Like, if you need some, I'll bring it to you.

Yeah.

So you don't even have to waste time.

He's convenient.

The hose is 18 foot.

I sprung for the big one.

And so I know you're like me, we're like, we do this like very bootleg company building.

And like, you know, oh, like we look up and it's like, oh, shit, we have 18 dudes.

Okay.

Diversity.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, we're, you know, we're going to change that.

Or it's like the company culture is like, oh yeah.

Come to my, come to my house tonight.

I'm going to cook for you guys.

I don't know what.

So can you guys just stop at Safeway and just buy a bunch of chips, like every year like

chips, right?

It's like, yeah.

Everybody go buy your favorite bag of chips.

That's what we're doing tonight.

Like, you know, it's like these kind of company building at the minimum and it's like the

as you go style.

And then I see this and I'm like either, like either there's just like many play styles.

That's how you can win in different ways or they're way wrong or I'm way wrong.

I don't know.

What do you think about this sort of thing?

I think that for a very particular type of person, I wouldn't be concerned about this

type of email.

I think that you should most likely assume you are not that person.

Not even like you, but like anyone, anyone do it.

They should all, they should default to they are not this person.

Like if you are, you know, like some like big swing and dicks, some big deal.

Here's the analogy.

Steve Jobs didn't like, you know, he was like a perfectionist.

He would like build it and then release the perfect product.

He wasn't trying to iterate.

He didn't ask consumers for feedback, you know, like early on, early and often he was

a product visionary genius.

Okay.

But like to assume that you're Steve Jobs ish.

Yeah.

That assume that you're that is like dangerous, it's a dangerous path to go down.

I think this is a horrible idea.

You and I have a friend that started a company and when they were only two people, him and

the business partner, they hired a CEO coach so they could help with culture building.

And that's another sign.

But yeah, I think, and they would go to like retreats, like for like this type of stuff.

So no, I think that this is not a good sign.

It's not very good at all.

Have you, I guess like, what's your, describe your approach like, okay, you're starting a

company from scratch, I would say like, it's just a question of priorities and I would

say this versus priorities is building an awesome team.

They're recruiting like high level people and then like really setting a cultural foundation

around that.

So that's like the, that's the non like non poking fun way of looking at it is like, that's

that's their priority.

So what's your priority when you like start an endeavor?

So yeah, I'm doing that now.

So like, I'm gonna start getting into it and we can talk about it, but I'm gonna start

getting into something and I'm thinking like, all right, is this something that I want to

build a cell or is this something that I want to run forever?

Because that actually kind of matters on how you set up your entity.

So I think about like, what do I want personally?

What type of life do I want and how long do I want to operate this for?

So that's what would you do differently?

Let's say build, own forever or build a cell.

What's the core difference?

Well, if you want to pay yourself from the business as you go and LLC makes sense.

If you want to sell the company and you're willing to not pay yourself a little bit or

you only want to pay yourself as a W2, then you want to be a court, like a C Corp.

And if you want to, I guess you could be an escort, but if you want to sell your company

in five plus years and take advantage of QSBS, which is $10 million of tax or sorry, $3

million of tax savings, then you for sure want to be a C Corp because you can't get

that on the other two.

So I would think about like that, like what type of structure do I want this to be?

Of course, I have a history of getting hits.

So like if you don't have a history of like making money, then like I wouldn't even worry

about that shit.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Like I've proven to myself that like if I say I'm going to do something I follow through,

you know, I'm not, you don't want to be the nerd that just buys business cards before

you even have anything done.

Okay.

So that's like literally your company structure.

But by the way, I think I told you this, one of the kind of like tax slash lawyer people

that's like kind of advising us, they give us a pretty great structure.

They give us best of both.

They were like, just have a C Corp that owns the business assets and that's what will be

eligible for QSBS down the road.

But then the C Corp will pay your LLCs, your LLCs for each, you know, the co-founders like

as a management thing.

And so you're going to get, you're going to get personally paid out through your LLC.

And then you, but you still retain the long term benefits of raising money or selling

a C Corp.

Yeah.

That's, but is the, is the stock owned by the C Corp?

Yeah.

