My First Million: Shaan Goes to LA, The Number 2 Guy Network and Getting Bucked Up

He'd just come back to it.

We were talking about a whole different topic

and he's like, big O tires?

Really?

You could just own 12 big O tires and that's it?

And he would just come back to a new example

of one of these like shitty brick and mortar chains

that are like, you know,

so easy, sweaty, cash flow business.

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 the road

All right, we're going to start the pod

But before we do, we have an announcement

we are looking to hire a new producer.

This producer is going to be the person who sits live

on these podcasts helps us edit them

and make the videos and podcasts popular

helps us get guests.

And so we're hiring.

We're hiring.

I almost call him a band manager.

It's like, you know, the band manager's job

is to make sure that the band blows up, right?

And so this podcast has grown a lot.

It's time that we find somebody who wants to take it

to the next level, booking amazing guests,

helping us brainstorm great content segments

and be like, guys, people love it

when you do the blue collar side hustles.

Let's make sure we hit those every week

and, you know, keep us on our A game.

Make the audio, the video tighter

make the YouTube channel better, make it pop.

We want somebody who's great at this.

Ideally we hire somebody who's already a fan of the show

and is looking to basically hang out with us

a few times a week, see how we operate.

Loves making great content, loves getting content made

and has the, I don't know,

like kind of like the taste and the skills

to put out a great content product.

And that's what we're looking for.

So if that's you, you could reach out.

You can email me.

It's Sean at SeanPurri.com.

So S-H-A-A-N at S-H-A-A-N-P-U-R-I.com

and I'll forward it to our team over at HubSpot

that is vetting and interviewing everybody.

So we're gonna hire somebody this next few weeks.

And it's a full-time position.

If you're an amateur, you've never done this before.

Maybe you'll get noticed, but you have to be really good.

We're not looking for people who are trying

to take huge risks on.

We're trying to find people who are the best.

We've already had hundreds of people apply.

So we really want the best people out there.

If you've never done this before,

you could still throw your resume out there

and try to impress us, but make sure you do that.

If you've already been there, done that,

that's awesome too.

So check it out.

Email Sean, Sean at SeanPurri.com.

All right, let's get to the pod.

All right, you ready?

The greatest show I've ever done.

A lot of people have...

We got a lot of good comments on the last show.

People were saying,

someone asked me an interesting question.

They go, your guys' cadence is really good.

You guys, you talk really fast and it feels quickly.

And then someone said,

do you do something to one another?

Because Sean and I are remote.

Do you do something to one another

to let each other know that it's your turn to speak?

And I was thinking,

I think we just know each other well enough

that we know how to do it,

but there is something that we each do,

at least I pay really attention to you when you do it.

And I try to give you the signal,

which is you open up your mouth

when you want to say something

and then you let it sit open for a minute.

Do you know what I mean?

It's the Zoom hack,

because you're like,

and the little uh is without the sound

is basically just set light on now,

but you know, because on the recording,

they're not gonna see it.

So it's a silent signal,

whereas if you were doing that in person,

it'd be a little like strange.

But yeah, it definitely works.

The hard one is during interviews,

because during interviews,

the guest is talking,

we don't know when they're gonna stop.

They're opening up like probably a bunch of like paths,

you could go down like,

oh, they mentioned three things.

They say it was really hard.

Then they said they met a guy,

who was the guy?

And they said that it really changed the perspective,

but how, what did it change?

And so you're like,

and then we don't know who's gonna go.

We're both pretty insatiably curious.

I have a bad habit of just like talking too much

in general in life.

And so then it's like,

we don't know which path we're gonna go,

and we don't know who's gonna decide.

So a team interview, I think is really hard.

It's, it's very, that's very hard.

The interviews are easier in person,

but what we do this now,

with just us,

I think it's way easier on Zoom,

because I've gotten so used to it.

Also, I've recorded in studios,

like you have done lately,

you're gonna talk about your trip in LA.

I cannot stand when there's a third party there,

because I'm constantly trying to entertain her or him,

like the person there.

But yeah, what people don't see is,

we do a good job of opening our mouths just a little bit.

So the other person knows when it's done.

Pro tips for everybody.

Yeah, that's what you learn after three years

of intense podcasting,

one of the top ranked business podcasts in the world.

You don't get these kinds of insights anywhere else.

No, oh my God.

Someone was like, you guys are so fast paced.

I'm like, yeah, it wears me out.

I usually always take like a 20 or 30 minute nap.

I just close my eyes and lay down on this couch.

That guy's definitely just listening to us on 2X,

and he's like, wow, these guys are strange.

He doesn't know he hit the button on his app.

So you just went to LA.

Last episode, I asked you about it.

You said, I'm gonna do a whole thing

where I tell you about it.

I love these things because you're very observant,

you have great observations,

and you don't ever leave your house.

So when you do, you have great observations.

Boy meets world.

And the thing about you is you've got like a child's like awe

of the world because like you're so sheltered

and you live in such a bubble.

And so you say these things that I'm used to,

but I love just hearing it anyway.

I'm staying far back any couple of it.

One of the finest.

Yes, all those things are true.

There used to be a website back in the day.

I don't know if you remember,

I don't know if it's still up, probably is.

Little big details.

Did you ever see this website?

No.

And it's a great little blog.

It's a Tumblr blog, actually.

That's like, Tumblers not even around anymore,

but what they did was...

Last post, 2017.

They would just, it was like a swipe file.

So they would just capture any example of like,

a small thing that a company did well.

So...

Like on a Google Doc,

on a Google Doc, when you go to share it

and you don't name it,

it just takes the first line of what you spoke about.

And it makes that the title of the Google Doc

as opposed to just naming it untitled document.

Yeah, exactly.

Or like it says on Google,

if you Google the word, kerning,

every word that shows up in the results

has a large amount of kerning, right?

Like the font.

Or it'll be like, you know, the error,

like the 404 page of this site,

instead of just saying error,

has this really fun fucking poem or whatever it is.

And so, I love this website.

I love the name, little big details.

I love this site

because it just gave me a bunch of inspiration.

Went back in the day when I was like more

of like a PM product designer type guy.

But third, little big details are the secret of life, right?

I've said this before,

it's the moments in between the moments.

Like it's not the big moments that matter.

It's the moments in between those moments that matter.

This is the product version of that.

It's like, here's the little things.

I remember the first time I used Slack

and our designer typed a hex code.

They were like, oh yeah, it's gonna be color, you know,

number 883344F.

And then it just,

it automatically swapped that to the color swatch

so we could see it.

Ari added the color swatch to it in line.

Right.

And we were just like, what the,

like it was a mic drop moment in our,

in our every, like our design team was like, okay,

I fuck with this product.

Like they, like somewhere in this,

a designer was like, you know what would be cool?

It'd be cool if you could actually

see the preview of the thing

because nobody knows what these numbers mean.

And like, I don't even know how they did it

with the emoji size thing.

And it was just like a little big detail.

And there was a bunch of those

with great products like Slack.

That kind of like,

we were in the first hundred users of Slack or something.

And so it was very clear that like,

this thing might become a thing

because the care that they took to this.

So anyways, the things I want to talk about in the LA trip,

they're not the big moments.

It's not, oh, I met with this famous person

and here's the groundbreaking insight.

I tried to find a bunch of the little big details,

a bunch of the moments in between the moments

that I think were interesting in their own way.

This is for two reasons.

One, I don't really want to brag

or I can't really talk too much about the people I met

and what they said because it'd be kind of airing out,

those private meetings.

But two, I think there's just a lot

of interesting stuff in these

or at least I think there could be.

So I wrote down a bunch of very vague

but slightly intriguing bullet points and you could pick.

But I will say, here's the structure.

So I go to LA with Ben, business partner Ben.

We do three things.

So we, here's the daily schedule.

Morning is basically meetings in a workout.

That was the goal.

Midday was typically recording a podcast live in person

with someone that we admired, respected

or thought was really cool.

And then the evening was always a dinner

with kind of like founder friends who were almost always

people who had sold their companies,

sold one or more companies in the past.

And we did that for five days straight.

So we would leave the house at 8 a.m.

We would get back around midnight and crash

and then do it all again the next day.

Oh my God.

For me, who's someone who's almost always at home,

I have two little kids that are under the age of four years old.

So I'm on a kid's schedule.

Typically this was crazy, but it was an awesome experience.

So now take it away.

All right, so you have a list of maybe 20 things.

I bolded about half of them that intrigued me.

I wanna learn about big company CEOs

talking about laundry mats.

