My First Million: One Question Friday: What’s The Fastest Way You've Had Your Life Changed By Money?

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.

Hey, guys.

It's Ezra from Grand Rapids.

I was listening to the pod the other day and I remember you guys saying that getting

rich quick is the best way to get rich.

So I'm just wondering, what's the fastest way you've had your life changed by money?

Or what's the fastest way you've seen someone else's life get changed by money?

Thanks.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on a road, let's travel, never looking back.

All right.

We were asked, what's the, this is one question Friday.

We were asked, what's the fastest that either of us, Sean and Sam, have jumped in wealth

and how it felt and or the same question, but for some of the people we know.

You want to go first?

No, you go.

I think you, you might have a good story here.

I'll talk about a friend first.

So I was with a friend that sold his company for close to a billion dollars.

And I was with him.

I was with him when the money hit the bank.

We are at their apartment and immediately like, he's like, all right, I think it happened.

We went to the ATM.

He previously had like a $300,000 in his bank, which is not a little amount.

So he wasn't like destitute at all, but he was 28 and we went to the ATM and there was

$90 million in the bank account.

And immediately afterwards, we went to McDonald's and we got a number one each.

We just got a Big Mac and we went back to his apartment and watched TV and like, we're

like, that's pretty cool, isn't it?

And it was really cool.

Like it was pretty crazy.

The crazy part is not just the 90 million, but if you do the math of 90 million conservatively,

if you look at historical average, 90 million at, let's just run up to a hundred, a hundred

million at 30 becomes 240, which becomes 450, which becomes 800 at 60, which becomes 1.1

at 70, 1.1 billion.

So you can see this, it's not just that they have $90 million.

It's like, well, you're, it's like sure, fire away more likely than not that you're going

to be a billionaire at some point while you're alive.

That was crazy.

So that's one story.

Do you have one?

I got a couple.

So we've told this one on the pod before, people are sort of familiar, but I'll do a

fast version of it, which is million dollar homepage.

So Alex too, who is a friend and I think you, your friends with him as well.

He, I think he was 21 years old and he was like, I want to be a millionaire.

I want a million dollars.

How do I like do this?

And he kind of asked himself this question, which was like, how do I make a million dollars

in like the next like month or two, you know, which is not the question most people ask.

Nobody will teach you or recommend that you ask this question, but he asked it.

And guess what?

The brain is a, a question answering machine.

And so you ask that question, the brain, if you believe that everything is possible,

we'll start to come up with ideas.

And one of the ideas he came up with, this is back in a, I don't know when million dollar

homepage happened.

Maybe like a 2007 or 2006.

Yeah.

Something like that.

So basically 2005, he creates a million dollar homepage and he's basically like, you know,

just like, I don't know, he's 1920, 21 years old, something like that.

And he's like, okay, I'm going to make a website that's a thousand pixels by a thousand pixels,

each pixel is just like a little square.

And he's like, cool, every pixel is a dollar.

And he kind of made it like at the top, it says be a part of internet history and the

site website is still up.

You can go to milliondollarhomepage.com and you can kind of, you can see all the pixels.

And so basically he was like, if I sell each of these squares for $1, I will make a million

dollars.

And sure enough, he did.

January 11th, the final tally was $1,037,100 by the end of it.

And so he literally made a million dollars.

And I asked him, I was like, you know, how did you get, like, you know, he basically,

he built something that was like designed to go viral.

So it was almost so stupid, and so like either, some people shared it because they thought

it was fun, funny and cool, and other people thought it was dumb, dumb and dumber.

And so like, you know, either way, it evoked a reaction out of everybody.

And so you can go there right now and you could see all the pixels that sold and basically

companies would buy it because they thought, oh, if this is going to get a bunch of traffic,

then cool, I might get a bunch of clicks if I put my billboard here.

A bunch of people have tried to replicate this since, but he made a million dollars

in, I think, two months time period.

And then he blew it over the course.

He blew all the money in the course of the next year, just kind of having party, bought

a condo, you know, like he did what a 21 year old would do.

And he was like, oh, I for sure, I'm just going to, dude, I did it so easy the first

time, I'm just going to keep making hits.

I don't have to worry about saving this, I can just blow it.

And then I think it was 10 years of like not having another hit, trying thing after thing

after thing after thing until he built calm.

And then calm took several years before calm became a thing.