So the company, well, C Corp is the one issuing the stock.

It has the stock.

That's the stock that we want to.

So if you do a stock purchase and we can either, we, and then the LLC doesn't need to own that

stock.

Yeah.

Then that's great management company.

That's like savvy shit that I would have to like look into and make sure I'm doing it

right because there's a, there's a clock you need to own it for five years.

Additionally, what you could do is you can issue shares to family members in different

trusts.

So many, many people can take advantage of the QSBS and other long term capital gains,

things like that.

So I think a little bit about that stuff.

And I think like what, right now I'm, every business that I'm thinking of, I'm think about

how many employees do I need to run this and what type of employee am I going to have to

hire because when you go big with some ideas, you're going to have to hire these like smart

ass X Harvard, X Facebook type of folks.

You don't have to.

But you know, like that, like that type of thing, or is this like, no, I can actually

hire this like $60,000 a year person, but where are they going to be coming from?

And do I actually want or not want to work with that type of person?

So I think about who am I going to have to employ and what the business model is going

to be.

And so how stressful will that be advertising was really stressful because we had to go

out and well, you're, you're in it now, you got to hunt every single month and that could

be a, that can be a bit stressful.

And so now I'm looking at what it's a little bit more recurring, which is less stressful.

So I'm thinking a lot about business model.

I'm thinking about what type of lifestyle I want.

And I'm thinking about who I'd have to hire.

And you're thinking about these things, but that's not your priority list, right?

So like, I mean, like in terms of action, right?

So that's thinking and planning.

Cool.

That'll take you a couple of days to be kind of noodling on that stuff.

In terms of how do you like, that's actually the hardest.

That's actually the hardest part is figuring out, because that's what Ben said.

That's what you're figuring out.

What you want.

But in terms of the action, I figure out, I narrow it down to what's the one thing that

can make this fail or work.

And so let's just say that I'm creating, let's say I'm creating a HubSpot.

Let's say I'm HubSpot a few years ago, I'm creating HubSpot.

So there's like a few items that could, that need to work, or at least I would think they

need to work in order to make happen.

So like, can I recruit engineers is probably one.

Do people want this?

And are my engineers even capable enough to create this?

And so if I'm HubSpot, I'm like, well, Salesforce exists.

So I actually think that people can build this.

Like it's, I'm able to build this product.

And number two, I know a bunch of engineers and I'm pretty good at sales.

I think I can, I think I can recruit engineers.

So then the, then it's like, well, but do people want this?

So that's like the, the, the, the, it's like, okay, boom, that's it.

That's the thing where it's like, I have to figure that out before I move on to the next

steps.

And so I go out and try to solve that for a company like HubSpot, I would actually just

do tons of phone calls and I would make a judgment call based on that for this, like

little small copywriting things, the trycopy that.com that thing that, yeah, I, I just,

oh no, with that, I just put a presale on there and I got $5,000 of presales.

And I've, with trends, we have $50,000 of presales.

So depending on how easy the transaction is, if it's $1,000 or less in transactional value,

I can probably create a landing page and pre-sell it.

We pre-sold this $1,000 thing for trends and we were going to charge a 10 grand for it

when it came out.

We pre-sold, I think we got $100,000, so we got $1,000 from a hundred different people

to launch it.

So if it's under $1,000, my first step is selling it and giving me, giving me myself

one month to pull it off.

Right.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

To me, I simplify it like, how do I make sure, like, how do I figure out do people want it?

Step one, do people want this?

And that's either pre-selling, talking to people, just kind of my own gut.

Do people want this?

Second thing is, where will I get customers?

Okay.

I think I could probably get the first 10 customers from here, the first 100 customers

from there, but like on an ongoing basis, do I have like a repeatable way to get customers?

And if I know the answer to those two questions, then I just go and I don't do other things

besides those two things.

I build the thing that they want and I give it to them and see if they want to see if

they actually love it or if they just kind of like it.

And then I see if the way to get customers actually works.

And once I do those two things, I don't really want to do anything else besides those two

things for like a long period of time.

And like all the other stuff, raising money, company culture, hiring, you know, corporate

structure, naming, branding, packaging, design, all comes after.