All right, so this is the story.

We're out at one of the kind of like after dinner,

just like let's go hang at this other place.

So we're hanging at this other place

and it's me, it's business partner Ben

and it's our buddy Sue.

And we're hanging out and Ben goes,

hey, that's so and so.

And we're looking for awesome.

I'm like, I don't even recognize the name or the face.

So I'm like, what are you talking about?

And he's like, we did a call with him two years ago.

And I was like, what?

He's like, yeah, we did a Zoom call

for like 20 minutes with that guy.

He introduced us to this guy, other guy.

And I was like, I don't, I mean,

I can't for the life of me remember this guy.

And this guy, by the way, doesn't remember us either, right?

Like he doesn't recognize us either.

Ben, he's got like fricking the like,

you know how China has the facial recognition software

that this running at all times using AI?

Yeah, Ben has that.

Ben has that.

This happens like five or six times during the trip.

He would see someone walking by and be like,

that's that girl from Twitter.

I'd be like, what?

How do you know this?

And so he does it.

He's like, hey, blah, blah, blah.

And they're like surprised.

And he's like, hey, it's Ben.

We talked two years ago on a Zoom call for 20 minutes.

And he's like, I think you see the guy kind of like,

doesn't really know what's going on.

They're having dinner.

So we merged in ours.

Wait, did you really?

Yeah, we just merged Hangouts.

Their crew was awesome.

So they're their best friends from business school.

They went to Harvard Business School together.

One of them runs, one of them is now CEO of a public company.

Can't say which one, but he's such a funny guy.

So assuming multi-billion, multi-billion dollar company.

Yeah, over $1 billion.

So we're hanging out.

And this guy who's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company

at the moment, he goes, he's like, yeah, he was like,

oh, you do a podcast?

What's a podcast?

What is it called?

Oh, yeah, I'll check it out, right?

And he's kind of like, he's like one of those people

that's like busy actually doing something.

So he was kind of detached from the world of Twitter

and podcasts and content creators and all this stuff.

But as we're talking, he's like, oh, you know one thing I did see?

What's with all these entrepreneurs who own laundromats?

And HVACs and shit, yeah.

They're just buying laundromats?

They're just making like $1 million a year

owning a laundromat?

What is this?

That can't be true.

He's like, either this is not true, and they're lying,

or this is true, and what the hell are we all doing?

Why don't we all own like 15 laundromats?

He's like, it can only be one of two situations.

So we had this hilarious conversation with this guy.

But there's not a third situation of it is true

and it's kind of stupid?

No, he was like, if it's true that these things are

as sort of simple and cash flowy as they sound,

why would we all not just own 15 of these and call it a day?

And he's like, and if it's not true,

why the hell are they talking about it like it is?

And I just thought it was so funny

because it was like smart person.

It's kind of like if you took a really healthy person

to like a grocery store and walk through the snack aisle,

they'd be like, so this is all just sugar?

And you'd be like, well, yeah, so all the kid's food is sugar

and then all the adult food is like sugar and salt,

like what, do you eat this?

Why wouldn't you just eat normal food?

And you're like, I mean, I can't defend it.

It's just the way, I don't know, it's just what it is.

That's how he was talking about like entrepreneurial content

that he's run into on social media, just like in passing,

while he's like trying to like go see friends' photos.

He's like, why is this entrepreneur telling me

that they make so much money so easily doing something

so stupid and hands off?

He's like, it's either not hands off,

it doesn't make that much money, or we are all idiots

and it, because it is hands off and makes that much money.

And I just thought it was such a,

like it was so funny the way he was ranting about it.

And he was just like kept,

and then every 15 minutes during the conversation,

he'd be like, he'd just come back to it.

We're talking about a whole different topic.

And he's like, big O tires?

Really?

You could just own 12 big O tires and that's it?

And he would just come back to it with an example

of one of these like shitty brick and mortar chains

that are like, so easy, sweaty, cash flow business.

I went through this period.

So I was public about this.

I bought a property to do an Airbnb

because I was like, let's see if I'm interested in that.

And what I've learned is exactly what that guy feels,

which is if you can make money on the internet

or like through content or software

or something like that,

the business is so much better.

You can create a huge amount of money from nothing.

You need nothing except when you got to work on it

with real estate and laundry message shit.

You make, we're talking like single digits.

If you're really lucky,

tens of thousands of dollars a month in profit

and it's a pain in the butt, man.

It is so hard.

And you have to have a ton of money to do it.

Like it's quite challenging.

So I understand now, I'm like, oh my God,

like I have the skill set.

This is so stupid to do this other thing

when this internet thing is so much easier.

I feel, I totally understand what he's saying.

And so the other great story this guy told,

so I'm gonna try to do this without giving me too much info.

So he takes over SCE of this company.

He wasn't the original CEO.

He becomes the retired SCE or become CEO.

And now this company has like,

it's like has big scale, but it's not profitable.

So the stock was getting kind of hammered

and the company wasn't doing so well

because it's not profitable.

And so there's all these theories.

So if you just listen to like the pundits,

they would be like, it's a category problem.

Like this category can't be profitable

because of A, B, C and D.

They're sort of like, it's more like,

they're all theorizing about it.

And they made it sound like it's just a law of physics.

That it's just not gonna work, bad category.

Like grocery delivery.

Yeah, like 15 minute grocery delivery or whatever, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that was, if you just listened to the smart pundits,

you would have just been like, impossible.

And if you listen to the original team,

they'd be like, yeah, we're working on it.

It's like, no, you're not.

Dude, every single customer, we lose money

every time someone buys from us.

Don't you recognize how big of an issue this is?

Like, how did you let this go on for this long this way?

And he's like, okay, so first act as CEO,

he goes to like the kind of like, let's say the place

where the kind of the product is developed or made.

Like it has like a real world product.

It's like a, it's a business that's like tech enabled,

but it has like a real world component.

Similar to like an Uber or a like Airbnb has like,

there is the physical place.

So the guy goes, and he's like, so what'd you do?

And he's like, I just sat there.

I just sat, I got a chair and I sat down in the middle

and I just watched for eight hours straight.

He's like, I just looked.

I just looked at what was going on.

I had no preconceived judgments.

I said, let me just watch what's actually happening here.

How is it that we are losing so much money

for every order that we get, every customer that we get,

we lose money?

How is this possible?

A just sits there and he watches.

He watches and he's like, oh, okay, I see.

We got too many people doing too little shit

and the manager is not doing what they're supposed

to be doing.

And so he's like, I like that guy,

you're outside for half the time.

And therefore this person is not doing what they're doing.

And these three people are all trying to do the same thing.

And he's like, I didn't have to like,

it wasn't a theoretical problem.

And it wasn't an inevitable problem.

It was just a everybody's two distance

from the thing problem.

Nobody just sat here for eight hours straight

and just watched what the hell is actually going on.

And they told the story how they actually turned it around

now it's profitable and so on and so forth.

And so I think that's all I can say

without giving too much away, but I just love this guy.

I love the story.

The two things that he said out loud was the like,

hey, wait, wait, pause, time out, time out.

We can all just own big old tires and call it a day.

Like if it's that easy, we should be doing it.

If it's not that easy, screw those people for saying it.

And secondly, he's like,

I'm just going to go sit for eight hours and watch

and just really get to a clear understanding

of what is actually happening

before we come to any other conclusions.

Will you ever do one of these things?

So I dip my toes in it and my thing,

like it's on paper, it's successful.

It's just like, it's just emotional baggage.

What do you think about yours?

Or are you ever going to do anything like that?

Do you mean a business that has real world sweatiness?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like for our e-com thing,

we ran our own warehouse for a while.

So that was like, you know, ultimately my problem.

If things went wrong and I spent many weekends,

you know, like breaking down pallets

and reorganizing the warehouse and making it work

and looking at the numbers and being like,

why is this person's, you know,

maybe we should measure their rates

and like this guy's picking 80 products per hour

and this one's picking 40.

Is it a person thing or is this guy just lazy

or what's going on?

Like, and then just dealing with all those issues, you know,

one guy threatened to kill another guy today at work.

All right.

There's nothing in the handbook for that.

You know, this doesn't make me money,

but I think he can lose me a bunch of things.

Did you really have that incident?

You had that incident?

Got a call that was, hey,

this one guy just threatened to kill the other guy.

Like what should I do?

Like it was a kind of a serious threat.

He's mad.

Like, I don't think he's going to do it,

but he did yell it in front of everybody.

And I was like, well, I think he got to fire that guy

right now and I don't know why you're on the phone with me.

