My First Million: The Richest Man In The World, A New D2C Biz Idea, And Working With People You've Never Met

I have this dev working on a project and he's in Hong Kong and he's in high school and he

built this amazing thing. And I don't really know anything about him other than I want to work with

you for a very long time. And I just realized this is super odd and also amazing. And I don't

think a lot of people realize that you could like do business like this.

All right, let's do this. The people are saying they loved your intro for the last one. Well,

the people said that last pod, they loved all parts about it, but particularly the first 20

or 10 minutes, I think. Well, I was going to do a different intro this time in honor of one of

the funniest things that ever happened to me at work. I was at the office at like the coffee

machine, if you remember where my old office was. And it wasn't just a coffee machine. It was like

a $30,000 espresso machine. Yeah, it was something crazy. I didn't know how to work it, but my co-worker

was there, this guy, this engineer who worked with us, Neil. And it was maybe like 11am or 1130am.

I was taking like my break and I was going over there to the coffee station. He had just got in.

We were standing there first for like two minutes, nobody's saying anything. They looked at me and

he goes, these are my first words. I hadn't spoken today. That was the first thing I came out of my

mouth. It was so funny. It was so funny, like the funniest engineer thing to do. And it was so

late in the day. And I know that realization where you're like, I haven't talked yet. And this is

going to be the first thing I say. That's kind of this podcast. I wake up and like this is the

first thing I do. So for this podcast, these are my first words. Dude, have you ever gone 24 hours

without talking? I used to do it every once in a while. It's pretty tough. On purpose or what

happened? Yeah, on purpose. That's not a thing that one does. You went to a retreat or you just

DIY'd it? I DIY'd it, bro. I don't need to go to like the Bahamas not to talk.

That's so true. That's amazing. Dude, I have another like weird internet culture thing that I was

kind of related to like your engineers. I was thinking about this. And I think that what I'm

about to say is incredibly not normal. But I think for you, it's normal and it's incredibly normal

for me. And it's probably normal for a bunch of our friends. So I was thinking about this. I have

this new researcher that you're trying to steal from me a little bit. And I met him through a

friend of a friend, but it all started on Twitter and the Twitter DMs. And without talking to this

person, like whether a phone or Zoom or whatever meeting in person, we just like text and we hire

them and we do a business exchange. And like you put a lot of trust in one another. And I've realized

I've done this like 20 times where some of like my best coworkers and best some of my best friends,

in fact, it just started like through internet culture. And we very rarely exchange words. And

we've done like some relatively big business together where we're like exchanging tens of

thousands of dollars a month or we've invested more in other companies or whatever. So I've

done it with the partner of my latest company, Joe. We basically were Facebook friends. Have

you ever met? Yeah, maybe only like six times. But like we knew each other for like five years

before we really like talked a lot in person. I've done it with this guy Diego who I'm helping

him with his agency business. By the way, I heard a funny story about you on this. So somebody who

was working with you goes, yeah, Sam gave me the login to his Instagram or something like that or

to LinkedIn. I don't know what it was. And what is it that you requested back from this internet

stranger, Sam? I asked for his social security number. I asked for his girlfriend's social

security number. I asked for a picture ID of both him and his girlfriend and a utility bill. So I

knew exactly where he lived. The Sam Parr School background checks. Like, dude, what is your plan?

Okay, let's say, what is he going to do? All right, let's say you post up there changes the

password. What are you going to do with this utility bill and his social security number?

What is your, what is your revenge? Well, I don't know, but I know it's scary enough that if someone

has that, I don't know, sign them up for a credit card. I would, I would show up to his house for

sure. Yeah, I don't know, but I don't know. Maybe it's like scary enough that it worked.

But have you done this? Have you like done business with a bunch of, it's not anonymous people,

because you actually get to know them, but internet, it's like a weird internet thing.

Totally, totally. That's like very normal now at this point, which is strange. It almost feels

like it shouldn't be normal, but it is. I don't think it's normal for most people.

I mean, it just seems natural. I feel like I know these people. I see they're writing or I hear their

podcasts or they email me a bunch of times and we go back and forth and then they're in my slack and

then sure enough, it's like, Hey, you know, here's everything. Here's the keys to the castle. And

once you get that, once you're working together or you're doing things together,

that builds even more trust and it just layers on. And then you meet them four years later and

you're like, you see them in person. And then you're like, nice to meet you. You don't know what

to say. It's like, nice to see your, nice to see your body. That's really the accurate way to say it.

