My First Million: The Man Month, Shaan's Feud with Jason Calacanis & Elon vs Zuckerberg Fight

He needs a hold me back guy you're at a hold me back guy. You're in a fight

You're like hey listen, I'm gonna go out these guys. I need you to hold me back

So I'm not I'm not actually trying to fight this guy. I need it to look like I'm trying to fight this guy

And I need you to hold me back and I it's gotta be off these guys weren't holding me

I would have kicked your ass

He needs to find a hold me back. I think Elon told me back guy. It's gonna be a hard sneeze

He's one hard sneeze away from getting like a backsmash. You know what I'm saying like

All right, we are live what's going on dude amazing hoodie sick hoodie

You like that?

Hampton, yeah, that is very nice. I had a team off site

We had all of our employees get together in Brooklyn and the CEO my CEO Jordan organized this lovely

Event and he gave us all hoodies that say Hampton and then our city though. We live in your you're a stressful dude to organize an event

For I've never had to do it, but I've been a part of events where people are organizing for us and

I'm like they're like, oh, yeah, by the way

It's everything you know the venue changed and we forgot, you know, there's only one chair on stage

I'm like, it's cool. All right, no no problem. And then you're like what the hell?

So I would be very stressed if I had to throw a off-site or an event

Where you were my like kind of core customer

Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair

But let me explain my reasoning behind that and this is very business related number one

I believe the way you do one little thing is the way you do everything

So what that means though is if you've proven to me that I can trust you I'm all in and I don't question anything

And so until you've proven that to me

I question everything and if there's not a good answer behind it, I doubt you and once we get past that stage

I'm good the second reason

There is no second reason I actually forget what it is. That was a good reason. Oh, I know

The second here's this here's the second reason and we could actually talk about this for a second if you want

But basically the second time around you've done something

Everything is so much calmer because now my entire reputation my entire net worth

It's not tied up into this one entity, which is what many things I've done in the past have been so I'm much calmer

I'm way more subdued this time. Yeah, I think that's true for sure

And do you find yourself?

thinking bigger as a kind of like way bigger now. This is you've got one win under your belt

What was the phrase that Justin Mary said once you do whatever you got to do to get your nut and after that go for your noble mission

So, you know, you've got your nut now, you know, you're financially secure. You're safe

Not only are you calmer, but are you more? I don't know ambitious or long-term oriented in some way?

Yes 100% I used to criticize founders if they would sell secondary

So you'd read about this a lot you you typically only read about it when it's done in a bad way of which it's done

In a bad way many times you'll see this company which is going to go bankrupt

The founders took $50 million off the table and it didn't work out the reasoning behind that

I think is great still which is you give an entrepreneur five or ten million dollars and they're like wow

I I can I can live a really nice life now. I think bigger. That's definitely the case with me

I think significantly longer term

So I think like what's this like in 20 or 30 years as opposed to next quarter and I don't care if it fails

Which is actually a good thing meaning I'm able to try more within it. I

What have I said treat them mean keep them keen

It's like that with with trying to find a date and make money

It's so like you the less I care the more it happens

Yeah, I think the way I think about it is like because you see examples on both sides

You see when somebody had no other option back against the wall

That's when they when they when they rose to the occasion and you could also hear the other other scenario

Which is because I was secure

I was able to play a long-term game and I was less emotionally

Invested in the ups and downs of it. Therefore. I was able to make better decisions and blah blah blah

You could see both examples. So which one is it and actually I think the reality is that

Success is not based on either one of those it's not based on how much money you had in your bank account

When you had zero or when you had a bunch people tell themselves stories about it either way

I think fundamentally if a person is driven

Intrinsically driven it doesn't matter whether that fuel is because

They're a technologist and they just love technology

They're trying to make something good for humanity or they're insecure because you know in seventh grade

Rachel dumped them and it's like well either way it doesn't matter

You know like it doesn't matter what your driving force is as long as you have a driving force

And it's different for a whole bunch of people

There's there's examples of people on with all kinds of you know chips on their shoulder

I think you do need to be driven and it's just a question of by what and I think everybody's got a different by what

Are you more calm?

Now that you've had success. I'm definitely more calm, but I was pretty calm before I said calm

I would say is not really the word. I guess the way I would put it is I'm less desperate and

Let yeah, yeah, I think that has ups and downs again

Like I said like when I was desperate to prove myself

Like

You saw that I worked in that really fancy office. I also slept in that office

I think basically I was like one year is like 275 days out of the year

I slept there and like it was nice to sleep there. So really night

They had an apartment built into the office or it wasn't like the it's not like I was sleeping under my desk on the like concrete floor

But nonetheless that just sort of means you I just didn't have a life. I didn't want to have a life

I didn't want to care about friends and dating and other things. I cared about just making it

I just wanted to be successful really badly and I was like

It's not even that I was super productive all those hours, but I was like look

I'm going to throw all my hours at the problem. I will sleep here. I will wake up here. That just seems more efficient

I'm just going to do that. I did that for several years

But now I would say that desperation has been replaced with

You know a different asset. Okay. I lost the desperation which was serving me. What do I have now? Which is like

I can operate more out of a like I can choose things that are like

I'm actually driven towards like to have a purpose even if there's no short more offensive as well

Yeah, there's no short term path to like right now. For example, I'm writing this newsletter every day

I write this thing every day. There's no ads

There's I subscribe no small boy or small boy. Yeah small boy and I'm writing this thing. There's no ads

There's no premium. There's no upsell. There's no business model

So why am I doing it and I'm like

Because I really like writing and more than I like writing

I like finding interesting shit to write about things that you know scratch my curiosity

So I'm able to do something and then as I'm doing this thing that has no business plan that has no whatever

I'm seeing all these extra opportunities open up because

That I that I couldn't have seen at the beginning and so just by doing the thing I really

Kind of have drawn to I'm most interested in I'm doing my best work and when I'm doing my best work

These unforeseen things start to open themselves up and I'm like, oh

I would have the 24 year old me would have never been able to do this because

24 year old me was desperate and needed

I needed a payoff quick

Now I don't need a quick payoff and so I'm able to do things differently

And I think that has a different advantage. Can we talk about is there a new chip on your shoulder now?

Well, you tell me is the feud that you're experiencing right now

Your internet feud is that has that even made it to the point where you bring it up at the dinner table?

No, no, no, my wife is not aware of it

But she's like, hmm. How come he's looking at his phone for like an extra 30 seconds longer?

And it's because I'm coming up with a a bad ass slam in my head

I'm worth smithing a seventh grade insult right now. And I don't know. What does my kid want? What do you want?