And now calm is a, I don't know, $2 billion company or something like that in the meditation

space.

So kind of an amazing story on his part.

What I did starting at age 20, I forget which age I was, like two years before my exit,

I used personal capital and as well, which is like mint.com.

It's just like mint, but different.

And you can manually add stuff.

And I manually added enough money that it said my net worth was $16 or $17 million.

And so I had that on there.

And I just started like seeing that number because of course money, you can buy stuff,

but in a lot of cases, it's really just like this like number on a spreadsheet where like,

you know, it's just like a digital thing, like you could put three zeros behind it and

like it kind of starts feeling real for a minute.

And that's what I did.

And so I put that my net worth was like $17 million, like two years or a year and a half

before my exit.

And then when I got paid, I remember thinking like, this feels cool.

But then like 20 minutes later, I was like, it kind of, I was kind of used to this now

already.

Like I see that number already.

And so I would say I'm still getting used to, you're a manifester.

I am.

And what do I think, what do we say, we're the manifest cowboys, baby.

I manifest stuff.

That's what I do.

I'm not a business person.

I'm a manifester, you know, that's pretty good on the spot.

Yeah.

That's what I do.

Cowboys.

No, no small boys stuff.

I love that.

Yeah.

That's what I do.

I'm like, I'm not a businessman.

I'm a, I'm a guy who dreams and tries to achieve it.

It just so happens that it's in the form of business, but that's what I did and it made

a difference.

And I actually noticed that here, but here's my, I wrote this down.

So I felt a big difference when I had $20,000.

The next big difference that I felt in my life was when I hit $100,000, this is all

liquid net worth.

The next big difference was when I hit 500,000.

And then the next one was 10 million.

And I think that maybe, maybe like the 40 or 50 range will be the next one.

And then maybe like the hundred range will be the next one.

That's what I think.

But I remember it feeling like between like 500,000 and like 10 million, I kind of almost

felt the same.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Similarly, first jump was 25K.

We won it in prize money for our startup, like at a business plan competition.

And it was like, oh, sweet, we can work on this for the whole year and just this will

be here.

This is the money we need to live on.

And we need to, so three of us lived on 25K for a year and a half or something like that.

It was amazing.

And that was a huge jump because it was freedom for a year and a half to not think about money

and to just try to build something cool.

I'll also share something that's similar.

So forget getting super rich quick, which I think is a good exercise to do.

Like what would I do if I really wanted to like 5X, 10X, if I wanted to make a million

dollars in three months, what would I do?

And if I wanted to do that, how would I do it worthwhile exercise?

The other one is like baby goals.

So I heard Kevin Hart on some podcasts and they were like, Kevin, man, you've, you're

now like the biggest movie star in the world, like, you know, you're up there, bro.

You have the huge comedy specials, movies.

You got it all.

Like, did you think that you could do this?

He's like, well, I never really thought about it, to be honest.

Like I just, he's like, I didn't think like this huge goal because that would almost like

it just seemed too, too different from where I was.

It wasn't really even useful if I thought about it.

I could say it, but like it didn't matter because I was so far from it.

He's like, so I just did baby goals.

Like just here's a little baby goal.

Let me get to this point.

And another baby goal, another baby goal.

And I actually think that baby goals are a lot more useful and a lot less talked about

than like having the big, hairy, audacious, you know, dream and goal.

You need both.

They're both useful at different times, but I would say most people would probably be

better off doubling down on a baby goal.

Let me give you an example.

When I was 21, we were working on our business, our startup, and we had a business plan and

we had an LLC and we had all of the like important sounding things that we thought it takes to

do a business.

We had a logo.

We had business cards, people, a logo.

We had a website.

We had a blog.

We had investor.

We had like everything we thought it takes to do this.

And so nine months go by and we're like, this was the sushi restaurant chain, nine

months go by and we're like, we've been doing our planning and then we've been doing our

like getting the chef on board and then we're trying to find a location and then we're trying

to figure out how much does it cost to build it out?

All the things you kind of got to do to launch this thing.

And I remember one day, I just sat there with my buddy Trevor and we were just like, God,

like, I feel like we're just like acting business.

We're playing startup.

Yeah.

You're playing house.

It's like, you know, oh, come over.

Let's play house.

Let's play doctor.

It's like we're playing business because we got this like and literally it was embarrassing.