And then the other person like, why are they,

why does that guy want to kill him?

What did he do instead?

Like, you know, can we just replace all these people

with somebody else?

You know, it was a, it was not a,

I mean, there's, there's, it's a very hard thing, right?

It's hard like getting warehouse crews

that are happy, productive and kind, you know,

and reliable is not like a thing for anybody.

I have a friend who runs an e-commerce store

and they go, I'm shutting down my warehouse tomorrow.

Like, where can I move?

And we're like, oh, what happened, what happened?

He goes, someone just shit all over the floor

in the warehouse for no reason.

And we go, dang, like, what did he do?

She goes, she, what did she, why did she do it?

I was like, wow, just for a woman to just shit

on the floor in a warehouse, he's like, what happened?

What did it take?

Was it a, was it a spite shit?

Or was it an accident shit?

I mean, the intent matters.

I asked all the wrong questions, apparently,

cause I didn't, I didn't ask that one.

I had 10 questions, but that wasn't one.

What about the NBA player?

All right, NBA player.

So we meet an NBA player in LA.

This isn't my store, I wasn't there for this,

but Ben related to me was very funny.

He's like, talked about like, yeah, so is it,

it's kind of like, what do you say to these guys, right?

So like, they get a bunch of fanboys

and you don't want to be a fanboy.

In general, I would say there was really two learnings.

The first was, we go to this thing,

there's a bunch of NBA players, but who cares?

And like, you know, they're cool.

I think they're cool.

I think it's cool what they do, but like,

this event, you know, it's like, ah, it's hard to like,

what are you gonna do?

They're not gonna be your friend.

Like this is like, very unlike,

like what do you think is gonna happen here?

Like you go in excited, this person's gonna be your friend.

You know what they're thinking,

you know what they're thinking, which is like,

dip, Sean, you're pretty tall, you ever lace up?

Like, you know, we, we, we need, we need a fifth.

Like, are you interested?

Like that's what you want to happen, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, we've been waiting for this,

you know, this Indian guy with no athleticism.

Like, you know, would you like to become my best friend

and come on the road with us?

Like, you know, what's gonna happen here?

Meeting Drake and to be like, hey, you're really like,

you're really good at speaking.

Do you happen to have a mixtape on you

that I can check out?

You want to just hit the studio real quick?

Yeah.

That's what you want to happen.

So I think the realization was,

we got excited to go to this event,

but it's also like, cool, this event is cool,

but that's not gonna happen.

Nothing's gonna happen.

That's awesome from this event in that way.

Two things happen.

We had a team owner, again,

Ben runs facial recognition software.

He's like, that guy's a minority owner

of the Philadelphia 876ers or something like that.

I was like, how do you know the minority owners of this?

He's like, I recognize him from something I read.

And I was like, and nobody's talking to this guy

because nobody knows this all kind of like older looking dude.

So we go up to him, we're like, hey, you're bubble block.

Normally when Ben does this, the person is so elated

that somebody kind of knows them,

that you're a fan of theirs.

Nobody's talking to them otherwise.

They're kind of like, they know they're actually pretty dope,

but nobody at this event knows they're dope.

This was the opposite.

This guy just totally big dogged us

and made us seem like we were pieces of shit.

So we're like, oh, cool.

I asked you 10 questions.

You gave me exactly 10 words as answers.

So one word per question.

And you left your AirPods in the whole time

and then you looked at us at the end like,

if you asked one more question,

I'm gonna fucking slap you.

And so we had that.

It just farted and walked away.

And then we had the basketball player experience

where Ben takes a photo, Ben's like,

oh, look, I got this photo with this like famous NBA player.

And we had a realization.

The realization was this.

It's dope if these guys were our friends,

but it's not gonna happen this way.

The only dope situation is not that we meet them

and we're a fan of them and they recognize us as a fan,

but that they're a fan of what we do

and we're a fan of what they do.

That's the only cool version of this

is do something dope so that they have respect for you

as you have respect for them.

So you should actually spend your time

instead of chasing them to meet them

and get a picture with them and whatever,

just do dope shit, become a magnet

where other people who are awesome will respect you

and wanna meet you and wanna talk to you

or have something that they,

some common ground that they could find.

Peer versus fan boy.

Yeah, so like showing them your calves

was not gonna like cut it like, oh, like.

I run a five, four, 40.

Does that do anything for you?

Can you jump high?

Can you jump high?

Those calves are like a great.

I wear a fit fit.

We have so much in common.

So, okay, next thing was, every player's like,

Brad, so I have nothing to lose at this point.

So we're like, so like, what's it like just like having,

you know, tons of chicks that wanna be with you?

Like, how do you do that?

How do you navigate that?

He's like, because we're like, you know,

he's like, I got a wife, I got kids and so he's like,

he's like, I told my wife, I said this.

He has to have somebody else that voice.

Yeah, I mean, only good things come after that tone.

He goes, I said, baby, you're happy, right?

Yeah, I'm happy.

Baby, you got the house of your dreams, right?

Yeah, yeah, baby, I gave you three beautiful children,

right?

He sure did, they're beautiful children.

He goes, baby, you can buy anything you want

on this credit card, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Baby, you got to be called my wife, right?

All right.

What more do you want, baby?

Yeah, what more do you want?

I just had an open conversation with my wife that like,

look, you're gonna have a bunch of amazing things

in your life and so am I.

And I thought it was, I thought it was-

Oh my God, I hate that, by the way.

I hate that.

Of course you hate that.

I mean, it's not necessarily something that's admirable.

I'm just saying it was something that was fucking hilarious

and nobody is that honest.

And I thought, wow, to have the honesty to tell a stranger

that story is a confidence level that I can only admire.

Do I do that with my wife?

No, of course not.

Would I want to even?

No, I do it with my wife, except it's a little bit different.

It's like, hey, Sarah, look, you know,

if someone comes in this home,

I'm gonna go and fight to the death to protect you, right?

Whatever you want, I'll give you, I'll do anything for you.

Take out the trash, please.

Usually it's more like that.

It's like, will you be the one who takes out the dishwasher today?

Let you do it this week,

and tomorrow when someone breaks into our home,

I'll die for you.

Normally, that's the argument that I make.

Yeah, yeah, these are all not great traits, I would say,

but I found it hilarious.

This falls in line with just a general thing,

which was people in LA say wild shit.

Like, people in LA are so, like, name-droppy and money-droppy.

It's disgusting, isn't it?

But they're not even really even aware of it.

It's crazy.

Like, they'll be like, it is made up example.

But like, yeah, yeah, we can meet at my place.

It's over on, you know, Beverly and whatever.

It's a $4.2 million property.

It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why did you add that at the end?

Like, completely unnecessary information,

complete brag out of nowhere.

And I just kept getting sideswiped by brags

as I was walking through LA.

Just, oh, oh, sir, you dropped this.

Oh, that's a producer, you know?

Yeah, that's a name.

Okay, here you go, take that, you know?

Like, I couldn't believe it.

And I think SF is obnoxious.

San Francisco is obnoxious in its own way.

Which was?

You'll be like, oh, I'm gonna eat dinner.

They're like, dinner is, you know,

actually a necessary study show.

I'll say, what, dude, I just wanna eat dinner.

Like, don't like make me,

like we don't have to like be transhuman right now.

Like, you know, we don't have to like,

like not everything has to be a thing.

Or like, you know, we don't have to use AI

to like, you know, go get a smoothie right now.

But like, you know, San Francisco is obnoxious

in its own ways, but the LA version of being obnoxious,

I found to be very strange.

Yeah, it makes me really uncomfortable whenever I'm there.

It's, every study is a dick measuring contest.

But the type that they measure in LA,

I'm comfortable with.

It's like the ruler changes, right?

And in San Francisco, it's like, how ambitious are you, right?

No, you say the craziest thing you're working on.

No, no, no, you say the crazy investment you just made.

It's like, it's an ambition contest.

And New York is like some power contest.

And LA is basically like a fame contest

or a network contest.

Like, who do you know?

And who knows you?

When I, when my wife used to work at Facebook one time,

Facebook rented out the baseball stadium, AT&T Park.

And I remember going there and we wore nice clothes,

like a suit jacket or whatever.

But then the engineers would wear,

it was like a contest to see who could look the most schleppy.

So it would be like one guy wearing a tuxedo t-shirt.

It's like, oh, I see.

It's like, you're ironic.

That's funny.

And then another guy would be like just only wearing pajamas

and Birkenstocks.

Or another guy like only pajamas, but like dress shoes.