Hold on. Daddy's busy. I'm coming up with a yo mama joke to jason calacanis right now

Background of this is there's a podcast called the all impod. They're great. I think they're good

but they're different than us and a lot of people will listen to both of ours

so maybe there's a little definitely some competition in there, but we can all win and

Last podcast Sean challenged them basically to a hundred thousand dollar

Poker bet a heads up poker, but there was some more there's some more detail behind it

but I shared that on the internet and jason calcanis

I thought he was coming hard at me too, but he came hard at he said sam. You're great. Sean

You'll still learn and he gave you a head pat and he said smart of you Sean to punch

I don't know if he

So the background is while we were I forgot what we were talking about

I think we were making fun of him a little bit because he um in the rogan debate people were like, you know

It's raised two million dollars for this the scientist to come debate this guy like a kind of a famous internet challenge here

and he's like

I'm in for 10k

Which is funny because the answer to the record is doing was a hundred k plus

I've never made fun of jason if it comes down to it. I you have my loyalty

I will I'll die for you, but I've so far if you want me to I'll I'm glad these hop in I've stayed mostly neutral

This is a you thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I by the way, I like jason for the record

I have nothing against jason calcanis. I've listened to this week of startups for a long time

I don't listen anymore, but I used to listen like back in the day

I like the all-in podcast. It's sort of like two thoughts that are both true

I like their content. I have nothing against them personally. I've met him a couple times in passing

No ill will there

also

I think some things he says are funny and cringy like funny kind of laugh at you not with you type of thing and cringy like

When the thing I think the joke I had made that he didn't like was that I said all in is billionaires talking about

Billionaire shit mfm is millionaires talking about millionaires shit and somebody goes

Actually, it's more like three billionaires and their friend jason calcanis and he go he came in for his own defense and goes

Actually, I'm a centi million a centi millionaire

I just thought that was cringe as fuck which

objectively and scientifically it is

So I think he might have might have taken offense to that and I didn't it didn't fully like it

But I would say my poker challenge to them is only for fun. I just think it would be a fun thing to do

I think it'd be a fun thing to watch. I'm just looking for some action. I love playing poker. They say they're great at poker

Okay, let's do a little celebrity

But no no celebrity challenge. Nothing's been settled. You're not doing it yet. Well, they didn't take the bait

I think, you know, he was sort of just like well

You know, you're not famous enough for me to do this challenge

I have more to lose than I do and then I have to gang and out of doing this was sort of the the vibe I got which

Honestly, the problem with that is that

That's not entirely true. Are they are they more popular? You could argue that for sure for sure

but but

There's a ballpark and you know, it's there. I'm in the stadium

Yeah, it's not like calling uh, you know, what do I say? It's not like calling a five ten guy tiny

You know what I mean? Like you got to be at least five six to get that nickname

You're five ten here. You know what I mean? Not small enough

Yeah, yeah, but the funny thing is as I was talking about, you know, we should like on the podcast

I was joking. I was like, oh wait, is this fake internet beef? I would love to have some fake internet beef

That's you know, this is how rappers for generations have been getting famous. You know, they just have fake beef

We should do this as podcasters with other podcasts. And so I think that was the the fun behind it

We got one up big time

Just when I thought me and jason calcannis were getting some some fake internet beef

Palmer lucky comes off the top rope the founder of oculus and androle comes off the top rope and just body slams jason

People love that and then while that's going on

Elon musk challenges mark zuckerberg

to a fight

and now

I don't even give a shit about my own poker match. I need to see these guys fight. Let's break this down. We have to do this story

Yeah, so

Basically, I don't actually don't know how it started. Do you know how it started?

But what I do I'll fill in when facebook actually facebook officials replied with a beautiful response

Well, there's a few steps to it. So I think the first thing was I guess the old I think the origin of this was

A presentation leaked out of facebook that was talking about the facebook's coming out with a twitter competitor

I think it's called project 92 or something like that

And it's a twitter competitor

And their pitch was sort of like, yeah, it's a twitter competitor

Instagram people will be able to immediately have their instagram following on this

So if you want to if you're already famous on instagram, you could just start sharing short form text like twitter on our new thing

And you know, it will be run by like run in a sane way like it'll be managed in a sane way

I think was the something that something with the word sane in it

And so essentially implying that twitter is sort of insane

And the way elon's running it is reckless

So that got out that that present internal presentation leaked. Maybe intentionally. Maybe not. I don't know

So elon started making fun of of zuckberg. He sang like, you know, zuck my blink

You know, like, you know, he's just sort of like, you know, tweeting stuff like that

And then somebody somebody was like, you know, watch out zuck's been training and he and elon replies and says

I'll fight zuck in a cage match

So he says this

And zuck screenshots it

And posts on his instagram story with the caption

send me location

Which for those who don't know is a iconic

Ufc slogan by kabeem. I think one of the greatest

Ufc fighters of all time

Who was when he was fighting with connor mcgregor and mcgregor was like, oh, he's scared

He doesn't want to fight me blah blah blah and kabeem just goes brother. I'm not scared. You want to fight me?

Okay, just send me location. Just send me location. Like basically, where do I need to go?

I'll fight you anywhere. And so zuck hits elon with the send me location

And this triggers a chain of events that I thought was a joke. So I thought

First of all, I've never seen zuck talk trash. That was already

Kind of an amazing moment. He he he he did a heel turn, which is awesome

The second thing is I was like, okay, well, there's no way this is serious

And then elon

Sees that tweet and goes or sees that story and goes i'm serious. I'll do it if he's down

And then people are like, wait, what? I don't know if you saw this today sam

Do you see that dano whites involved?

So dano white is the president of the ufc comes out because again, i'm sort of you know

My greatest fantasy would come true if this if randomly two tech billionaire CEOs

Went and decided to do a ufc match. That's my two worlds colliding

All of a sudden dano white comes out. He says I talked to mark and elon last night

Both guys are absolutely dead serious about this

He goes this would be the biggest fight of all time

Floyd and connor was one of the biggest fights of all time. This I think triples it

There is no limit on how much this could make

He said it would be in las vegas

It would pay per view and it'd be about a hundred bucks pay per view

And you would have 51 year old elon musk against i don't know like 39 year old mark zuckerberg

Who's a hundred pounds lighter than him?

And dude, what is happening? Is this is this real and then

The verge reached out to facebook and a facebook official which is replied and they just said

Yeah, and they go the story speaks for itself

Which is another like basically there's a guy in the ufc that always says it is what it is

And that's exactly what what facebook just said. They said we are it is what it is

It sounds it sounds serious and I thought that was a pretty baller move. I think this is hilarious. I think this is awesome

I love a freak show

Assigned me. All right. I have some rapid fire questions topic number one

most importantly

Do you believe this will happen? Yes or no and why?

I believe zuck will do it and I and I and I think he would do it

I think there's not a chance that elon would do it

I think elon would get very hurt just training for it

And I don't think there's a there's a there's not a world where elon does

So you think it's a no a no because elon. Yeah, I 100% agree with you

I hope it happens. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I would just if I had to guess

I had to guess I would say it doesn't happen

Because elon realizes that he's gonna lose a lot. He's gonna lose first of all if he does this

He's gonna get destroyed

He's gonna get he's gonna get tapped out and if he if he does it

I think he realizes that it's a pretty bad look for him to lose to zuck his cool factor is really high

And he needs to find a wiggle out. He needs to hold me back guy. You're gonna hold me back guy

You're in a fight and you're like, hey listen, I'm gonna go after these guys. I need you to hold me back

So I'm not I'm not actually trying to fight this guy

I need it to look like I'm trying to fight this guy and I need you to hold me back

And it's gotta be off these guys weren't holding me. I would have kicked your ass

He needs to find to hold me back. I think elon told me back guy. It's gonna be a hard sneeze

He's one hard sneeze away from getting like a backsmash him. You know what I'm saying like

He's not the guy's not fit. You know, he's he's a he's a char. He's a charlie horse away from quitting

Yes winner by noogie

mark

All right, so so that's my second question, which is how do you think let's say

Let's say our dreams do come true. This fight does happen

What do you think would actually happen like predict the actual fight? What would what would happen fight starts? What happens?