We had a binder of a business plan that was like 300 pages and we used to brag about how

well thought through our business was like, we've thought through every detail.

What are our binders?

All of them with the uniforms will be what the binders full of full of plans in this case.

And we had like, here's how here's how we're going to do employee promotions because we

think that the way that companies work is like all this shit that didn't matter.

And like, again, 21 years old, too dumb to know that that wasn't what was important until

we got, we took it to a meeting and we got sort of laughed at where the guy was like,

oh, like this is your business plan and we're like, yeah, it's a every thunk to this binder

onto the desk.

And he was like, I'm not reading this.

And we were like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's okay.

But just we wanted to show you.

We've thought it through.

He goes, that means you're thinking about the wrong things.

And we're like, oh, so kind of we're getting, we get this feeling like maybe we're doing

this wrong.

This is about nine months in.

Maybe we're doing this wrong.

So we're just sitting there one day.

We're like, all right, why don't we just like for the weekend, let's just make a business

and like, let's just try to make a thousand dollars.

Like, can we make a thousand dollars in a weekend, 48 hours as a challenge to ourselves?

Can we get to a thousand dollars?

And I swear, I learned more about like actually building a business in that 48 hour, thousand

dollar challenge that I did the entire year of like working on the business because we

were like, okay, how would we do this?

What's a product that we think people want, we don't, you know, instead of like being

married to our current idea, it's like, well, what's a simple product that like people want?

And my buddy was like, oh, we used to live in Boulder and he was like, Trevor was like,

you know, you ever seen like every time we walk around campus, all the sorority girls

and like frat guys, they all have these wristbands on like the Livestrong band, but they have

this like stack of wristbands.

And he's like, oh, there's this new one that's like a really thick one.

It's like triple the size.

And it's like, I don't know that seems to be in, he's like, what if we made those?

Like that seems like that's pretty simple, like to sell those and we're like, oh, yeah,

you could just like customize it.

You could put like, you know, the hustle on it, or you could put like Milk Road on it.

Or you could put like your brand name or your, your frat name or whatever on it.

That'd be cool.

I think we could sell like a bunch of those.

And so we're like, okay.

What should we call it?

And like everything that we had been super thought through and thoughtful about, we just

like did in five seconds.

Like what's a good name?

What's a good name for these like fat, like wristband things?

Oh, let's call it the fat band.

And then we created the fat band.com bought it on GoDaddy for in five seconds.

Logo here, let me just use impact, the like thick font.

Okay, impact.

That's the, that's the logo.

Done.

Um, product.

Okay.

Let's not try to have the best product.

Like, is there just something on Ali?

We had heard of Alibaba as like, is there something on Alibaba or Ali Express that we could just

get these like made?

I didn't even know the word drop shipping, but we figured out that same concept ourselves.

We're like, oh dude, you can just buy these for, you know, 17 cents.

And then if you include shipping, it's only this much.

If we sold each one for $1.50, like that would work.

We could do it.

We'd only need to sell whatever it was.

Like we only need to sell 700 bands in order to make a thousand dollars.

And hey, that's actually, we could even be profitable.

If we did it, it's like, all right, well, how do we sell this thing?

We only have like 24 hours left.

And so we just started like posting on our own Facebook pages and calling like anybody

who we could think of to be like, Hey, would you, do you want this for your sorority?

Do you want this for your, your group?

And like we found one girl who he used to date who like basically she bought, she was

like, oh, my parents are having an anniversary party and there's like 200 people coming.

I'll take like 250 of them.

And we like made a sale and we were like, yeah, just like read out your credit card.

So I don't even know how we took the payment.

Like we didn't even have anything to take payment.

We just like took the payments.

I'm out of the paypal of us or something.

And dude, that feeling of getting to a thousand dollars, like you can see the smile on my

face.

I still feel that how good that felt that weekend.

And that was when I first was like, Oh, this is what it feels like to do something real.

Everything else we've been doing is fake.

And like I was so obvious to me and it changed the way we did our main business too.

And like that thing paid for like, you know, a little bit of a side hustle money as we

went.

And I've built maybe seven or eight different businesses, whether that just be like a real

estate thing or the hustle or a court or just whatever.

I think almost all of them, I got to a hundred thousand in sales before I filed an LLC.

And the reason I do that is momentum and like people are like, like Ben's laughing and people

are like, Oh, it's illegal.