It's like, oh, it's cute.

You make a joke like, oh, you think that that means

you're dressing up.

Get it, I get it.

You're like a brilliant guy, you're Einstein.

And that's the type of contest that you would see there.

Whereas in LA, it's like Land Rovers,

Range Rovers and Fancy Cars.

And everyone has beautiful white teeth.

And like, have you noticed that there?

The teeth in LA?

Veneers.

Yeah, what about that?

So veneers were, I don't know, just,

it was a blind spot for me.

I didn't even know what the hell veneers were.

Didn't know who how.

Do you know how you get them?

Dude, I went down the rabbit hole.

I went on YouTube for like three hours.

What are these things?

You like drill each tooth, so it almost looks like a spike.

And then you like put up these fake things on there

and glue them on there.

So your teeth are like ruined, I believe.

Like they're changed forever.

They shave them down.

I think the bad version is when they really shave too much

and it becomes like little spikes

and you look like you have little baby teeth.

I think the good version is they just take a layer

of the enamel off and then they basically glue

a fake tooth front onto your thing.

And it lasts like a decade and then you get them switched.

And you have these pearly white.

They look like Barney teeth.

Remember Barney that like puppet

or that like it was just like one strip of white?

Yeah, I think the good version, because I was like, again,

I went down the rabbit hole, like the good doc

makes them look like they're your teeth

and not just like the generic thing.

But I said it really like in LA, I was like kind of enamored

by this veneers thing.

And I go, OK, I figured it out.

There's only two types of people in the world.

People who have veneers and people who need veneers.

Once you see people who don't have veneers,

almost everyone's teeth are pretty, pretty nasty.

Like most people's teeth are kind of yellow, kind of misshapen,

whatever.

People generally don't have great teeth.

And the people who do have veneers.

So there's only two types of people in life.

This is now my belief.

People who have veneers are people who need them.

I'm currently in the people who need them category.

And maybe who knows, I'll go do them.

But for some reason, tell me this, plastic surgery.

Like, I don't think you or I would ever be like, you know what?

Just I wish my eyebrow was a little higher up or whatever.

You know, like, dude, I wish my nose was a little different.

The cool thing about being a man is like older men can be like pretty

smoking to women, you know, like George Clooney is like a fine wine.

You know what I mean?

Like people still like him.

Brad Pitt still looks smoking.

My wife's been trying to convince me that like Botox for women is OK,

because she'll talk about like Botox.

I'm like, no, after that, just age, you look beautiful.

Like it's cool that we're going to age together.

Then I met a couple of people who get Botox and they're like, it's not that big a deal.

So maybe my opinion is changing on Botox.

But in general, I would say plastic surgery.

I'm like, let it be.

Let's age together and we're going to look awesome.

So I'm generally pretty against that.

Me too, totally was in that camp as I met more people.

I'm like, it's way more prevalent than I realized because I'm in a dude tech bubble.

So it's way more prevalent than I realized.

And secondly, there's some things like I kind of get the teeth thing.

It's like there's there's grades to it, right?

It's like, well, you do get a haircut.

You do, you know, maybe you'll shave your beard.

All right, might buy nicer clothes.

OK, that's that's the thing.

Like, you know, what if you just like, you know, get the get like a facial treatment?

Maybe that makes your skin looks a little better.

OK, it's like a kind of like almost like a slippery slope of the beauty thing.

And like, yeah, but what did you see there?

Like fake asses and fake boobs or stuff on men?

Everything, dude, everything, saw everything.

Men with Botox, you know, fake everything.

Everybody's nose was everybody had the same nose.

So that was insane.

The power of veneers was like, I just love.

It's a pleasure to make you laugh because I like seeing that smile.

No, don't fall down this trap.

Do not do it, man. Do not do it.

I might show up to one of these podcasts with the veneers and a nose job.

Who knows? We'll see.

What about the thing?

Or like, I don't know if I told you this, I have like a deviated septum.

I went to ENT person.

I was like, yeah, I don't know.

Never been able to breathe through my nose very well.

And they're like, yeah, because you have like a super screwed up thing.

Like, it's like horrible.

And he's like, you should get that fixed.

I was like, OK, cool.

And I was like, does that change how my nose looks?

Well, yeah, they're like, while we're there.

That's the thing.

He's like, it doesn't have to change how it looks.

But like, we're doing the surgery anyways.

It's very easy to like, you know, just shape it.

And I was like, but does that make me lame?

And he's like, that's a personal question.

Like I was like, if I did that, would I have to tell my boys I got a nose job?

Like, what do you like telling this?

Like, doctor, am I gay?

I was like, I need a 360 opinion here on this.

Like, you can't just hit me with the medical.

I need the medical, the personal, the social.

Like, I need all the opinions.

He's going to diagnose you as being a douche.

He's exactly like, douche levels will go up if you have beers.

But like, you know.

All right, maybe the last one.

But what about the rich?

Did you meet with someone who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to a high school?

Yeah.

So rich people do really stupid things is the name of my of this topic,

which is actually they do misguided things to help their kids.

So I met multiple people who had donated somewhere between

single digit millions to double digit millions.

One person said a hundred million plus.

Well, I don't believe it because we're to a high school that would go to a high school.

I'll give you one.

I'll give you one fame.

Where would even 10 million go to a public example, which is that, you know,

the Fratida brothers, the guys who owned the UFC before they sold it,

the guys who own casinos in Vegas, they their kids like to play football

as many kids do.

But unlike many football parents, these guys decided that they're the high school,

their alma mater needed a like a division one

college level football facility and donated tens of millions of dollars.

They didn't have said the exact number, but you can kind of triangulate it

because they later donated like 10 or 15 million bucks to a college.

And it's less than what they gave their high school for their football.

Oh, my God.

And it's like, basically, they gave at least 20 million dollars

to a high school to build a better football facility

so their kids would have a better shot at becoming a better football player.

And I was like, this is such a misguided way,

such a like inefficient way to help your kids.

And I've met many people like this.

I know people who are wealthy beyond measure.

And I asked them, why are you still working like so many hours?

What are you doing? Why are you taking all this risk?

They're like, OK, they're like, my dad, when I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Said you're never going to do it.

And he refused to give me any money to start, start.

So I struggled so hard at the beginning when my kids turn 18.

I'm going to give them each 20 million dollars and say, like, you know,

I will support you in building any business you want with that.

You know, someone who said that their literal plan,

they like and they're saying it bragging to me again, crazy brag.

How old are their kids?

To me, their kids are currently the oldest, maybe 10 years old,

and their youngest is four.

So they have four kids.

That's 80 million dollar, you know,

allowance that they're going to they're creating trust and trust

funds that they're getting creative with the kids to start these businesses.

And I told them, I was like, well, you know that, like,

because you didn't have the resources, you developed all these skills,

which is what made you successful in business.

Like you weren't if you were handed 20 million dollars,

I don't think you would actually be who you are today.

So I love that you try to help your kids,

but I don't think what you're doing, which is working super hard

when their kids being so busy, being busy that you're kind of away from them,

making all this money that you plan to hand them at 18.

Like this sounds like a recipe for disaster.

But, you know, it's a horrible drug addict.

So, you know, I don't think that message was received very well.

But, you know, I just found that people do crazy things

in the name of of like their kids and money.

No, I think that that's crazy.

I think that's exactly how you create like a future heroin.

I'll tell you a couple other ones that I think are good.

Talk to an investor friend.

So I have a friend who was a VC at one of the big VC firms.

He's left. He left and started doing his own thing.

But he has a style and a strategy that I think is very different than most people.

I find it very fascinating.

So if I asked you, I said, what's what is like?

Draw me like a picture of the typical Silicon Valley VC.

Like, can you just describe some things about them?

Like, you know, what what are they like?

What are they doing?

You know, like the average VC, let's say average VC,

a tall looking white guy who wears a sweater

and brown shoes or shoes that have white souls like white bottoms.

And they basically meet tons and tons of people of tons of coffee meetings.

Yeah, tons of coffee meetings, lots of introductions from other people

who come from really amazing universities and they'll pass on most of them.

But then they'll invest like 50 to 100 companies,

smallish checks and then never hear from they don't really talk to the founder

often unless things are going really bad and they bitch out.

Exactly. They say they're going to be value add.

They invest in dozens of maybe 40, 50 companies over their lifespan of like a couple of years.

They're taking tons of coffee meetings.

They're super agreeable.

They'll only kind of smile and say nice things to your face.

Typically, they cast a wide net.

They love going to meet mark networking events.