Zuck look so I box for fun and I spar and what I've learned is it doesn't really matter that much

It matters a bit, but it doesn't matter how in shape you are

It doesn't really matter how tough you are if you don't practice that skill set and you go against another person

That doesn't have that skill set. It's just it's just your light years away from one another just being comfortable getting hit

I think zuck would finish him within two minutes

He'd probably get him on the ground and elon would tap from getting his arm injured or something like that

Yes, now the counter-argument would be but elon could train

Are you counting elon out this guy's proven he could do anything he could train? What's the counter to that?

He won't I don't think he'll train and I don't think any amount of training

Look, you can't make a overweight 51 year old fit in any amount of time

Ozympic the magic powers of ozympic. He's already on ozympic. He's already lost like 30 pounds on ozympic

It it it doesn't matter. It's keep in mind zuck's still only 39. I think or 38

No, I don't think that elon can train and I don't any no amount of training

So I get him to the point where here's some extra data people will on twitter were like elon. We love you

But man, I think zuck would handle you. Here's what elon said

Three things that he said. Oh, I saw the one he said I don't work out

Except for sometimes when I pick my kids up and throw them in the air

So he doesn't work out at all. He doesn't exercise. Yeah forget about fighting. The guy doesn't exercise

secondly

He's like, I'm so much bigger than the guy. You know just for reference elon's like six three

200 plus pounds

You know zuck is probably five nine. I think five five eight five nine maybe five ten max

And it's probably giving up easily 50 pounds in a in a fight here. So weight classes do matter

And elon says I have this move called the walrus

Uh, yeah, I'm just like a walrus. I just lay on them. They can't do anything. They're just pinned

This is this is his plan

None of that matters. It doesn't matter when the guy knows jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu people want to start on their back with you on top of them

It doesn't matter. I I'm not a practitioner of jiu-jitsu, but I've watched it enough that I feel

I feel confident at least in this call. It is so one-sided

It doesn't matter and by the way training like if you're a beginner in jiu-jitsu, you can go to a jiu-jitsu gym for

six months

And you'll still be getting your ass whooped by like, you know people who are just like, you know one year ahead of you because

The learning curve is very steep to actually get good at this stuff

Like you you don't pick up boxing or jiu-jitsu very quickly boxing. I don't even think it would be a factor

I think the fight's going to the ground. Both guys are too uncoordinated. Nobody's knocking anyone out

Both guys I think would look very unathletic and would end in zuck tapping him out

By the way, do you see this picture I put in the doc? Look at this the picture of elon

Wrestling a sumo wrestler. You seen this?

Oh, yeah

He said he's briefly done

karate

Briefly done judo and and done a little bit of jiu-jitsu is what elon has said in the past

If I had to bet on elon versus mark on most everything, I think I would choose mark zuckerberg

Yeah, like whether business or fighting I think both

A good hang I think zuck would be a better hang

I think zuck it would trump him and just about everything. Don't you agree? I mean good hang

I think a lot of people would pick elon. I think elon's looser and for fun and

It's like, oh, he he smoked weed with chill rogan. He must be awesome. All right, like this is like how much

I think he would be an awkward hang. I think it'd be very uncomfortable. I don't think I think zuck is is just zuck

Dude, they're but they're both podium on the in the awkward olympics. I mean, let's let's be real

Yeah, but zuck zuck zuck like, you know, he reads books on where to place his hands when he meets people

Like he's like place on shoulder. You know what I'm saying like and he actually like studies it, you know, I think that

And zuck is gonna win in every aspect. You agree. I agree. I really hope this happens

There's this Dana white thing gave me a slight hope, but there's a famous people don't know this Dana white is a like

He's a world-class liar

In fact, if you ever go into like the ufc communities on on reddit, whatever like one of the most famous like tag lines of the communities

Don't believe his lies

Because he'll tell you he'll sell you anything. He's a promoter

He will he will try to drum up interest

Doing whatever he's got to do and try to pull things off like that. This might be by the way

This might be the hail mary save twitter thing, you know, like

Mayweather mcgregor

Did like 500 million dollars if he thinks this is going to do triple that let's let's just pretend

Dana white's not lying for a second here

If this fight did like a billion dollars and elan took home, you know 200 million dollars out of that net

Hey, that's you know, just another a few months of runway for twitter

Which is currently unprofitable and you know, depending on who you believe could be could be bleeding advertisers

I I have to imagine that there's also like a life insurance policy that these guys have

Like I wonder if it's like you have to have security with you. You can't you can't ride a motorcycle

Dude, they're just gonna do what billionaires do. They're gonna just send in like a proxy. It's like here's my bodyguard versus yours

Right like in history. Isn't this how like conquerors fight? They don't go fight themselves. They send in their best gladiator

Like the top engineer at facebook at the top engineer at tesla need to go in and fight for their eye

I would still I would still bet on anything zuck does. Do you want to um, can we talk about beehive?

Yeah, let's do it. Tell me a little bit about the background of beehive. All right, so what is beehive beehive is a

piece of software if you want to create an email newsletter

Beehive in my opinion is the best way to do it. I'm

Bias because I invested in it, but I also used it before I invested in it

We used it for the milk road. We built our whole business off this

I basically saw what you had done with the hustle what the morning grew guys had done and you guys had all done

Almost like what I'll call like the homebrew version of beehive

Which was like when I asked you I said, hey, what should I use for this? You're like, well

You know, you're here's some things you care about you care about deliverability

You care about how easy it is for your writers to write you care about a referral program blah blah blah

There's five tools

And what beehive was was and it's complicated and it's complicated and it's expensive

And what beehive did instead was the guy worked at morning brew and he built out there like referral and growth program

I think

He left and he basically was like, how do I productize the internal tech

That we kind of had at morning brew so that it makes it easier for anybody

To create a newsletter brand

So and this is a constant discussion that we had at the hustle and my constant answer was

No, let's just focus on this one thing and that's true

I made the right decision because it's so challenging for a media company to be a software company and vice versa

It's hard

When you're doing one thing to like I had ad sales people. I'm like, you guys can't sell software

It's just different and he has proven that I actually predicted

I was like no because we're not we we need to focus and also because I don't think there's a market for it

So far, I think I've been proven wrong, but I I haven't been proven wrong

Totally, we'll see if it actually spins it out. He or so he creates beehive

It's basically you go on you click a few buttons. You've got a newsletter. You got your templates

You can create segments. You can do all the features of a newsletter. Great

It's good. We use it for the milk road. We build our whole business off this thing

We sell milk road after a year or so along the way

I got pitched by him probably when you did it was like, hey, I'm thinking about this beehive thing

We're raising money

Big fans of you guys would love for to have you involved

And I I had the same opinion as you I was like, I don't know seems small

It's like I think I think there's some newsletter brands that will be big

But I don't know if their underlying tech is going to be that big

I don't know if there's I don't know how big that platform would be as a software

So we passed and I think the first valuation we looked at was maybe 10 million ish 10

You passed two at that time, right? Same reason market might be too small

And at the time I was saying no to most stuff, but really I also thought I don't think this can work

I don't think it's I don't think it could work at a venture scale

And there's a classic lesson here, which is like sometimes there's such a thing as knowing too much often the people who know the most about an industry are

Either a too much scar tissue. They just don't want to be involved anymore

They just want to go do other things that just don't want to think about that because there's too much like I spent seven years

I left a piece of my soul over there and I don't really want to

Want to worry about that again

And the other is you get too defined by like, you know

How things are and you don't really see you're almost too too deep in you don't see where it's going

This is why very few breakthrough innovations come from

Traditional industry experts they come from often beginners

And why why would a beginner be able to create a breakthrough and not an expert?