First, I don't think that's illegal.

You can use your social security number and like get a lot of this stuff.

Like you can like enter your social security number.

And second, I have no idea, it actually might be illegal, but like I don't care because

I'm willing to like sacrifice those things and get in trouble for the sake of momentum

because momentum is like the lifeblood.

Like when you're going, because once you start getting sales, it gets addicting and you like

taste, you taste it and it works out amazing.

Listen to this.

So there's this.

So I tweeted out that I want to address better.

And this guy who's got like a fashion Instagram thing, what's it called?

Like well built style or something like that.

He D on me and he's like, Hey, like look at my Instagram and like, I think it fits what

you want.

And I go, yeah, this actually is great.

He goes, tell you what, I'm going to make you a presentation on all the things that

you buy.

Just send me a Pinterest board of the people who you admire and like your personality and

I'll study your Instagram and study your Twitter to understand your body and your personality,

things like that.

And I'm going to send you a PowerPoint with like image, like it looks for you and then

just a link to buy like all these clothes.

And I said, all right, great.

What's in it for you?

He goes, if you like it, pay me $300.

And so he spent like a week doing this.

And he sent it to me as like, this is sick, man, I would have paid way more than $300

by the way.

And I just, he goes, he goes, well, that's awesome.

Here's my email.

Just PayPal me 300 bucks.

And I did it.

And this is a beautiful, perfect example of a person who just, they just did it.

They did it the right way.

And it just worked.

And like, then you do that maybe 10 more times and then eventually you quit.

You create a questionnaire on your website and then you like do a pay half upfront and

then you do this and then you do that and then you hire a couple more people.

Like it turns into shit really fast, but you don't plan like, well, how many people would

buy this?

You really just think like, well, how big do I want it to be?

And like, would a million people buy this over the course of three years?

Yeah, maybe that sounds about right.

All right.

That's cool.

Let's do it.

And that's typically how it works for me.

And I think that's how it should work for most people in most cases.

Not all the time.

Some guys are starting big companies like car companies and shit like that.

And that does require planning.

But for most people, most of the time this works.

The question was about getting rich quick.

And I think my takeaways are that there is a benefit to actually think through how would

I do it if I wanted to?

Like let me not just be like, pretend to be morally opposed to the idea of getting my

outcome faster.

Right?

I think it's fine.

Getting rich, it kind of gets a bad rap, but like, I think we all would love to get

to our dream outcomes faster if possible.

Might as well ask the question, could I get there really fast and what does the brain come

up with?

You don't, you're not obligated to do it.

Second thing is instead of focusing on getting rich quick, I would say get revenue quick,

especially if you're kind of like early in your entrepreneurial career, because getting

any revenue quick will like make the whole thing real.

You'll stop playing startup and you'll actually be in the game.

You'll feel what's real.

It'll force you to focus on the only the stuff that matters and you won't end up like me

with a 300 page binder full of business plans.

Like it's almost like a caricature.

How dumb that was.

But it's like, I took it to the extreme end of like the wrong way to build a business

is like to super over plan and never like go to market and actually try your thing.

And you know, the fat band thing that I did was by far the best thing I did early on in

my kind of entrepreneurial thing, didn't get rich off of it.

But in a way I did, because I actually learned about how to do a business for real, which

is what ended up helping me become wealthy.

You know, that skill ended up helping me become wealthy.

That experience did.

It was like enough money to get like a blooming onion and maybe a steak dinner at Outback

Steakhouse.

So I consider that a success.

Right.

That's all you want.

Now we were big on that fondue places.

You ever been to a fondue place?

I feel like you're like lactose intolerant.

You're probably, I could, I could see that you're lactose intolerant.

Dude, are you, are you see, I look like the embodiment of a glass of milk.

Like it looks like I just eat potatoes, milk and corn all day.

Like when you were talking about that fashion guy, he was like, you know, I think you got

potential.

You know, you're a tall, tall drink of water and it's like, you're a tall glass of milk.

Cause that's the way I would describe you.

I get it straight from the udder every morning.

Yeah.

I mean, look at me.

I'm like a melting bar of chocolate.

I'm like a melting piece of fudge and you're a tall drink of milk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If corn were a human, it would look like me.

You ever thought about it for corn on the combat legs?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

That's the sign that we're done.

See ya.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days on.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.