They'll say that like we're a founder's first company.

We're a founder first. We're founder friendly.

We invest in world changing ideas.

Yeah, all of them.

All of them only invest in the best somehow.

Every single VC only invest in the best.

They do all those things.

This is an investor friend that has a Twitter egg profile picture.

They go to no networking events that are like VC run

and and or like kind of generic founder events.

They do go to random events that are like,

oh, I'm going to this biohacker meetup in downtown Oakland

where people are going to like shoot themselves up with DNA.

It's like, OK, I'll go to that.

Like they go to those types of events.

They have a strategy, which is basically here's what he told me.

He goes every year, one company becomes like kind of the center of the universe.

And my job is to have invested in that company three years ago.

And I go, wow, OK, I like that.

So what do you give me examples?

He goes, well, like, you know, back when we met,

I met this person in 2012 or 2013, they were like, you know,

Stripe was actually the center of the universe at that time.

Stripe was the company that like was the clear breakout recently.

He's like most recent ones last year would have been open AI.

So open AI before kind of like our like kind of early chat GPT

or before really releasing GPT three.

Right now I go right now.

Who is it right now?

He goes, Ozempic Ozempic is the center of the universe right now.

And I was like, oh, interesting.

So not just like tech companies.

When I last time I talked to this person was maybe three years ago

in earnest, and I was like, so what are you up to nowadays?

And generic.

Usually the answer is like, oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

This person said I quit my job and I am just hunting down

a way to own a piece of OnlyFans.

I go, what, the porn thing?

And he's like, yeah, OnlyFans, I think is going to be massive.

I think it's, you know, it's one of these.

It's the center of the universe right now.

And people are going to be the center of the universe.

People won't realize it.

I think it's going to be one.

I think it's going to be the one of this like this year kind of cohort.

This is going to be the company that matters.

So my only mission is to add so much value to the owner of OnlyFans

that I can invest in it or own a piece of it somehow.

And if I don't, whatever, at least I was helping that rocket ship go.

And, you know, previously it might have been SpaceX or Tesla was like, you know,

those that come the company and.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, like those are like some of the other ones I had there.

They're they own that that year.

There was no more valuable company that was like creating more value

that would then in the future be realized.

And I just thought it was awesome.

I thought it was an amazing.

I was I'm just so happy that this person's a friend that like thinks so

differently, operates so differently than the average person that has.

He's been successful, has been successful.

And he told me, I was like, I go, so what's the strategy here?

He goes, oh, I'm trying to make all the best investments I can so I can make

the worst investment of my life and buy this like soccer club in Europe

that I grew up loving.

And he's like, I'm trying to make the best investments ever so that I can make

the one worst investment ever.

And does he use other people's money in the past?

He did. I think now he's doing a lot of his own or he'll raise SPVs.

Like I was like, oh, you invest in this company.

Cool. What? What? How much do you invest?

He goes, a hundred million dollars.

And I go, a hundred million.

I was like, you have a hundred million dollars.

He's like, yeah, I raised a hundred million dollar SPV because I believe in

this company. And you just it puts your own conviction and ambition and check.

You're like, so what's the company I believe most in?

How much have I plowed into that?

And why is that number not 100 million?

Like you can only like self-check when you hear stuff like this in a good way.

It's a frame breaker.

I said, where did you get the hundred million?

He goes from one LP.

I convinced one person and they were actually already convinced.

Actually, that person was kind of already convinced that this was a good company.

I busted my ass to get the ability to put a hundred million dollar check in

and they put the money in.

What did you put a hundred million dollars in? Can you say?

I can't say.

Has it worked?

And again, it's you bake these things three, four years ahead

and it will find out like that company was at the right place

to concentrate like a laser beam of conviction.

So I loved that conversation and meeting that person.

So that was one that I think is great.

Let me give you one more that I think is

Oh, here's a quick one.

Neighborhoods, not cities.

You're, I think, a great person to talk about this

because you've been traveling around trying to find cool places to live.

You don't pick at the city level.

You pick at the neighborhood level.

It's actually what is the best neighborhood to be in?

Not what is the best city to live in?

And it's obviously obvious.

Understands me once you go to a place like LA or, you know,

you've done this in New York or Brooklyn or and it's really hard to do that,

by the way, like the idea that like, let's say that you're a normal person,

your home is likely going to be the biggest purchase of your entire life.

And it will unfortunately be the for most people,

it'll be the largest portion of their net worth.

And it's pretty insane that you make that decision, a 20 or 30 year decision

off one, maybe two one hour visits, right, like in like for a open house.

It's it's it's it's insane.

And you did this, I think way back in the day,

I think you created one of these for San Francisco.

I think it was the the roommate infographic for neighborhoods in San Francisco.

It's like, if you live in this neighborhood, here's who your roommates

going to be like, which is so brilliant because it's a about neighborhoods and B

it's about people because people is also what makes your experience

when you're in a in a city.

It's not it's not the environment.

Yeah.

Basically, in 2014, we had this app and in order to make it popular,

we launched in five cities, San Francisco, Boston, Manhattan,

L.A. and Chicago, I believe.

And what we did was we're like, all right, in order to make things go viral,

we have to name as many names of local restaurants and local people

that we can think of because those people will share if we name

like 50 of them in each one, that's 50 people sharing in that city.

That's how we'll get that's how we get popular.

And so we created this thing called the stereotypical roommates of Los Angeles.

Stereotypical roommates of San Francisco.

And if you Google them, you could find them and we just made

like an infographic that made fun of each neighborhood and all the brands

and places that they shopped at.

And that way you could like figure out what restaurants were like that neighborhood.

But those restaurants and the people in those neighborhoods would share.

And here's the thing at that period, I don't think I had never been in New York.

I had never been to Boston.

We just looked at Yelp.

We just went to Yelp and look at one of the most popular things.

And we found the jokes that people were making about it.

And then that's how we made the infographic and it went like crazy.

I think we got tens and many, many tens of thousands of downloads

for the app in the first day.

I saw that before I ever met you.

I read that thing when I moved to San Francisco, somebody shared it

because it was so funny and like kind of like, oh, that's funny because it's true.

Like so it was actually useful too, because it was like,

it was a little bit stereotyping generalizing, but it was it was true for the most part.

So I thought that was so, so good.

And I kind of wish somebody did that for every city now.

Like exactly.

Whenever I go and look at new neighborhoods, I try always go to a bar

and I say, what's the stereotype of this neighborhood?

And I'll ask the bartender or whatever.

I'm like, tell me the stereotypes.

And they'll be like, oh, a lot of gay people are moving in.

And I'm like, all right, up and coming. Got it.

That's what that means.

Like gentrifying or like, oh, like, what's the stereotype of this neighborhood?

Tens of strollers.

So I'm like, all right, rich, young families.

All right, got it. What else?

You know what I mean?

Like there's all these like things.

Yeah, there's like code codes.

It's like that's a it's like, you know, if you're in the government, it's like, oh,

it's a to three eight, three, three, three.

That's the government code that means X.

This is the same thing.

It's like when somebody says critically acclaimed, cool code for not profitable.

Thank you for moving on or boring.

For the everyday man. Got it.

OK, yeah, I got a couple other quick ones for you.

Rattle off one more.

I'll give you a networking hack.

So Tim first, back in the day,

they did this blog post called How to Build a World Class Network

and Record Time or something like that.

I loved that.

And I remember reading that and like kind of like getting inspired by that.

So I don't know if you know this, but business partner,

Ben, I think is the greatest networker in the world.

Actually, I've now come to realize this.

I had no idea I had no idea what was going on until recently.

I've now now learned this.

He is working the phones and he is just like it's so funny to what he does

is he just checks in on people like just this morning.

He texted my friend from college that I had introduced him to once.

One of my best friends from college

that we're helping by a business and he goes,

yo, yo, I remember you said that the close date was supposed to be 731.

Did it end up closing?

I was like, bro, how did you remember to check in?

Like he's the he's the perfect boyfriend, basically.

He's just fucking checking in and supporting everybody like bar shop.

You can probably attest to this.

And all and all of our we work together.

I probably text you, I don't know, a couple of times a year max.

And it's usually about something that's like urgent, sort of transactional.

Can I'm just guessing that you talk to Ben fairly often?

Could you just describe this for a second?

Because I think there's something to learn here out of this whole thing.

Yeah, I couldn't pull up my text.

He he probably hits me up like two or three times a week.

Like how's the X project going or how's how's X going?

Yeah, he's a beast.