Because they come in with a fresh perspective in a blank slate. They don't they're not limited by, you know, the prevailing wisdom

So that's that's happened many times over

So we pass we start using it though. I'm like, I'll be a user. So, you know that

There's that I'm not going to invest but I'll be a user

So we start using it

And what did you think of the product?

And at first it was good

But I kept running into these limitations and I would be like, hey, oh my god, they don't even let you

Filter by x or wait, you don't even have analytics for my growth side or the referral program only does this

You know, like I would find these I'd bump into the limitations because it was very early on

We were like one of their first users I think and his reply

I bet was the best reply on earth because that's what it seems like it was the perfect reply as always, which is

I hear you

We agree

Already working on it

But let me see if I can get you something a little sooner

You know, we're planning to release this in two months

But let me see what I can do here and what they would do is either he would manually do a workaround for us

It'd be like look

We don't have this analytics thing yet, but here's what I'm going to do. I put a button on your dashboard. It's ugly

It's gray. Nobody else can see it. It just but it's an export

It'll email you a csv and then can you just run the run the analytics yourself for now until we build it

So he would give me a he would take three hours and just make my life better

He would understand he would also ask me a bunch of questions

Like so, what are you trying to really do here?

And let me just confirm I understand this like a good product person would do

He's trying to really understand the needs

The second thing he would do is then they would actually ship the feature. So what he'd say

That's two weeks away. I remember telling ben many times

Ben'd be like, oh, yeah, they said they're coming out in two weeks. I was like, dude

Are you a rookie like no way start up say anything?

They don't like no what engineer has ever hit a timeline like this never happens

Sure enough two weeks later. Hey, they would proactively reach out. Hey, the feature's out

Test it out. I want you I think it'll work for you guys now

And we would go do it and he just did that three times

So over the course of about three or four months

I was like change my mind call tyler. We need to invest in this thing

I was like, but what about your concerns about the market? I was like, I don't know still might be true

But here's what I do know

This guy's an animal he's making a product that's really good

And you know what this might be an example where

The market is bigger than you think which has been the case for many big winners

Like, you know, what's the market for, you know, private black town car on demand or

Crashing on someone's house as an Airbnb, right?

Like these things can become a lot bigger than you sort of initially look at

If you sort of squint I've heard so many people say the same thing about him and I've noticed because I found him online

I've only talked to him once or twice

I've noticed online of him changing like quickly moving quickly changing the product quickly and whenever I saw that

I I thought

Damn, he's gonna do it. He's he's gonna I don't know how big but something's gonna get pulled off here

That's that's like you could tell that right away. And this is so two things on this one

There's a framework that we had in my very first startup. We realized this we were in the we were doing a sushi restaurant

in the restaurant industry, there's this weird phenomenon which is

Provide what's expected no points

Mess up their order minus 10 points

But fix the mess up

Plus five points. So it's like I was like, hold up if we had just given them the right dish

They don't care. They just move on as expected

If we mess up their order, they're angry. But if we fast fix

And we not just fix their order, but we give them the freebie with it or we

You know, we we really make come back and make sure that they're all good or we take it off their bill

All of a sudden they had a tremendous experience where that's they'll go tell their friends

And I was like, what's with that? And I came up with this sort of like the fix it theory of restaurants, which is actually

mistakes

They're gonna happen anyways and actually what you need to train instead of a mistake minimization

It's how fast and how like thoroughly can you fix it because that actually creates like a

Higher net promoter score. That's beautiful. This guy's doing this with software. Basically. Did you make this up?

Yeah, I'm sure there's some some name for this. I don't know. This was like a whatever or you know,

discovered very hard way, but like

I'm sure there's a fancy name for that. Oh, I just call it at the fix it theory, right?

Like if we fix it, it's it's all about how you fix it and the fix it's where you get the like diehards

So it's very good. I noticed that

So he was doing that I'll give you one other little beehive story

Which is like, I don't know a little dark

Maybe doesn't want me to share this but like, you know at some point his cto passed away

So we were a biggest jerk of all time. He says the two week thing

Something didn't happen in the two weeks one time and I was like, dude, come on. You said whatever

Where's that feature? We really need it. Don't you understand how important my newsletter bubble?

I'm being like, you know, I didn't say those words, but like I'm playing it up in a way here

We were we were just like, oh god complaining like it's not ready yet

He's like, I'm so sorry. We're just dealing with something right now. His co-founder or cto had passed away

During the startup and they were, you know, that's a very hard thing for any entrepreneur to deal with. Yeah

he handled that

Like as well as a human being can handle it meaning was totally, you know, like gracious and empathetic around what was going on

But also understood that like, you know

He's gotta he he's gotta keep moving forward in some way and he's gonna have to figure this out

It's not an easy thing to figure out. I mean like

All kinds of great

You just don't know the passwords to have the things right?

He's like all kinds of stuff that you don't even really think about because knocking wood this never happens

But you know, just seeing how somebody overcomes adversity and deals with really tough situations

Is another thing where you sort of see, you know, characters revealed in moments of difficulty and adversity

You see how somebody handles something you think, you know what? I think they're gonna figure things out

Fast forward to I think it's really young too, right? He's like 20. He's he's in his probably 27

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, he's he's pretty babyface. I don't know. He seems seems youngish

I'll tell you two other interesting things. So yesterday the reason why we're talking about is yesterday

They announced we should probably should have led with this yesterday. They announced

They raised a series a 12 12 and a half million dollar series a

From lightspeed at like a 50 million dollar valuation. I think is what an article said

Yeah, I think a little more than that. So they they raised this money

And they he posted a graph of their ARR. So their annual recurring revenue and it's uh

hockey stick curve

It's three million and ARR and like I don't know how long let me let me check

I think it's sort of like yeah through three million AR and like 12 to 18 like 18 months. Maybe something like that

It's really really really impressive. And so the run rates. I think four million

He's like and he said in a thing. We're trying to end the year at 12 million

Super impressive and the end this year. So go go from four to 12. That's what he's four to 12

Trying to jump. He says currently at a four million dollar run rate

They have three million of recurring revenue from their subscription product plus another million of revenue from their like

Because they'll help you let's say you want to sell ads or you want to monetize your newsletter?