Yeah.

And you have to, my opinion is not only do you have to not, you have to like say I'm

not going to worry about that at this point, but you also have to say I'm actively actually

going to avoid it.

So it's like, I'm going to like actively not care about it.

You know what I mean?

Like you have to like, and you kind of have to like take that stance.

And I think there's actually some products where the question is not do people want this?

So like there's some stuff that I'll create that I'm like, well, I already know people

want this.

Like I know they're going to buy it.

The question is like, can I even get customers to this repeatedly?

And then that's actually.

Can I tell you a couple tactics that helped me with this?

I wonder if you did something like this.

So I have learned that it's actually best to be a little bit, what I'll call brutal

about this.

Okay.

So what do I mean by brutal about this?

It is very easy.

Like when somebody hears that, oh yeah, you, you first figure out, do people want this

and you try to like, you know, pre-sell it or offer it to them and see if they sign up

for the wait list or they, they pre-buy or whatever.

And then you figure out, where am I going to get customers repeatedly?

And like you test that marketing channel and like those are the only two things you do.

You say no to everything else.

That sounds so simple and then you like tell someone, go try to build a startup and they'll

do everything else besides those two things because that's like the embarrassing hard

stuff.

Yeah.

Cause it's the hard stuff.

And if they, if it doesn't work, the car doesn't move anywhere, whereas you could do a whole

bunch of other stuff and it feels like you're moving, but the realities are not moving forward.

You're moving sideways.

And so, but at least moving feels like you're moving.

And so people will gravitate towards those things.

So let me give you some examples.

Yesterday, there was a tweet about Furcon, who was my, my old co-founder by my last startup

and Furcon is like, you know, a man of action, you know, a few words, a lot of action.

And you know, like, if you ever ask them, like, when do you think you could do this?

It is rare for him to not be like, I should be able to ship it tonight.

Now he only hits the tonight thing.

Like I would say 30% of the time, like 30% of the time nothing happens, 70% of the time

he gets like a crappy version that's like not ready, but like he'll at 2am, there will

be a message from him, be like, here's where I left it.

And you know, like 10 or 20% of the time he actually finishes the thing, but he almost

never says anything besides like, yeah, we should be able to do that tonight.

And so I learned that from him and every engineer we hired learned that from him.

We're like, you can't give him a timeline.

That's not tonight.

He's, if you say something besides tonight, he's just gonna be like, what the fuck are

you talking about?

So he now has this new like incubator thing called f.ink.

Dude, what was that picture of that?

Dude, it looks sexy as hell, right?

What was that room?

It was a 2000 square foot space in Fort Mason.

It was beautiful.

When everybody was leaving San Francisco and, and then remote work shut down all the offices

and schools and in-person events, he was like the only buyer.

He was like, yeah, I want a big space.

I'm in the middle of San Francisco, in the best part of San Francisco.

So he's like, you can see the water, the bridge, he got 10,000 square feet, he's like, oh,

I'm going to put a robotics lab, a hardware lab, desks, and there's gonna have a bunch

of engineers come make stuff here.

You don't have to pay me rent, like just come build stuff.

It's like beautiful.

And like, it looks like.

And now he's renovating it.

So it's like, it started with an empty blank shell and now it's like, it looks awesome.

So.

Does he make story?

Does he make money from that?

Or is he just spending money hoping that one of the companies takes off?

No, he's just spending money.

He's, he's like, he's made a bunch of money and he's also just like, he invests in the

incubator company and the companies that are there and invests in a bunch of them.

And like, those are already doing well.

So somebody tweeted it out, somebody who's working out of there, they go, one thing that

Furkan does around the office is if a developer spends like more than a day, I think it's

like, if you spend more than a day on local host, which is basically just means like you're

building your website project, but you didn't ship it to the world.

Like nobody else besides your laptop can access the site.

If you spend more than a day, he'll just start calling you local host until you stop using

your name.

And he'll just call you local host because you, oh, you're just local host now, right?

Like you don't want people to use your product.

So you just, all right, local host, do you want to get lunch?

And like, I wanted to tweet this out and you people take it the wrong way, but like that

is a style we kind of incubated at our last startup.