So I noticed this because I would meet people and then somehow afterwards

they're only keeping in touch with Ben.

I'm like, dude, am I just unlikable?

I was like, and I think there's something to it.

I definitely give off some some stink that's like, you know, repels people.

But Ben has the opposite effect on people.

He draws them in.

He's like a golden retriever and he's always smiling.

He's just harmless and people people like him and he's helpful.

He's just supportive and helpful to everybody.

And so he's like, he knows here's what he's figured out.

He's figured out that most people just nobody checks in with him.

So he checks in on how's that your mission in life?

How's that going?

Does he do it on his cell phone or on the computer?

On his phone.

Then they reply with like a long ass update.

And I'm like, you're basically just saying sup.

And then the sup is generating this like highly interesting response.

And then what he does is he's just like connects dots.

So he'll be like, oh, you should talk to that guy.

Like, oh, you you really like this TV show?

We just met the writer.

You should meet him and he'll just connect dots.

And like he's just a dot connector.

And then people are like, oh, that was helpful.

Or like, once he knows you're trying to do X, like let's say he knows, Sam,

you're trying to do some body fat thing.

He'll then just start sending you tweets, just little links.

Like he does that to me all the way to it.

And he's also what's it called?

Like infatigable.

Like you can ignore.

Like you probably ignored the last four that he sent.

Don't matter.

No hard feelings.

Going to keep them coming.

And I'm like, wow, this is just a recipe.

So this kind of led me to this understanding of, okay, Ben is world class

at this fantastic.

But in general, Ben's kind of like my wingman.

He's like my number two.

And everybody's got like a number two at some once you get to a certain level,

you get like a number two.

And actually the number two guy network is the most undertapped resource.

So why were we meeting these NBA players?

Because we're friends with the number two of an NBA player.

And it's like, and guess what?

Nobody knows that guy.

Everybody wants to get to the NBA player.

Nobody even knows this guy's name, but he's got all the access.

He's got 98% of the access to the NBA guy has, but he's got 2% of the like the busyness.

And which we did with with Huberman's guy.

God, I'm blanking on his first name.

What's his name?

Rob, Rob Moore.

Yeah, I went out to, I hung out with that guy in LA and he was like, he runs

the Huberman show, Huberman's the face, but this guy's got all the keys.

He's like, oh, yeah, we interviewed this person, this person, this person.

If you ever want to talk, let me know.

The keys to the kingdom.

And generally, these people are nicer, less busy.

They're the ones who actually do a lot of the fucking work.

So they're actually more interesting people.

They also were kind of like the gatekeeper, like they decide who gets in,

who gets out, what opportunities come in, what gets out.

And they're hit up way less.

They're hit up way less.

So they're way more available and they're very helpful.

Like they, they know a bunch of the other people.

And so I'm like, oh, shit, the number two guy network.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but I've had the insight now.

And I'm like, I actually get along better with the number two guys, but for

all those reasons I just mentioned, and I just think that this is like an

undertapped resource and I get why everybody hits up Ben now.

Cause he's the number two guy.

And some people have figured out this arbitrage that you should hit up the

number two guy cause he's, you know, nicer, smarter, better, faster, more

accessible, all the things.

And, um, so this was just a realization for me on the networking side.

One of the, one of the few like big unlocks, I think that I've had.

Before we wrap up, did you, what was this thing about bucked up?

Is that someone you met with in LA?

I didn't meet them, but I heard, I met somebody who told me their story.

And I was blown away.

Had you ever heard of bucked up?

No, what is it?

So bucked up is a hunting thing.

Is this a hunting thing?

No, no, no, no, okay.

Let me tell you, don't even look it up.

Let me just tell you the story.

So, um, starts basically in the, in the, in the early 2000s, there's these

two guys, two twin brothers, I think, and they just do affiliate marketing.

So they're like affiliate marketing.

They're like, Hey, um, it's 2001.

Google is not that competitive.

We can basically say, Oh, you want leads for your lawyer practice?

Cool.

What are you going to pay us?

We'll get your leads for that.

You want leads for your apartment thing?

We'll get you that.

You want leads for this, uh, this supplement?

We'll get you that.

So, and at that time, those guys killed it.

Those guys are killing it.

Uh, by 2010, so they've been doing, they do this for about 10 years.

They're making money by 2010.

They're generating 25 million a year in revenue with only three employees.

That means they're basically pulling in like 20 million a year of profit.

Uh, as well.

Yeah.

If they're, if they're, if they're, uh, CBCs are low or the cost per clicks

were low, which bet back then they were, maybe I'm super aggressive.

Yeah.

I thought it would be pretty low then.

Maybe I'm super aggressive.

Let's say it's eight to 10 million a profit.

I think it's a very, yeah, a ton, which is just amazing.

Three people doing this.

So this was like, you know, what they were doing.

My partner, my partner, Joe, by the way, Joe Spicer, my partner in Hampton,

he started this and when he was 25, he sold the business.

It was called Epic Advertising.

He was the affiliate marketer.

He sold a portion of the business for $250 million.

That's amazing.

Amazing.

It was all this affiliate marketing stuff.

And so these guys, they're doing the affiliate marketing thing and a guy

comes to them and says, um, this is now like a decade later, right?

And he comes to them and says, hey, I have this supplement called L.

Arginine, uh, and the brand's called L.

Arginine plus.

And he's like, I don't know what L.

Arginine does, but like, um, it's like a vitamin.

I think it helps to make you sleep or does it give you energy?

I think it gives you energy or does a happy brain function better?

Who the hell knows?

I don't know.

It's one of those.

I think you're supposed to drink it with caffeine and it gives you energy.

I think.

Yeah, maybe.

Like right now, it's just a generic fucking supple is the one.

But back then it was Arginine was the one.

And so yeah, whatever.

The guy goes, I say e-bols and shit.

It's all, it's all a guy barrier.

What the fuck that thing is.

It's all a different thing every time.

What's that shit called?

What's that?

Brazilian shit called a guy.

I ain't no ACA berries.

It's like, whatever I see the word, uh, Kenoba foods.

All right.

What's that?

Kenoba, quinoa.

Uh, no, it's one of the Kenoba.

No, Queen.

Wah.

You know, yeah, it's like, what do you call, uh, did you ever use to call?

Uh, I used to think that like, like Quinta in was Laquita.

You know, I'm talking about the Laquita in.

I don't know.

Is the thing you said you say it.

How do you say it now?

Cause I think it's also completely wrong.

What's it called?

Like Quinta.

What's supposed to be called?

I think it's Quinta, but I don't know.

I'm Laquita.

So, so a guy approaches him says, Hey, I'm making $250 a day on this L.

Argentine thing.

Will you guys be my affiliate marketers quickly in three weeks?

They ramp it up.

It's now making like over $3,000 a day.

Okay.

That's pretty good.

$3,000 a day.

That's like a hundred K a month.

They own 50% of this thing and they buy L.

Argentine.com to get an exact match.

They're ranking number one.

That's doing pretty well.

And then he reads this article.

So he's interested in this supplement game.

He reads this article that Major League Baseball just banned Deer Antler

Spray, never heard of it.

What the hell's Deer Antler Spray?

Looks it up, finds that Deer Antler has some extract.

That's supposed to help you with recovery.

Damn, it must be so good that the MLB bans it.

That means it must be fire.

Like there's going to be a lot of, so he, he takes, he, he has the right.

What does that Chris Barley thing?

Did you learn the right lesson?

He learned the right lesson from that news, which was.

This shit must be fire and every athlete is going to want it.

So he buys Deer Antler Spray.com for eight dollars and he owns the domain.

He's the number one rank.

And it goes OK at first, not a huge demand, but he's kind of, he's there.

And then I don't know if you remember this, but one year before the Super Bowl,

Ray Lewis, who was the killed the guy.

No, he killed the guy, I think the year before, but during the playoff run,

he gets hurt. Got it.

And there's a two week, there's like a, there's like an extra week rest

between like the Super Bowl and the playoffs or whatever.

I think the story goes, Ray Lewis is hurt, but he's got to play in the Super Bowl.

And then he plays amazing and they win the Super Bowl.

And he's, and it comes out that he used Deer Antler Spray to like recover

during that week and to like get rid of the pain and allow him to play well.

Demand explodes through the roof, baby.

And GNC comes to him and says, hey, we'd like

30 units. And he's like, okay, cool. No problem.

And they're like, Oh, no, no, sorry. 30,000 units.

And he's like, Oh, what?

They're sold out everywhere.

As soon as they, they, they, they, they get all this influx of demand.