Nice to see your face finally. Yeah, like sick legs. Dude, I'm okay not meeting these people.

I like it how it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like I enjoy these types of relationships.

Yeah. We have this feature, not a bug, right? For sure. And we have this one dev. I have this dev

working on a project that I have and he's in Hong Kong and he's in high school and he built this

amazing thing. And I don't really know anything about him other than I want to work with you for

a very long time. And like, I would just, he sent me some of his work and it was so awesome. And I

just realized this is super odd and also amazing. And I don't think a lot of people realize that

you could like do business like this because I'll tell my family and they'll think I'm crazy.

But it's become so normal at this point that I don't even, I forget that it's not normal amongst

others. Right. Right. Yeah, totally. I've also, a lot of my real life friends, I just sort of like

shifted more to online. I'm like, Hey, let's, we can hang out 10 times more through the group chat

and through a bunch of a bunch of these little like, like, you know, apps or things like that.

I feel like I get to know them better that way almost. And, you know,

anybody got time to hang out in person anymore. And now we know why the birth rate in America

is declining rapidly. But yeah, this basically like is a thing that I do. And I thought I should

bring that up because I don't think most people realize like how some of that stuff happens.

And it's actually quite random how it happens. But if I see like a 19 year old who's like

impressive or like a 21 who's impressive and like writes well and is like clever in my DMs,

this sounds like creepy. But I'm like, I'm interested in giving them a shot on something.

And so it's really cool how these like little projects actually turn into like pretty meaningful

things after a while. Right. Yeah, they're IYBs, Interesting Young Boys and Sam's Young List.

Isn't that a Michael Jackson song? Pretty IOB? Yeah, pretty little things.

R.I.P. No disrespect.

What what topics you got today? All right, you want me to go first? I've got a billion a week.

Million dollars isn't cool. You know, it's cool. A billion dollars.

So I'm going to tell you some facts about this Billy of the week. And because I like your

your Mormon setup, I want you to see if you can guess who this person is. All right. Okay, I'm game.

R.I.P. So Steve Jobs. So one time Steve Jobs approached him on advice about designing the

Apple stores. And when they discussed each of their products, Steve said to this guy,

I'm not sure if the iPhone is going to be very popular in 20 years, but I'm certain that your

products are definitely going to be popular. So that's one interesting thing about intriguing.

Okay. He's had multiple tennis matches with with Roger Federer. He lives in a 150 year old castle.

And last year, his company did 84 billion in revenue and 22 billion in operating profits. And

this might give it away. This year, his company was the fourth largest company in the world.

And oftentimes he's number one on the richest person in the world.

The Louis Vuitton guy, the Louis Vuitton guy. I don't know how to say his name because it's

French. We're going to call him Bernie, but it's Bernard Arnault. I don't know if the tea's silent.

Sorry, but it's usually not a hard tea, but we're going to go with that.

Is that a hard tea or is that a soft tea? I don't know.

Bernie Arnie, you are the man. So Steve Jobs really went to this guy, huh?

Dude, yeah. And a lot of people really respect this guy. So I'll like give you a little bit

about his background, but some facts about him. So he owns 46%. So the Louis Vuitton empire,

it's called LVMH. So it's a multinational luxury goods conglomerate deal, market cap of 430 billion.

Oftentimes him, Elon and like Bezos go back and forth, but he's kind of the odd man out

because he's not like, he like dresses really nice and he like looks as like a

someone who owns Louis Vuitton would look. He like has this black turtleneck and a nice sports

jacket, but he's been called the the Wolf and Cashmere sweaters or something like that because

he's like, he's pretty ruthless, but he like dresses nice. So at 21, it's kind of an interesting

background. They call you the denim fox, right? The denim fox. Yeah. I wish. The short juggernaut

is what they call you. The dog and the Canadian tux. That's what I'm known for. The denim dog.

So listen, at 21, Bernie joined his father's construction company after finishing his engineering

degree. And by 25, he was the CEO of the company. The company wasn't small at all. At the time,

it was doing something like 10 million in revenue, which is the equivalent of 40 million now. And

it had a thousand employees. But right when he joined, he like, he said, let's expand. So we

got into like some, he started investing investing the profits and some finance businesses in the

real estate, things like that. Then in 1981, he goes to the US and he starts expanding the business.