It's sort of like bully management.

And it's not that you're bullying people, it's that you're bullying your values.

It's like, how do I like live my values instead of just say, we care about, you know, like

building things fast.

It's like, no, if you don't build things and get it to customers, you will get ridiculed

here because that is not cool in our books.

You want cool, you want respect, then you got to do the thing we respect.

And like, if you don't, we're going to tease you until you do it.

I was given a guy a hard time in the trends group because he posted, hey, so I've got

six podcast episodes already recorded.

Can someone give me an answer on which hosting platform is better?

And I replied to go, well, that's not really the important question.

The important question is, why did you record six, like just release one and, and it just

posted it that was like, well, by the way, so when I started this podcast, when I started

this podcast, what did I do?

I messaged you on Facebook, I go, hey, I'm starting a podcast that I think, you know,

it's going to be awesome.

You know, here's the concept at that.

I was literally making it up as I was, I made up the name, made up the concept right there

on the spot.

I knew I wanted to do a podcast generally.

And I go, I go, you know, you have this awesome audience, but no audio content.

I'll make great audio content if you'll put in front of your audience.

And then I was like, I'm going to send you the first, I'll send you the first episode

later today.

There was no first episode.

I then go book a studio, record the episode and send it to you within 24 hours in order

for you to like, see that I'm like being legit about it.

And it was live like two weeks later, right?

Yeah.

I was like, okay, this is ready to go.

Like here it's, nobody's listening to it, but it's in the store.

You can go listen to the podcast if you want to.

The guy was like, we got, we got six done.

And I'm like, but that's not the question that you do.

Like the question is, why do you have six done and none, none live?

Like that's just crazy.

Right.

Cause people default to they, it's embarrassing and it's to post that shit.

So let me give you some other examples of this, of being brutal about it.

At monkey inferno, when we were working there, we would sometimes let like kind of interesting

engineering guys like just hang out in our office and they would, we'd just like, I'll

just work from here.

No, you don't need to pay us.

It's not a we work.

It's like the sick office, we got extra space.

Just come here and work, just bring some good energy.

And so these guys came and they, they were working there.

They had this idea that was really cool.

And then they were like, they would always ask us questions that were like, that like,

this investor is interested.

Well, you know, we're thinking about raising money, you know, how should we think about

this?

Can you look at our debt?

Can you do this and that?

I'm like, as like, Hey, is your guys, is your guys product?

Do you have your product built?

Like, do you have users?

I was like, it's just like, those are more important than this fundraising stuff.

But like, I get it.

It's flattering when an investor wants to give you money, but like now that investor

just took over your day, like now your day is all about that instead of like the main

thing.

Like, hey guys, whatever happened to the main thing.

So then, no, so then they get, they get into Y Combinator, they're like, oh, we got into

Y Combinator and we're like, awesome, those guys will keep you on track.

And then over the next six weeks, it was like, yo, um, you're in YC like, what's going

on?

What's it like to be in YC?

I've never done it.

Like, heard it's awesome.

And they're like, oh, yeah, the office hours are great.

They're bringing up this and that.

And we're like, Hey, so how many users you guys got?

And they'd be like, um, and they would like, they didn't know the number.

Oh my God.

And me and Furkan just looked at each other and were like, all right, new rule.

If we ask you how many users you have, how many daily active users you have, you don't

know the number, like 10 pushups.

And they're like, haha, we're like, no, we're serious about that.

And then they still didn't know for two more days and they had to look up the dashboard

and we're like, all right, 10 pushups not working.

So we took a marker and we started writing a giant zero on the, um, like the, the wall

behind them.

And we were like, this is the number of users you have, according to us, because you don't

know.

You're just going to keep putting zero here and like, it's your job to like change this

to be like the number of users you have every day when you come to the office, you're going

to see this giant zero above your head until you change that.

And like, again, this worked and like all of a sudden they started thinking about how

many users they had.

They want, they didn't want that giant zero hanging over their head.

And I've just seen many versions of this.

I've heard a story about Peter Thiel doing this too.

Peter Thiel's values were all about like focus.