They're, they're trying to keep up.

So for one or two years, they're just keeping up with the new demand

and being the number one player in this Deer Antler Spray thing.

But as they go, they're like, OK, we're kind of limited.

It's like very niche.

What if we expand this to something a little bit bigger?

So they changed the name from Deer Antler Spray to Bucked Up.

They kind of stay with the Deer.

Oh, my God.

They changed it to Bucked Up because one of the GNC franchisees

who they were chilling with goes, yeah, you know what, sells really well.

But like, you know, it doesn't look that good is these pre-workout supplements.

So basically the powder you take before you work out.

You remember NO Explode?

Yeah, NO Explode.

Dude, that thing was acid.

That would, that would, you could brim a paint with that thing.

I used to take that shit and you would lift so much weight,

but it would make you feel miserable after.

I don't even know what was in it.

Yeah, it felt like your heart was going to explode.

It should have just been called like, you know, Artury Explode

and like, you know, one out of 10 people died of this thing.

It was crazy.

But like that category of pre-workout supplements turns out is a very big category.

So Bucked Up today, they say is the number one pre-workout supplement.

This thing does guess how much revenue this does.

I have no idea. 10.

Two hundred and fifty million a year, apparently. Bucked Up does.

Dude, the flavors.

So it's called Mother Bucker.

That's one of their things is the Mother Bucker.

And it just has like their slogan should be like, strong as an ox.

Like this is like ridiculous.

You focus, strength, energy, the mother of all pre-workouts, Mother Bucker.

That's crazy to me. This is nuts.

You know, sometimes when I'm flipping the channels on TV, I'll see like,

you know, Hasan Minhaj and he's just like, you know,

this guy who's his comedian, he makes the world laugh.

He's so good looking.

He's, you know, happy.

He's having all this success.

And I think, you know, it was maybe one or two, you know,

right turns away from from going down that path.

When you see Bucked Up, do you think this?

Because I feel like you were one or two right turns away

from being the creator, owner and sole proprietor of BuckedUp.com,

selling Mother Bucker pre-workout powders to people on the Internet.

Yeah, maybe, maybe.

I mean, I don't know.

With like a 90,000 square foot factory in Missouri and just like, you know,

I have a huge antler tattoo on your back.

Dude, listen, the flavors are Woke AF.

Another one is the BAMF high, the other one is the BAMF high stimulation.

Another one is the LFG pre-workout.

Let's fucking go. Another one is called Rut.

This is hilarious.

These are all like really good names of like really mean dogs.

You know what I mean?

Like I'm going to have like a really like a my junkyard dog named Buck.

Get him, Buck. That's like what this stuff is.

You know, or like, run.

Yeah, like this is crazy.

This is a deer antler.

This is from that to this is kind of an insane, insane story.

And yeah, and they still kill it.

Yeah, they're doing really well right now, apparently.

I mean, I mean, I'm talking to I know this from one guy

and then what you Google about them, but like apparently just crushing it.

Oh, my God, I have no idea what's in this stuff.

I would like I mean, this might be a legit performance enhancing drug.

Is it still illegal for the MLB?

Because maybe I will order it.

Exactly. Like, that's so insane, you know, as you check out.

Well, people talk about performance enhancing drugs like it's a bad thing.

But I'm like, I would love my performance to be enhanced.

Do you know what I mean?

Like the main problem with my performance is how do I enhance my performance?

I really want it to be enhanced.

I prefer it to be enhanced than unenhanced.

So like give me the PED.

So I'm like in favor of some PEDs, not not if it means you break the rule.

But we talked about this.

Did you see that thing, the enhanced games that somebody was creating?

Was that the was that just the different sports, but for steroid users?

It's basically like it's like, you know, I feel like every college

bro had this like conversation in their dorm room, which like they should

just do the Olympics, but with the drugs.

Like you could take anything and see what happens.

Like I want to see somebody run like a two second 100 meter dash.

And it's like these guys created it.

It's called the enhanced games and it's happening.

And I don't know if you've it came out and it almost looked like

like satire, like it wasn't happening.

So if you go to it's enhanced.com, it's got a better version of the Olympics.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a great.

That's a great.

We're basically Airbnb, but better.

Performing, it's from the dance.

I can't find their website.

Websites down right now.

The website's down.

But enhanced games is a planned international sports event

where the athletes will not be subjected to drug testing.

It's meant to take place in December of 2024.

So the guy, Aaron D'Souza, is the same guy that Peter Thiel funded

to take down Gawker, by the way.

OK, so sign me up.

Well, I think, you know, best LinkedIn ever.

So here's how he does it.

He says, athletes are adults.

They have the right to do with their body as they wish.

My body, my choice, your body, your choice.

And no government should be making these decisions for athletes,

particularly those around the FDA.

Yeah. So here's what he said.

He goes, here's the game plan.

He goes, every athlete who participates is going to be a part owner

in the thing because you're you're generating, you know, part of the opportunity.

I assume that if you were an Olympian, you won a gold medal, your life is made.

It's not the case.

It's sad to see people have achieved the highest level of human excellence

or living living an objectively impoverished existence afterwards.

But, you know, the bureaucrats who own these things make millions.

We took the Olympics has 13,000 athletes.

We're reducing that to maybe a thousand with no special infrastructure.

So instead of costing a hundred billion to deliver this, it'll cost us,

you know, double digit millions.

And yeah, they have like a bunch of things.

Here's kind of like their their belief system.

So it says the enhanced games will be a competitor to the corrupt

and dysfunctional Olympic Games.

The first international it'll be the first international sports event

without drug testing.

Olympics are about the past.

It's about grief, great gods from history.

The enhanced games are about the future.

We're building superheroes.

And it talks about how the IOC is corrupt, like the committee that runs the Olympics.

And that, you know, anti-aging gets stymied

because of all the anti science, like, you know, authorities trying to like

take drugs out of out of performance.

And we're trying to do the opposite.

It's my body, my choice.

He says, thinking, think back 50 years ago,

being a gay man was like being an enhanced man today.

It's stigmatized, marginalized and illegal in some senses.

OK, I don't know about that.

Yeah, and then I don't know if it's actually going to happen or not.

This is seemed seem well, their website doesn't work.

So like, we'll see they can't afford their go daddy renewal for the domain.

But no, I think I'm I'm I think I'm cool with that.

My big I mean, besides Lance Armstrong,

kind of used to be my hero and then he like got in trouble for lying.

And I kind of like got upset about that.

But besides that whole lying thing, I was like, they're all doing it.

And he's doing it as well.

And he's still one.

So like, it's kind of fair. Right.

So and so I do get that.

I'm kind of on board with that.

And I think a lot of the PEDs are pretty amazing.

Like, you know what EPO is?

It makes you get more red red blood cells in your in your blood.

So like endurance, basically.

Yeah, you have better endurance.

And I hear about that stuff and I'm like, that sounds great.

Give me more of that. I want that.

You know what I mean?

Like there and there are some

in a box steroids that, you know, you'll die young.

There was this one which I don't like.

But there was this one.

Have you seen the guy on Instagram?

He was only 30.

But I think his name is Joe.

I forget what his like handle was.

It was like Joe, like all ripped or something.

And he was the guy who you would see flexing and he was so lean and big

that you would see it looked like he had little spiders in his chest

because all the little muscles were like flexing.

I think his name was like Joe Flex.

Have you seen that guy? No.

Well, he died like last week.

He died like, oh, that was that guy?

OK, yeah, yeah, I've seen.

He died last week because he definitely was on the juice.

And he was just it's really hard to be that lean for that long.

So you have to be on a ton of stuff and he died.

And so like I'm not in favor of that type of stuff.

But some of the other performance enhancing drugs, like I actually think that

you could be a healthier, longer living human being if you took some of that stuff.

Or like blood doping.

So like in the 60s, this runner in Finland named Blasey Varen,

he would like go up in the mountains and no one would see him when he was training.

And what they alleged that he did with blood doping, you could just take out

some of your blood and you could put it in a refrigerator and that gives that

oxidizes it, it gives it or it gives you more red blood cells ultimately

and you just inject it back in your body.

That's considered illegal.

That's crazy to me.

It's not illegal. It's against it's against rules for the Olympics.

But that's insane that blood doping like that is illegal.

It's like, well, dude, it's just your blood.

You're just freezing it and putting it back in you.

Things like that you can't do.

But I've thought about that.

I think it'd be amazing.

There was a guy in Netflix who did it where he was an amateur cyclist

and he was like, I'm going to blood dope and I'm going to document this.