They'll help you monetize your newsletter too. So they have like other products now

Wow

And it says yeah, I forgot you posted the chart

But I think it's like roughly 18 months to two, you know, maybe 24 months at the max

Uh that it did that. Oh, you got a call out in the in the tech crunch article. It said used by milk road

Hell, yeah, that's right. I'm in the ballpark, baby

um

So, you know, you know, I think that this is an interesting example. I'm curious to see how this plays out

I could see this still honestly going one of two ways, you know, I'm an investor

But I I could totally see this being a great business that wasn't venture scale meaning like

He might sell this thing for 100. They might get to 25 million in revenue and sell for 200 million dollars

I think that could be that's probably the expected outcome to be honest

It would that be would you be happy with that? Yeah, I'd be happy for them

Yeah, I mean we we would make some money it wouldn't be like the type of return we would

Like, you know that you would like in a startup portfolio

Obviously looking for these like billion dollar plus outcomes

But hey, you know, like that's a wins a win and I would be really happy happy for their team

So, you know, I think that would be life changing money for him and it'd be a great outcome

I think that's like

That's like the the like

If they do well if they execute well, I think that's on the table

I think what's

The question is how big does this kind of newsletter media thing get?

Can this get to the scale where?

Okay, if they're if they're trying to get to 10 million an hour this year they're at 4 trying to get to 10

If they get to 100 right if they 10x once from if they 10x from there over the next, you know, five years

That's now a billion dollar company. The question is like can it become that?

What would they need to do to do that? I think that's going to be be the challenge or the big question for them

I don't think that's going to happen if I had to bet

I think that there's a nine figure exit that's going to happen here that will make them wealthy and be a huge success

I don't think a billion dollar company is going to happen. I think it's too challenging

I think that I'm an investor of convert kit if you google convert kit and then the word bear metrics

You can see all of the revenue and the churn on convert kit

convert kits been doing it for eight or nine years I think and

You there are a little bit more focused on small businesses as opposed to beehive

Which is like freelancers turned one man two man companies

And you can look at their churn

Of convert kit and I would think it's better than beehive

And it seems very challenging to get to a hundred million in revenue in a venture times

In a venture time frame

Yeah, I think that's I think that could be totally totally totally the case. So on convert kit their MRR right now says

Basically three million a month. So 36 so it's 36 million a year 36

And look at the churn. I think it's four percent a month. Yeah 3.5 percent a month

So does that mean that most people churn out after one year? Is that what that math means? No, I don't know

I can't math a public math. Definitely definitely don't try to do monthly compounding into

Extrapolated that for 12 months. That's not easy for me

But I think through you know three and a half percent churn per month is

You know, obviously not great, but it's also not like bleeding and in in sass metrics

No, not at all

And I think that I would rather be Nathan berry and own 90 percent of that company

Of course, Nathan probably had money or had some income coming in

So we have like the the ability to do this and like you said, everyone's got to get their nut and get it how you can

Yeah, so I think it's going to be a massive success

I just don't know if it's going to be a billion dollar company

But I think that the takeaway here for myself for you and for the listener is

The speed of shipping new stuff and making iterations and more so talking to your customer constantly and hearing what they have to say and asking them

Why not what do you want? But why and I'll come up with a solution. I think that's the takeaway here

I think the fix it menu thing is or the fix it framework is really really really good. Is that what you call it?

I'll give you I'll give you two other little frameworks around this

So one is from Paul Graham Paul Graham wrote this essay once where he goes a thing

I've noticed like, you know in successful entrepreneurs Paul Graham created YC. So he saw, you know

Whatever a thousand plus entrepreneurs try to come through there and picked picked very well

He goes one of the things I would say is most commonly linked with like success

He goes can you describe this person as an animal?

And what that means is not

Oh, he's like a giraffe. He's got a long neck. No, it means could you just be like, dude, that guy's an animal, right?

Too. She's an animal. It's basically just just just just describes the sort of tenacity

Intensity and speed with which somebody moves and just figures things out and gets through obstacles and breaks through plateaus

And that one piece of like kind of like investing advice

Has really stuck with me and like served me well because it's really easy to get analytical about the market

About the product about the industry about the competitors and you should that's that's good. Look at it from all angles

But whenever I'm like this person's an animal

I'd make a bet for better or worse

I'm just like I'm just going to err on the side of betting on people when I think when I can describe them as an animal

because

That type of person could figure things out and I think on balance

It's just a higher predictor of like outside success and also the opposite is true

I've had I've made some mistakes in investing when I'm like, oh love this market love this product and I'm sort of projecting

If somebody was just a beast and took this on they would just crush it

And I kind of overlooked the fact that the person going after is sort of soft and timid and

Seems to lack aggression. It doesn't seem to know their shit

They really know their numbers about well when I ask about the customers they don't post on linkedin a lot

Yeah, they keep wondering about stuff and when I ask them what's going on three weeks later

They don't really have clarity on like what's changed. What's better? What they're focused on

You know when they hit they get overwhelmed easily

And it's like I've I've also talked myself into market, you know market investments

And I I guess for me early stage investing

I think that that is the person an animal was just a very important test. That's one

I got an update from a company I invested in and they were talking about their new like linkedin

content series

And that was like the main thing and I and this is a software company and I was like, okay

But how about revenue profit and like how fast like, you know what I mean? I was like, I don't care

Also, I don't care about the new hires. Frankly 100%

I'm gonna shit on my own portfolio this way. I would I said this the other day

I said to to my investment partner romin. I go romin man. Like I feel like

Maybe 15 best case 20% of our our portfolio

writes good updates. I said

That makes me worried because I was like really there's two buckets

There's people who just don't write updates at all or they're inconsistent

You know, they pop up when things are good or they need something and then they disappear for nine months when things are

Going tough and Paul Graham also was written about that which is when you stop talking is when things go bad

Like the people who survive are the ones who continue being in communication even when things are tough

And when you omit information when it's like, hey, so why didn't you just put how you you told me how much your burn was

And your law, why don't you put your cash balance in there? Exactly like like, you know, I can do the math

We invest in one company early on that's a pretty famous company in silicon valley

It was really hot for a period of time and now it's like people have gone sour on it

And they said they like would write their first when they were when it was really hot

they would write these very surface level updates like

Uh, we hired this vp and this person and this person and we brought on this new investor. It's like cool

But what about the business? How's business going and you're almost like it's almost like don't ask about the business

Let's see what's going on. Why is that the feeling and then sure enough 18 months later

Oh bad news coming out. You know, we had to do layoffs and there's bad hit press article and all this stuff and

We're just you know, we really need to raise money, but it's not looking good. It's like, what's your burn rate?