And eventually he like specializes in specializes in townhomes, sells a bunch of them, makes the

equivalent of 75 million dollars now, which was 25 million back then. Or that's what he sold his

company for. I don't know what he made from it, but there's an interesting thing that happens.

So he's in the cab, he's in a taxi in New York, and he asked the taxi driver if he heard of the

president of France. And the taxi driver was like, nope, never. But I know all about Christian Dior,

who, you know, Dior is like a luxury, a luxury brand. And he started thinking, he's like, okay,

so this guy who's like just a normal guy in New York doesn't know who the president of France

is, but he knows all about Christian Dior. Like maybe I should explore like luxury brands. And so

he buys the holding company eventually of Dior. And it was like all like he got inspired by that

first taxi cab meeting. He raises a bunch of money, buys it, fires a ton of people, turns it around,

sells like the other brands that Dior owns. And it's a really good success. And that's like his

first big entry into luxury brands. Then in 1987, he gets the idea by Louis Vuitton. And he does

the same thing where he raises a bunch of money and he buys it and he fires a bunch of people and

definitely turns it around. Was Louis Vuitton a big deal? Was it was a very successful at

the time? Or was it like distressed? Because I think Christian Dior was like distressed when he

bought it. They both were distressed, but they were both brands. And so that kind of brings us to

like the big point here, which is, I mean, Louis Vuitton has been around for hundreds of years,

or at least 100 years, I think from since the 1800s. But they were kind of mismanaged. So have you

seen that movie with, I think it's Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga, where she like is... Does that how they

say it? Lady Gaga? Have you seen that movie where she plays like the wife of like the Gucci guy in

like murders him? I saw part of it, yeah. Yeah, it was only D's. But you know, big gaga fan. So

it's like mismanage. So like a lot of these family businesses, they like have great style,

but it's kind of like, you know, like a singer managing their own career, like maybe like,

you know, the left part of the brain doesn't actually work well with business, but it will

create and stuff. And so it was the same thing where it was definitely mismanaged. He raises

all this money and he just turns them into an operation powerhouse. And then he just starts

going on a spree where he starts buying all this stuff. So he owns all these brands. He owns a,

you know, I don't freaking buy any of this shit. So I'm going to look like an idiot talking about

it. But Sephora, which is like the big makeup thing, Fendi, which is another popular thing,

Bulgaria, Mark Jacobs, like every thing that a woman aspires to own, he owns like a huge portion

of that market. But I want to tell you about a few of the things that make me interested in

this game. And first, have you, have you heard about him? Do you know anything about him? I had

only seen him because he's at the top of the rich list and he, you know, LVMH, but I didn't know,

I didn't know this backstory. So go on. So what interests me about him is, I think Peter Teal

has this book. What's that book called? Zero to one, zero to one. And it's awesome. I really

like reading that book. And it kind of had an impact on me where he talked about like extreme

personalities and having extreme results and all about like an engineering culture, yada, yada,

yada. But there's one part of the book where he lists out all the motes. He's like, you can have

like, you can like know like a secret that no one else knows, you could have like a patent,

you could have technology that no one else has, whatever. But and then he mentions there's this

one moat called brand. That's a huge moat. And I think he's like, I never understood brand. So I

don't know how to invest in this. There's one sense that he says, this is definitely a boat.

Not for me. I don't get it. I don't understand it. And I always thought that was funny because

when a lot of like tech people discuss motes, they talk about like technology, networks effects,

yada, yada, yada. Rarely do they discuss brand. Well, this guy Bernie, that's truly what he

understood where he was like, no, they're like, that's where all my margin is because I can create

a brand. I'm going to create luxury goods. I'm going to get luxury margins. And not only that,

it's going to live for forever. So Louis Vuitton, by the way, was founded in 1854. And he, his whole

thing was like, in 10 years, there'll be far fewer luxury brands and the ones that survive will be

more important because people are getting richer and richer and richer. And if a brand has been

around for 50 years, he thinks it can be around for another 50 or 150 years. So that's like his

whole shtick. And I thought that was interesting. And he has this rare combo of operational excellence

and also like good style and understanding brand, because typically this might be an

overreaching statement. But a lot of times these really rich people are like, maybe like,

Warren Buffett might be a little bit like that, where he like sees like what a good

business is. And he's like, well, I don't care. This could probably last for a long time. Let's

just do it. I can look at the spreadsheets and I can understand it. And then other times there's

people who are like, this is a sick brand, and they just totally, but they totally mismanage it

and they're not numbers oriented. But then you got a guy like this guy who like does a pretty good

job of like being pretty ruthless that you like you need to be in order to make the business

hugely profitable and very successful, but also like understands like vision and some of these

intangible things basically like how to make shtick cool, which is very, very, very challenging.