And this was the whole documentary and it was awesome.

He crushed it. He killed it.

He like improved so much and I thought that's pretty cool.

I think this actually would be a good YouTube or podcast channel.

Have you ever gone on YouTube down a rabbit hole of college ethics classes?

Have you ever seen this?

No, no.

Sounds boring as hell.

But it's actually kind of interesting.

It's not very interesting because it's not made for YouTube.

But basically, if you go like you could basically sit in on a Stanford or Harvard

ethics class, will the pose some question like, should you be allowed to

like our performance enhancing drugs, should they be allowed in the Olympics

or whatever, like some philosophical question, like the version of the trolley

thing where it's like, if you could save five lives and pull the trolley

and kill one, would you do it?

Right. Like that those kind of like moral and ethical like thought experiment

questions and you see people just stand up in a college lecture hall and they're

like, I say no, because blah, blah, blah.

And then somebody says, I disagree.

I would say yes, because I think that what about blah, blah, blah.

And you just see the debate.

I think debate is actually like pretty interesting.

And I think if somebody did that well, you could do a kind of like NPR style

or gimlet style, like intelligent, but entertaining podcast series or YouTube

channel that like just gets like find these things like the equivalent of

like somebody I was at one of these dinners in LA, somebody goes, I had jury

duty and the case that I had jury duty for was actually kind of interesting.

This guy, this guy goes online and he's in this online forum or community

for like kind of like kinky meetups.

OK, nothing illegal about that.

And there's a woman there who says, hey, me and my husband really want to do a thing.

It's, you know, here's our thing.

It's kind of weird, but like we want somebody to come over and we want to

role play like a kind of like a rape scenario.

And she's like, so, you know, I'm looking for somebody who wants to do that.

This guy's like, that's fun.

I can do that.

And she's like, cool.

So here's what's going to happen.

You're going to come over to this place.

I'm going to act surprised.

I'm going to say no.

That's part of the bit.

We're going to do it anyways.

And, you know, we're all good.

Was it like a setup?

Was it like a different woman?

No, the husband was playing it is bad.

So the husband was on this forum as acting as if he was the woman saying

that's what I mean. And on it, she wasn't his wife.

Oh, no. So. Oh, no.

Now this guy's.

So the jury duty was should this guy be go to jail for rape?

What a horrible scenario for everyone involved.

It's lose, lose, lose, right?

Like just. Oh, man.

But it's kind of like an interesting question.

It's like, well, like on one hand, what a conniving husband.

Yeah, he's like, OK, definitely the husband should be in trouble.

Like that's kind of a separate scenario.

But this guy, like, should he go to jail for like 20 years because of this

scenario or not? Like and the vote was basically like, should this go to

is like an indictment?

So it's like, should he go to it?

Should this go to trial or no?

Should this not be not go to trial or whatever?

And we had this is like fascinating dinner conversation about it just

hearing everybody's kind of opinion, hearing like a little bit of a healthy

kind of debate or just like a perspective on it.

Similarly, there was another one that was like,

you know, this couple

looks like they're holding drugs, like crack or whatever.

Cop starts chasing after them.

They throw something away in the trash.

Cop, you know, cop grabs them, they don't have it on them.

He's like, I saw you dump it in the trash.

He opens the trash, sees it there.

But who's to say they didn't throw something else away?

Right. Should they go to jail for this like this offense?

And it's like, well, on one, if you're the jury, like you kind of do think

like they probably did it, but you don't have like

uncontroversial or whatever, like evidence that like leaves no shadow of doubt

that they that they did it.

And it's like kind of a nonviolent offense.

Do we really want to punish them?

You start bringing your own subjective opinion into this versus what you're

supposed to do as a jury member.

So anyways, I just the conversation was so interesting that I thought,

I think this could make for an interesting pod or YouTube channel.

What do you think? You have a good sense for content.

What do you think?

Well, I think I think they would be great.

I think I would I think you could do a YouTube channel

a 10 minute 10 minute videos where you could

dissect some of these interesting things and just have one take a take a

sided debate and then people live vote.

I think wasn't there an app that was trying to do this where it was like

live debates and you vote on who's the winner?

Maybe. Do you not remember that?

Yeah, I have in 2014.

Yeah, I think you could kill it.

It's it's where it's, you know, almost like, remember,

you know, drunk rap battles where it's like Napoleon versus like Caesar.

Yeah. Yeah, you do this in that situation.

I think like it's an incredibly interesting topic.

I mean, clearly, if you've gotten into it, yeah, I think it could work.

Cool. All right.

That's all I got for my trip to L.A.

Hope that I actually had a bunch more.

But I think that's that's enough.

Also, Erdogan, you've been to this place?

Yeah, I went there before and I wanted to buy the most expensive bottle

of water they had to see what it was about.

And it was like 20 or 30 bucks.

This fun, a fun, fun experience.

How's the water?

It is fine.

It was normal.

But and I also bought like the most expensive.

I wanted to I was like, whatever,

like the most expensive chocolate is and water.

I'm getting it. I think they have like asparagus there,

like asparagus water.

That's really this is also a layup TikTok channel.

You know, Erwan experiments or the Erwan taste tests.

You just go to famous people there, though.

What's that? That's why you go.

But did you see any famous people?

That's why you go.

No, I was just looking at the snacks.

Is that what I was supposed to be doing?

Oh, God, this is like.

It's like in college, when I used to go to the bar and, you know,

I'm there to listen to the music and I didn't meet anybody.

I missed the point.

Yeah, you're like doing a Long Island.

I see tasting.

I'm talking to the bar.

I forgot.

Yeah, you're supposed to go and see famous people.

You know, it's a fun experience.

That place kills it.

They're expanding, I think, aren't they?

Don't they have multiple?

They used to be one just in Santa Monica, I think 13 or something like that.

For those who don't know,

Erwan is basically like the bougie.

It makes whole foods.

It makes whole foods look like the dollar store.

Yeah, you're like you look down at whole foods people as peasants.

Yeah, Erwan is to whole foods as Aole is to mayonnaise.

It's the like just jazz version.

The cool part about it is it has a lot of products that are like

almost like it's like a D to C pop up shop.

It's like, here's a bunch of products that are not the normal things

that are on the shelves, so you can try them.

And they're all three times more expensive

than they should be already five times more.

And I think a layup content thing would be

go to Erwan, buy all the chocolates or buy all the chocolates versus

the fancy Erwan versus Walmart and you do blind taste tests

and you like absolutely to rank them and you just give your recommendation.

You spend the money on the stuff and you just do like Erwan shopping.

You just you become the Erwan guy.

Like, dude, if I was broke again,

I'd be back.

I'd be back so fast because I just know

that these are right.

You just see it and you know it like another one is pranks.

I hate the pranks.

Dude, have you seen this guy who does the thing that was Jodi or something like that?

Like, what is this guy's channel?

The guy who went to sleep at an NBA at WNBA game.

Did you see this? No, no.

But I hate the pranks where it's like people like prank pick a fight with you.

And then the person responds and actually beats him up.

And then the recipient is like, it was just a prank, bro.

So this guy, Jedeon, Jedeon, I don't know how you say it exactly.

I love his video.

So he goes, he went to the WNBA All Star game.

He bought four courtside seats,

dropped like, you know, like whatever, 25 K on these seats.

And then he came with a blanket and I guess it looks like an eye mask.

Oh, my God, what an asshole.

And he's like, the funny thing is they asked him about it.

He was like, dude, I had the idea because I knew this would like

go viral, just fall asleep because he's done it before.

Like he goes to a basketball game courtside and he brought his barber

and they put like the the bib on him and he gets a haircut during the game.

But like, if you're just watching TV, like, is that guy getting a haircut?

Like, this is like very obvious.

And so he had this idea, I wasn't going to do it.

I thought it might be too mean.

I told my friend about it.

I said, yo, maybe you want to do it.

And the guy was like, he's like, that guy got so excited

because he knew this would go so viral.

I was like, nah, fuck it.

I'm going to do it myself.

He's like, so I did it.

He's like, but then it turned into like a political thing.

It's not how I intended it.

Like he got banned from all NBA events.

He got banned from all NBA and WNBA events for doing this.

But this guy is just so good at trolling the world.

And it's like, that's just like a.

It's a it's a niche that will never get old.

Like you get what an asshole.

This is like infinite demand for.

He also caught one of the NBA balls and tried to shoot it from his seat

like because he was courtside.

He's so he's so funny.

This guy.

All right.

I think we should wrap up there.

That's the pod we done.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.