And so his thing was everybody at PayPal when he was the CEO of PayPal would have one thing

that they were responsible for.

And the list could only be one, they had one big thing to care about.

And if you tried to talk to Peter like, Hey, Peter, um, you know, yeah, the, the market,

you know, the, the marketing stuff's going well, but I had this idea around this feature.

He would literally just leave the room.

If you ever tried to speak to him about the non one thing you were assigned, he would

just ignore you.

He's like, Oh, that's not, remember we decided what's important.

So by definition, this is not important.

So by definition, I'm just not going to talk to you about non important things.

I'm going to leave, right?

I don't know how hard, I don't know how real that's anecdote is because I wasn't there.

But like, let's just say like directionally, it's true.

I think that that is like a really important way to like operate a young company.

What happened to the guy is from your office.

They ended up getting into YC.

They ended up getting better.

They kind of grew, but then they lost like, like once the growth wasn't like instant, here's

my read of it.

They pivoted.

They pivoted and disbanded.

They're all doing different things now.

One guy, one guy's like, you know, working on a different company and other guys work

on a different company.

And the third guy I've never heard.

I don't know where he went and probably found some cocaine somewhere and he had told me

something once, which was just like, he was like, you know, he had told me only once he

was like, like they were building a marketplace of supply and demand.

And like they, the reason they, we were all excited about them was because they got this

huge amount of supply really quickly.

They had just posted on Reddit and like people really wanted the thing.

And so they started posting, but the demand side was slow and he was like, he's like,

when I, he's like with the length, with the supply side, it felt like I stepped on a land

mine.

I just like did one, I took one step and it just blew up.

He goes, I want the demand to feel like that too.

Dude.

So on one hand, I respected that.

On the other hand, I was like, dude, sometimes you got to like figure out how to get that

to work.

No, I don't respect that.

And the reason why is, you know, we're taught like, you know, people could change, we can

evolve.

And I've actually, I think last year I actually made the decision, I'm actually going to

assume people don't change the way you are is the way you are and you're never changing.

And that, that way of thinking, how hopeful of you, it's actually been amazing because

like I'll meet someone and I'm just like, Oh, you are a loser and you're always going

to be a loser.

You say you're going to do something, you don't do it.

You don't have big dreams.

You don't work hard.

Like innocent until proven guilty.

Yeah.

You're just guilty until proven innocent.

100%.

And then I meet someone who's just like a baller like Steph Smith.

I'm like, Oh, well, you're just a winner.

So just like, maybe sometimes you're going to swing and miss, but you're always going

to swing.

Therefore I'm on board forever with anything you do, because I know exactly how you are

and people never change and you're just a winner.

You win consistently.

Whereas there's a bunch of other people.

There's this great article.

It's called losers exist.

Avoid them.

And it's the founder of bleach report, Brian Greenberg or Goldberg and he writes a blog

post about how he interviews people and he's like, Yeah, see, I just think that losers

do exist.

I'm like, not everyone's a winner and I'm just going to try really hard to avoid those

types of people.

And his way of doing it is he would say, I asked you about the bottom fourth of your

resume.

So where you went to school?

So if I'm interviewing a candidate and she can't tell me like passionately about something

that she studied for four years, it's like, Oh, you're just a loser.

Like you're not interested.

You don't care about philosophy.

Even though you studied that for four years, you're uninteresting and thus are a loser.

But you interview this other woman and she could like passionately tell you a story about

something that is like, Oh, I don't even care about philosophy, but because you entertained

me like you clearly, you are curious, you're a winner.

So anyway, my way of thinking as of late is just people never change.

My sister has a great phrase on this.

She goes, people say that people don't change, they change for the worse.

So her default is even worse.

Yeah, this person will change over time.

They're going to get worse.

They're going to decay basically and like harden in these like bad patterns until proven

otherwise.

And I think that's actually a pretty good way of thinking about things.

Dude, can I tell you about this last thing, like this experiment I'm doing that I think

relates to this, which is like losers exist, how to avoid them.

So here's my, that's a good line, right?

It's brilliant.

Here's my, my inversion of that.

Winners exist.

Here's how to attract them.

And so I put out this thing the other day.

I tweeted out this.