Oh, we burned three million a month

I was like, dude

What and why haven't you been saying this right? Like it's unbelievable

And then and if you ask them like, okay, what's the problem right now? It's like, wow

The problem is, you know, the funding market right now and this that's like, no

The problem was you were burning three million dollars a month

For a long period of time

Without the corresponding like, you know reward for that burn

You know, you weren't growing in proportion to that burn and you were reckless with money, right? Like that's the reality

That's the honest lesson out of it. You might be telling yourself some other story

similarly with our portfolio

Up to about 20% are writing good updates and a good update is

Here's anatomy of a good update. I might actually just release a template for all on this but it's basically

Hey guys, as a reminder, we are Hampton. What we do is this right? Like first, just like say what you do

not that like your investors forget but

It's in general

You're not top of mind for people and you should have a real clear punchy thing that you're

Drilling in this association

Whenever this whenever you think of this word think of us whenever somebody has this problem think of us and so

You like first start with that then say

Last month was and your answer you're a great month

good or bad

Answer that question and then write the kpis. I need the kpis got to be

revenue

active users or active usage active customers in some way

The the negative of that some churn or you know cost number associated with that net burn maybe

Cash balance, you know, how much cash do we have on hand?

And then you want to write the number for we have to write the number for what it is in parentheses

You want to write

How much is that up month over month and what is your goal? Right?

How are you doing against your own goals?

Because our annual goal is to get to 10 million in revenue or get to 100 million in revenue

And to do that we need to be doing x and we're actually either above that below that or on track

That's the honest way to start an update

Below that you can write whatever the hell you want to be honest

You got to write that part first the next part you should write is

why that happened so

Revenues down because blank revenues up because we tried this affiliate thing and it's actually working pretty good

We're going to double down on it revenues down because

blah blah blah the users is flat because

You know we didn't do xyz or we are doing xyz and it's just maintaining

We're going to figure out how to get to the next level so you have your your sort of two sentence commentary on the metrics

Then after that you could put your ask like here's what I need from you

And below that you can put in whatever the hell updates you want honestly

I don't but the fluffy fluffy stuff. Yeah, what you don't want to do is what a lot of people do

Hey, um, we have this article. Can you share? That's the you know the start of the update

Just a quick update on our end good month for us. We made these four hires

I want to welcome, you know, steve. It's like why are we talking about steve your vp of marketing?

You know, they just go on, you know, steve used to work at visa, but now he's over here and that's really great

blah blah blah oh on the product side we released these new updates

It's like do this not where you put patch notes like your investors care about something

And you don't want to go over here and wave your hands about all this other shit. That's not actually like

The core relevant information and I think it's just wild to me that people don't get that I refuse to

I'll die on that hill

That's how investor updates should be written and it's crazy to me that people don't just do that consistently

Yeah, when I see that I just think you're lying about something

This is goes back to what I said about the way you do one thing is the way you do everything

If you're not honest if you're not honest about it

I think that you're lying about other stuff and I just and so I think it's really important to do these things

Really in the right way. I used to do this all the time at the hospital

I felt I think you used to get mine right used to send me your updates and they were phenomenal

They were perfect. It was exactly in this format

And you were like, you know, you're just the university of common sense. It's not like you were like

Getting mentorship or advising or your fifth startup. It was just like, all right

What are people going to care about like obviously the key metrics?

How I think how it's going what I think about this key metrics and what we're going to do next

That's what that's what your update was. I think what I understood is that like

People basically want to get rich. They want to get laid and they want to have power

Like most of my things in life are rooted in like knowing those three things

And the problem with a lot of silicon valley companies is they think that like the answer of but I learned a lot

Is good enough when it's like, no, man, I give you my hard-earned money

I expect a return and you need to be uh, uh, what are they?

Scott balsam is he goes you need to be a steward of capital and I heard that and I was like, oh, man

You'd make it sound so official. I sound like a knight like I'm just like deploying like money

I'm like a I'm like a knight in shining armor to do this

and so there's like that and it's basically like

I'm a small business owner trying to make money and my business is investing in your company

You just took money out of my family's mouths and you know food off our table

That's how I feel and so if a person isn't doing everything in their effort to give me a return on my investment

I get fucking pissed if they do really hard

But they work really hard and they fail or if they make errors

I'm cool with that because I knew that I'm playing the lottery here

But if they do this soft shit and they don't aren't honest about it, it kills me. So you're saying honest in the sense of lying

I actually think that's the minority case. I don't think people are actively lying. I think if they're lying to anyone

They're lying to themselves. I think what I would actually it's it's lying through a mission

It's lying through a mission is what is so so I think it's there's three scenarios either

You know the situation and you don't want to say it bad

Or you just don't even know the situation. You're not on top of these things

Really bad. It's usually the first or you know it

You don't want to say it

and you're intentionally

withholding the information in order to mislead or misrepresent or whatever the worst and so it's really bad bad or

batter right like you know the bad bad or bad is it's it's like

There's really not a good explanation the only good explanation that I will accept

Is that there are some companies that are doing so phenomenally well

And they know that investors are actually kind of a leaky a leaky bucket

And they don't want

They want to get ahead they want their rumor mill to go ahead now

Let me tell you the number of times it's that out of 100 is one out of 100

I had that happen to me. Did I tell you have I told you about this?

so

All right, so the hustle was supposed to sell the deal was supposed to close on February. Let's say fifth

February fifth was their earnings call was also supposed to be on February fifth

And that's a big deal for a variety of reasons, but there's like legal implications here

You know the sec is involved

So it could be it's as simple as like if I told someone that we were about to sell

Our deal wasn't big enough to do this it did happen

But it wasn't because of us

But where the stock price can change

Significantly at the announcement and if I told someone and they make a big trade which has happened multiple times not with us

But multiple times that there's insider trading

That's against the law you go to jail

That didn't you know

So there's like that implication there and there's also like other implications around like, you know, it just not like cool

It's not like it makes you look bad. Well, anyway, we're supposed to close on let's say February 5th

Someone told Axios on February 4th. I get an email from Sarah Fisher. I think her name is

Someone leaked it to her. I had only told I told a small amount of people who are helping me

I think I told you who are like guiding me

And I also had to get like some people to sign some paperwork and I explicitly said don't tell anyone

This is a big deal. I think I told them this will ruin the deal if you tell people which isn't true

but you know, I told them that it could have and

February 4th the day before we're supposed to announce it I get this email from Sarah

And she goes I have a source saying that you guys are selling and she told me a bunch of facts about the deal

That I was like how on earth do you know this and it didn't back it leaked

And I have we're not a big company like we're not we weren't big enough that this is like

I don't I don't know why this should be gossip, but it happened and it freaked me out big time

And so I understand that perspective of not telling people certain things with my company now with hanthan

Things are going well. I'm not going to talk about it too much when things are going well

Shut up. I think that you should shut up. Yeah shut up and push the shut up. Yeah

Yeah, so I understand that perspective, but it happened to us and it it drove me crazy and I was I I have I suspect

It was one of three people to this day

I hold a grudge with that against them all three just as preventative measures

Just preventative and I just stare at what they do and I'm like, I'm plotting

I'm plotting to a get to find out intel that they did it and b

I already have my revenge plan and I'm just waiting

And I check it. I check what I check up on them constantly and those people probably know who they are because they see me

Looking at their LinkedIn all the time. I want to like I wanted to know that I see them

They're like, oh

I love them. You know keeps it. He always keeps tabs on me. What a good guy

Oh, I'm looking I'm looking a lot. It's so I have a feeling who who it was

But can you tell me about this black rifle story because I have a little bit of information about them too

Yeah, this is kind of fun moment. So we

So a few episodes ago, we did this. What's black?