It's hard to have just that, let alone both of those features. So I thought that guy was

interesting. And he has a few interesting quotes and I'll wrap up. So luxury goods are the only

area which is possible to make luxury margins. For me, luxury is how do you create desire?

And then he says, I'm optimistic long-term, pessimistic short-term. So interesting, interesting

guy. Here's another one. I think that's like something about being rich without being famous.

He has some some quote like that. And he's not quite a recluse, but he like owns this island

in the Bahamas where he spends most of his time, obviously flies private and is somewhat under

the radar compared to Bezos who's in the news with his new girlfriend and things like that.

This guy's pretty low key in his business. He owns like all the voting shares and all that.

And when he dies, he already says he's giving 20% to each of his five children and it's run

like a family business. So in that regard, he's pretty low key and out of media mostly.

Right. He had said some, there's some French phrase, which is like, you know,

basically it was something around the idea of you want to be wealthy, but not rich.

And he had some cool French way of saying it, but I can't find it off the top of my head here.

I'd be a lot cooler if you did, but that's all right.

Sure would.

Well, that's my, that's my Billy the week. I thought that guy was interesting.

All right. I want to tell you about somebody interesting I met recently too. So

did we talk about Chris Sparling on the podcast yet?

Yeah. So we have this great friend named Andrew Wilkinson who has

maybe close to a billion dollar empire and Chris is his partner in crime.

And I had never met him until we went to that event in Vancouver for the show.

You guys are really similar. You guys are very similar.

Me and him?

You have similar, some, some similar parts of you.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. A couple of, a couple of observations I would say about him.

I want to, I want you to tell me if you, because you've interacted with him, right?

You've, you've met him.

Only a couple of times, but yeah.

And we're both very interested in these kind of like high performers,

especially in this case, it's a high performer who went and built their own island and did,

they won in their signature way. I think that that's particularly what's interesting to us.

Like if somebody's just like, I don't know, some VP at Google, I'm a lot less interested

than somebody like Chris who basically made their own path.

I think, I think he, you know, Andrew met him when he was working at a bank.

He was like a banker, not like a cool investment banker, but like a go to the bank.

I need to write a check banker and they started talking about cars.

Cause Andrew, I drove up in a cool car and they both nerd out about cars.

And then they were like, okay, what's going on?

You know, what do you need for, you're getting like a line of credit or whatever

for your business. What's your business? Chris was like, yeah,

I'm like studying to be like a CPA or like I'm about to get my,

my license to be an accountant or something like that.

And Andrew was like, Hey, you want to just leave here with me and like, you know, work with me.

That actually happened at the bank.

He didn't say it like that, but he, you know, he offered him a job.

He said, you should come work with me. Like I need help.

At the time Andrew just had met a lab, his design agency was doing well

and had gotten to maybe a couple of million dollars a year of profit.

Let's call it, I don't know, four or five years in something like that.

But so, so he hadn't started what became tiny,

which was acquiring a bunch of other internet companies.

And so Chris tells the story.

Here's some of the things that I took away from this, this, this meeting.

So one interesting part of the story goes, so my first day at work, I show up,

Andrew's not there. I'm just like waiting at the door, 30 minutes go by, Andrew's not there.

Andrew rolls up in an Uber with like, you know, one air pod hanging out of his ear or whatever.

And he's got, he opens up the trunk, he takes out this giant box full of papers.

And he's like, you're here. Okay. Fantastic.

Here's all of our papers for like, you know, here's the business finances.

I got to go to a meeting and there's no office space for you.

So I talked to my neighbor, they have room in their basement.

So just go knock on the door, tell them you're with Andrew and like,

there's a desk in their basement and like, here's this box of papers that he's like,

Andrew left and Chris was like, man, I made a huge mistake.

Who is this guy? What is happening here? He goes, he knocks on the door.

He's like, Hey, do you have like a basement desk for me? They're like, yeah, yeah, come on in.

It's like, when you see the guy with the hole in his boot, you know, you're there, make a right.

The hole in his boot, exactly. He's like, so that's how it started.