I was like, hey, $50,000 thing.

Yeah.

I was like, you know, we just made 25 grand, like a wire just came in for milk road for

25 grand.

I did not think that was going to work.

I want to give it all.

I want to give it away.

And I said that, you know, crypto has full of speculators, there's too many speculators,

not enough builders.

So if you want to build something, here's the deal.

I will give away one, one ETH, which is like $3,000.

I was like, I'll give you $3,000.

No strings attached, no equity to build whatever you want.

Like you're, you scratch your itch.

And I just want to give it to builders here.

Here's the link to apply.

Go.

So two kind of amazing things happened of how like winners exist, here's how to attract

them.

First, a bunch of people who are winners were like, hey, great idea.

I'll put in money too.

And it was just an excuse to touch base of like a bunch of these winners.

So the prize pool is more than doubled already.

And like now we're giving away more money to more people because people are like, oh,

this is cool.

I want to give more.

It was like the calm guy.

It was Furcon.

Yeah.

The founder of calm Furcon was like, we'll match it.

And then like, there was more people, but we were like, hey, let's just give away this

first batch.

And like, if this is cool, we're going to like, we'll do more.

We can just grow this into a self-sustaining like builder grant.

It's philanthropy, but like, I don't, instead of charity, I'd rather give to like people

building shit.

And like, I'm sorry to the, you know, people who are like, no, there's people suffering

out there.

I'm like, yes.

But also like, this is where I want to give money to is something like this.

And by the way, the whole like a wire came in today.

That was all bullshit.

Like that was just like for the story.

Like we just, I was just like, I want to give away this.

I'm willing to give away this much money.

Dude, people need to realize that lying for the sake of a story is actually okay.

Have you remembered the book that we read about storytelling?

Yes.

Which one?

Storyworthy?

Storyworthy.

And he was like, is like, just lie.

Like for example, if you're talking about like, yeah, so I was in the car at my teacher

and she started flirting with me.

Like, and he was like, well, there was actually like three people in the back seat, but like

I couldn't say that because it was a story thing was like, don't lie to add lie to omit

details.

Just omit details that don't add to the point of the story.

And, and so yeah, but mine was like, you know, I kind of just framed it as like, oh, a wire

just came in.

And because a wire could have came in.

Oh, it could have came in and it did come in in pieces.

Like the money did come to me somehow.

You received a wire that day.

And so like, so basically I told, like this came on a whim.

So I told you, we heard that new guy Saffron and I was like Saffron, Saffron's 22, I think

and he's awesome.

I just like having winners around me, like young, awesome, energetic people who want

to like make shit happen.

And I was like, yo, I want more people like you around.

I'm not going to hire all of them.

But like, how do I just get more like, you know what, there was Peter Thiel do that thing

where he like took like young people's blood and like put it in his body.

I want to do that.

Allegedly.

Yeah.

I want young, young blood in my, in my body.

How do I, how am I going to do that?

So I was like, all right, let me just put out a grant for builders.

This will attract people who A, can build things, B, like know what one theory, one

ETH is and like what one ether, like, and that $3,000 like means something to them,

that this could like unlock like a month worth of like, it's like an excuse to go build

that thing.

Right.

So what happened?

Almost a thousand applications came in in a week.

And how long application?

It was like a form that was like, you know, who, what's your, I was like, what's your

story?

I was just like kind of open-ended.

And it was like, what do you want to build?

Tell me the tweet pitch of it.

Why do you want to build it?

You know, what's your handle?

What's your address?

What's your email?

What, blah, blah, blah.

And so people wrote in and I'll share the air table with you.

It's kind of amazing.

All right.

So there's like a bunch of junk.

We shortlisted like about 150 people out of the like close to a thousand as like strong.

Like this person's kind of like either their story or their idea is strong.

And then we like kind of got to the finalists, which are like these 35 people that are like,

okay, these 35 people, they all seem like kind of worthy of getting this and we're ultimately

going to pick like, I don't know, 15 or something for the font for this, this batch of grants.

And and I think doing this is like, this whole thing is going to take me, I think maybe three

days total to like of attention to pull off.