Say what black rifle coffee is black rifle coffee. It's a coffee brand

so it's a coffee brand that I would describe as like

it's

like kind of patriotic it's like it's like has an american vibe to it and

The customers are mostly middle-ish america or southern and they they they are probably right of center

Which is like a target. It's kind of like a

You know just to put it in a box, which I'm sure they don't they don't love but like whatever just to for simplicity's sake

Started by veterans. I think so it has like three or four of the four guys or four of the five guys were former

You know military marines, whatever something like that. And so they and they're hampton members by the way

Oh

There you go

So they start this thing and there's a kind of interesting origin story to this

It becomes a it becomes a really popular brand. In fact, like not only do they sell a lot of coffee

They sold enough they sell enough product that they basically they've gone public

So let me see their stock as I think it's three or four billion dollar market cap

Still, it's a little less now. Maybe the whole market's gone down. So

current market cap is

1.1 billion so

They built a billion dollar DTC brand basically consumer consumer package

And you know, do you know how they started one of the owners had a bunch of facebook pages?

I think he had like 30 facebook pages ranging like I was like

Shit for moms to like veterans and he started selling a ton of stuff

He was like looking at all the stuff they were selling and they were like

Damn, we should make our own thing and that's how the coffee business. I I believe that's how it started

So I did a call with them one of the one of the guys which one Richard and so

I think he might be in Hampton too. So he he had said something slightly different

He didn't talk about facebook pages. He talked about youtube. So he was like, I was like, what's your story?

He's like, well, I was like, you know, he's like wanted to be an actor. It goes to hollywood

It's like whatever. It's not really working out exactly great

He's been in a couple things but he teaches himself to code

He starts making iphone apps really early on and the iphone app store does pretty good with that ends up getting hired by

Verizon or something like that to do like

something on the marketing side for them

And along the way he starts doing youtube fairly early on and so he's doing youtube videos

And for the brand but also for himself like personally doing youtube videos

And he starts building a pretty big youtube following

And then him and his buddies start trying out different products and they're trying out

You know this and that and oh should we do a I don't know what the examples were but it's like, you know

Let's just pretend t-shirt brand and the shoe brand and you know this this thing that thing hats

And then coffee was one of them and the coffee one took off and that's kind of like how they

They rallied around black rifle coffee to this day. I think they do like tens of millions in merch sales

Not the coffee, but just like people love the brand so much. They'll buy the t-shirts

And so tens of millions of merch that there's t-shirt companies. There's fashion companies that do tens of millions

And that's their whole business. This is like their their spin-off business. That's like how strong the the brand is

In fact, when i'm on the zoom call with him his background

I'll I'll put a picture up on the youtube channel, but it's just like a great example of like

How to

Like this kind of like the subtle branding that exists today when you're on a zoom call

It's like your background your clothes like says everything about you because that's how we meet now

Right so you can actually bring a full story in about your home and everything

He's got like, you know on the wall. He's got his his camo thing. He's got his gun. He's got his like

He's got all the stuff. That's kind of like that same vibe that you know like

You know the american tough guy military veteran, you know like that sort of vibe

So we're talking he's telling me the great story and the reason why we're talking is because

He's like dude. I was listening to the pod and I heard you talk about the total man thing

He's like something just hit me. He's like I just love that. I love the total man thing

I went on I saw that somebody had the domain and I bought it and I was like, oh cool

Like I didn't I was like I swear I looked at the domain wasn't available. He goes. Oh, no

No, I bought it off somebody like I think he bought it probably like 10 or 20 grand

And he's like yeah, he's like I just want to gift it to you and like if you want to do something with it great

That'd be awesome. Um, that's a baller. I hope I can write this off or something

But you know, I just wanted to do this. I was like a baller move

It's like when darmesh, I think has done that for you like on your birthday

He bought you your domain. He bought me a like a $20,000 domain. It could have been more right

It was copy that.com he bought it and so baller move and

And I was like what resident about the total man thing. He's like, I don't know man

He's like I just felt like

the way you talked about like

The way you and sam talked about just like look it's important to me

That I like stand for something my own I live by a code

I care about fitness. I care about these things

I'm like I care about being a man and like that's important to me and like you're right that society has really

Like pushed this thing that is if you're trying to be a man, you're it's like toxic masculinity

And it's like it doesn't have to be like you don't have to be a jerk or you know, like rude in any way

But like why is it bad to like

Want to be manly and I think it just kind of like resonated with him

And so we bought this and we got a lot of shipper that's that you see people

Some people were angry about that and that's I think there was an understandable reason that they were angry, which is

We gave it and we when we were talking about it

We were like, you know, I think you're seeing the craving for this type of content and this movement

embodied in

People who take an extreme version of that like andrew tate or stuff like that people like

People just immediately they hate andrew tate so much they got blinded by rage and they're like

You guys are saying andrew tate's awesome and this total man thing is about andrew tate. It's like no

No, I'm just saying like

When you look at objectively that this guy's extremely popular. He's the number one most googled man in america right now

It's all under an umbrella

And we're saying what is the appeal?

I think part of the appeal not the whole thing but part of the appeal

As if this guy preaches that you need to live like a like a fucking man

And he's like, you know, be hard. Don't be soft like mentally be hard be tough

Physically be hard be fit, you know in your relations with people don't

You know be a softy don't get pushed over don't keep apologizing and groveling like, you know carry yourself like a man

And I was like and I was like, you know, what we had said was that

I think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction

Where a lot of people are preaching like a sort of like, I don't know what you would call it

Almost like a soft or sort of like a genderless

Like identity thing where it's you know, it's not cool to be a man

And I think that's building up a craving for people to want to be a man

And so

I don't know whatever something resonated with that he bought the domain and I was like, yeah, we should do something

We should try to just make it an open source movement of

And and when I mapped it out, I do a little five minute brainstorm the other day with ben

And I was like, yeah, what is it? What does the total man mean? I was like, this is a good little branding lesson

I was at first I I went down the path of like what matters to me

But like what matters to me is like I like to have I care about like

Freedom like financial freedom. I care about fitness. I'm trying to get more and more fit

I want to be somebody who is

Free to move their body in certain ways and it is a very fit individual

But I also care about family and whatever and I was like

Oh, I think I just described something generic. I said, what's the real appeal of this total man thing

It's not this well well rounded appeals to actually nobody

I said

Sam said something once on the podcast that made me laugh

But I kind of like I wanted to make fun of him and I also kind of liked it

I was like jealous and I wanted to make fun of him at the same time

What was it you you said this thing? It's gonna sound so simple. It's gonna sound dumb. You you said

It's important to me to be a fucking man

I was like what?

What are you even saying? Isn't that obvious?

You said that and you go, yeah, it's just important to me like

To be a man and like to be like, you know

I don't even know how you explain it. Maybe you didn't even explain it. That was maybe was the beauty of it

I don't remember exactly

But I say I say it to Sarah all the time. I go I take care of business

I go we take care of our business, you know, like all that doesn't mean money. That means, you know, look, I'm gonna provide emotionally

financially spiritually, I got you like we I take care of business whatever you need. I got you

I'll be here for you. Yeah, and uh, it's like I'm not gonna

I'm gonna try my hardest not to get too emotional if you're emotional. I'll I'll be a rock

I'll treat you with respect. I'm gonna take care. I'm gonna handle business. That's what we do exactly

And I was like, I think it's more that it's basically

I was like, I don't think it's about this well rounded blah blah blah because it dilutes the message

Well here and I also said and then you I'll let you go. I said when I like to exercise

I want to be able to outrun or what did I say? I said I want to either kill and eat everyone in the room

Or outrun them. I I stole that from galloway from skygalloway. I was like don't you feel that way

And I was like

It's a ridiculous thought you took your most ridiculous thought and then said don't you feel that way sometimes?

No, I've never once in my life

looked around a room of men and been like I could eat and kill ever all these people or outrun them not once

But when you said it it stuck in my head, it was provocative

I wanted to make fun of you

But I was also like, you know, there is a nugget of truth in this madness

And that is where a real brand is built. And so that was my my my little

Branding revelation to myself when I was doing this exercise around that what should we do with this total man domain?

I was like, honestly, it's real simple. It's about being a man

It's about men who want to be be a man. What does that mean?

We don't need to explain it. It's somebody who handles their business

You can come up with all the examples you want

It's not a checklist. That's not the total man attitude is having some some predefined criteria checklist. No

In all situations be a man about it

And that's what I was like. That's take care. Take care of this

That's the brand baby. Be a man about it. No matter what the situation

Be a man about it. And I was like, that's the total man philosophy

You could apply that to whatever situation you're going through in life

But what are you gonna do with it? So is this gonna be I know jesse isla who we're gonna have on soon

I've been emailing with him. He's got this really cool thing where it's like you run up this mountain a bunch of times

And that's like climbing Everest. That's kind of cool

I mean an event is the it's the obvious one, but but you can go a bunch of ways

Here's here's here's the idea fresh off the dome. You just said what do you want to do with it?

You asked a great question. My brain came up with an answer

It's inspired by 75 hard, which is also a very total man exactly and it's great

Total men don't don't don't join movements. Sometimes we create them

So we're gonna create our own version of this and it's gonna be the man month and what is the man month?

It's basically 30 days where you commit

To to working towards being the total man in these like, you know, couple ways and it's like

For 30 days

We're doing cold shower

We're doing 50 push-ups right when we wake up or 100 push-ups right when we wake up first thing

It doesn't you're all you're late

All right, you're 10 minutes more late go right? Oh, you can't do 100 push-ups

I'm waiting keep going

We'll stay here till you're done. All right, so all right, so push-ups in cold

Push-ups in cold. I think is two

We just need a third and it's gonna be you do these three things

You're just gonna do them for 30 days straight and we're just gonna harden you up

Just gonna harden you up a little bit

And so what's the third? What's the third in this thing?

well

Is this too soft you got a you got a you got to tell you got to tell the woman in your life how you feel

Or the man or the man in your life. You got you got you got to be kind

You got to tell someone how you feel it could be kind

It could be oh, you've been avoiding confrontation. It's time to say you got to have a tough conversation

You don't have to have a tough conversation. Oh, you really appreciate somebody

You better show it right and so you're gonna send a message voice memo text message

To your mom to your co-worker to whoever and we're gonna do that every day

You got to have a tough combo do that every day for 30 days

a tough conversation

A tough shower do a tough morning

All right. Well, you got to call it total right a total conversation

Total one and so I think it's good. I

My feedback you need to add two more things my only my critique of my own thing there. It's a little too easy

I think it needs to be a little bit harder potentially

It's got it has to be so hard that you're like, uh, I can't believe I'm doing like the 75 hard thing

It's pretty hard and people have to look at you and be like, are you nuts?

Yeah, the cold thing the cold things

You're on to something with the cold thing that is quite challenging

But you got to have about you got to have a few more hard things 50 push-ups if you're fit

I could do 50 push-ups in one sitting. Yeah

I think it's gotta be a lot more the the original thing I was thinking about because I was like

What would it mean?

Because a lot of this also inspired when duck did the mirf thing and I was like

Whoa sucks kind of

Been a man right now. Like what's going on? No, this is that's pretty cool. Could I do that?

I don't think I could do this. I can't do 100 pull-ups like this is something I can't do. All right

All right, so I started working towards it. So the next morning I woke up and I did my little quarter mirf

I ran the oh he runs a mile hard. I'm gonna run the quarter mile

I'm gonna do a quarter of the push-ups quarter of the pull-ups quarter of the squad. It's hard, right?

Run again

And I'll do it again until that's easy when that's easy. I'm gonna make it harder

All right, I'm just gonna keep inching it forward until I can do the full thing and I was like

Yeah, that's the way to go. It's progress right like it's about progress

And so I think you're right

I think we kind of need to workshop the actual difficulty level because I think it to hit the brand, right?

It's got to be something that other people think you're crazy for doing. Yeah, I think that's great

It can't be reasonable

You could also be a little self-serving and make it like a post on social media

So you get that little hashtag going around. You know, you got to share the results when I charge money

This isn't a program you buy

It's just a movement. You're either in or you're out

That's it. That's it. You're in and if you're in you got to do it if you're out stay out

Wait, so I've known you for close to 10 years now. Did you ever think that 10 years ago you'd be about this life? Never

Never

It feels good though, right?

It feels good to be a man. Yes

It feels good. I agree. I think it feels great. I when I remember when I moved to San Francisco

I felt really like nervous

I was like people would call me a redneck because I moved from Tennessee

I remember when I when I first got like in San Francisco when you moved there

You'd have to interview for an apartment because they had so many applications

I remember going to like one of these interviews and people being like this was in 2012

Right, I guess right after Obama. Was there an election in 2012 people were like

Who'd you vote for they asked me who I voted for in order to like get this apartment?

And like so I was like I got a hide like which I think I've been voted for Obama

But I had to like hide a bunch of shit about myself

Not anymore things have changed my friend

This stuff is actually a lot more popular if you go to San Francisco things are a lot different muscles are

Not quite in but they're more in than before and fitness is more in than before and hard conversations are more in than before

So I think it's good that you're kind of capitalizing on this. We're not chasing trends here. This is timeless

people have been trying to be

People have been trying to be hard for their whole like you know since the beginning of time

In fact, the only thing that turns me off is if this is a trend. All right, total man

All right, you're sounding harder already. Do you have to wrap up now? I see you're looking at your phone

By the way, I'm gonna do my Elizabeth Holmes and start talking with a deeper voice on purpose

Dude, people make fun of me on our youtube. They say I've got a high voice. Yeah

So now I'm like thinking in my head. I got to talk lower, too

Hey, dude, I think that's why Mike Tyson became Mike Tyson

I think he had to overcompensate for his voice and just turn into an absolute savage. Oh, so you're agreeing. I have a high pitch voice

It's not low

Oh my god, that's ridiculous. That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. All right, that's the pop

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.