But what it's going to create is like just a bunch of young, awesome energy, young being

just like, not your literal age, but like more like people who like psycho grass somebody

who, yeah, it's like somebody who has an idea, has energy, has optimism and like doesn't

think of all the reasons they shouldn't do it.

Instead they like, yeah, fuck yeah, apply, I'm going to do this.

And so they're going to be around me.

And I like, I think this is going to be so ROI positive in the long run that it's like

insane.

Dude, I've just to have that.

I've done these things before and I think you did it before when you gave a business

to someone, right?

Yeah.

And I've never had it work out.

Like it just kind of like went on the back shelf or they just kind of forgot about it.

Yeah, it could be.

And like, you know, that's why the main filter is like, are you going to actually do anything

or are you just talking about it or like, is your day job or your, you know, your student

status, whatever, going to just trump this and you never get around to like actually

making shit happen.

That's the number one criteria here.

But dude, the stories are like amazing of like who writes in.

It's like, it just reminds you of like, oh, wow, the world is way bigger than the like

the amount of people that I interact with on a day to day basis.

Are you giving the money all to one person?

No.

No, no, there's going to be like 15 people who get the grant.

And it's like a few grand each.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, I'm eager to see what's going to happen.

What's going to happen?

When are you going to decide?

We'll decide like in the next five days who gets it and then we're just like setting up

like, we're just going to run the whole thing and just like a telegram group or something

like that.

And, and yeah, we'll see what happens.

But guys, my point is do things that create that like attract winners to you is the opposite

lesson of like losers exist and how to avoid them.

That's great advice.

I think actually slightly less great advice is winners also exist.

Here's how to get near them, get around them, get them around you and like figure out different

ways to like get them around you.

This was one that like, you know, not everybody can afford to like do a grant program or whatever.

But like, yeah, but if I had no, if I had no money, I could have hustled and created

this grant program instantaneously.

I could have said, I could have emailed, you know, 50 people and been like, Hey, will

you put up $1,000 for this?

Here's all the benefits you're going to get.

And you know, which is how, by the way, I hired Saf one.

He initially emailed me saying, Hey, you should do a grant program.

Here's five reasons why.

And I was like, Oh, that's actually a great idea.

Will you do all the work?

He's like, Yeah, I'll do all the work.

Did you ever read a San Francisco subreddit?

No.

All right.

So I used to go to the subreddit for San Francisco all the time and there was this guy, it started

like five years ago.

He just said, Hey, everyone.

And he posted a picture of himself holding a beer.

He goes, I'm at this bar.

I forget it was in, Hey, Ashbury, I'm at this bar.

Come down and your first drinks on me.

And he just posted that and like people made fun of him.

And then he did it again the next week and he did this for literally like 60 weeks in

a row.

And then he like became famous for the guys like, Oh, you need to, you want to have a good

time.

This guy seems really nice.

Everyone goes to talk.

So he's a really cool dude.

It'll buy your first drink, drink, whatever you can.

If you do that with like building cool shit, it actually works out quite well where it's

like, Hey, I'm building this thing tag along for the ride.

It tends to work well.

The guy does it all the time.

It's great.

It's, uh, he like became famous for like, Oh, come have first drinks on me.

I'm down here.

I wonder how much he spent.

Dude, we used to do these mixers, these roommate mixers, uh, in San Francisco and we would

like only spend $500, but we were like the man, like we were like the most popular people

for a long time.

We did it every week for like two years.

Well, what were you doing?

What 500 bucks went to doing what?

I bought everyone beer at a bar or at a bar.

We would host them at a bar and I would just be like, Hey, can I get $2 beers and I just

come every week and I'll spend at least $500 and I'm like, All right, cool.

And so I was like, All right, here's my card.

Stop it at 500.

It was pretty sick.

Um, all right.

I think that's the episode.

What do you think?

Uh, by the way, that's a great idea.

I should do this in milk road.

I should basically just say, Hey, in 10 cities right now, there's a milk road tab go and

wear this, you know, wear this so that people who other people who go there will know that

you're through this person to start at 7pm tonight.

I'm going to do that.

All right.

Good.

All right.

That's the episode.

Yeah.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.