And then I go, okay, so then that time he's just doing metal labs. So what,

how did this become tiny? And he goes, well, we looked at the business and the business was

good. Business was generating revenues, generating profit. And it's like, okay, well,

like, what do we do with this profit? What are we supposed to, you know,

should we reinvest this in some way into the business? Like, can we grow?

Can we, should we hire people? He goes, I don't know. What do all agencies do? He goes,

agencies hire a bunch of people and then buy fancy offices and they put a basketball hoop

in the office. Like, you know, they put a play pit in the office and he's like,

yeah, that doesn't seem like a good idea. We should not do that. That's kind of the

only thing they agreed on. Let's not do that. They go, well, okay, we can't follow agencies to

figure out what we should do. Like, you know, how should we think about this? And they go, well,

look, we're a business that has clients and we have, you know, like a service team and then we

have some profits. Like, we are a boring law firm. Let's just pretend we're a boring law firm.

Let's not try to be a cool agency. Let's be a boring law firm and not get too high on our own

supply. Okay, so what, what could we do with these profits if we weren't going to like,

try to just get flashier and flashier with the design agency? And that's where they decided,

let's buy a better business than our current business. So like, let's buy a business that has

recurring revenues, maybe that has less service oriented, more product, and let's use the profits

from the service business to buy increasingly better businesses. So I thought I liked that story,

that frame, I enjoyed that. And what was the first thing they bought? Was it Dribble?

No, that wasn't the first thing. I don't know. I don't know exactly what the first thing the

bot is, but regardless, now that's kind of the start of their journey. So I had never met Chris,

Andrew, I talked a little bit about him, but you know, you never really know what people are like.

Here's my observations. Chris had the juice. And it was very surprising to me that Chris had

the juice because normally in these partnerships, there's like the outgoing face of the brand that

everybody knows. And then there's like the quiet, silent, but deadly operational partner, finance

partner, whoever partner that's like, doesn't really care about the spotlight. And usually

is more reserved. I would say most of that is true. But at this dinner, I thought it was remarkable

that he was kind of like this, like, it was shy, but he still had the juice. And I've never really

seen that combo before. Like, I think he would have rather just been at home reading a book.

But he had this thing was just like, I'm at this dinner. So the flip is, the switch is flipped.

And he was like super talkative and not, not because he's Mr. Charisma, or he's not like

dripping with like, you know, he's like wise charm. He has wisdom, it feels like he was,

he was just like, I would call it honest. He was just like, he would ask a question. And if he

said something, he'd be like, hold on, hold on. So is it like this? Or he'd be like, but you're

saying this, is that because you think that or is that because your parents taught you that? Why

did you say that? And he would ask these questions that were very pointed. That's what reminds,

that's one of the ways in which you guys are similar is you ask those same questions.

I do. And I saw I was eating it up. I was loving it. I was like, oh, this guy's right on my alley.

The other thing he did those like me, but times 10 is he was like Mr. Framework.

Exactly. You guys are the exact same way for that reason.

I called about the dinner. I was like, bro, you have just named 14 different like cognitive biases

in one dinner. It's crazy. Like he'd be like, it's like the strike stand effect mixed with the thing

that, you know, the like, you know, the suckers bias. And it's like, what are you talking about?

He had just like an index. He had an index of mental models. I was like, this, I was like,

did you download Twitter threads and you just memorized them? Like, how do you know all this?

And why are they so top of mind for you? And that's really how he thinks. He truly

seems to think that way, which I thought was really interesting.

Well, you know why? So Andrew told me this. I don't know like what Chris's story is,

but Andrew said they basically were like building their own companies and like reinvesting the

profits into building their own things. And then they read the biography of Warren Buffett.

I think it's called Snowball or something. And then they read like a Charlie Munger book.

And they go, oh, yeah, let's do this instead. And so they start buying companies that work.

And they have the, you know, like, I think tiny's website says we buy wonderful companies.

That's basically, I think, exactly what Buffett said at one point.

Tiny's just, we buy wonderful internet companies. And then they're like,

but Richard doesn't have internet in it. Right. And so they basically stole, you know,

a lot of Buffett's really great ideas. And also, have you ever read a Charlie Munger

book or anything by Charlie Munger? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Dude, their frameworks about everything.

There's like one's called like poor Charlie's almanac, I think it's called. And it's like

88 different frameworks. I started reading it and I'm like, dude, I need a story here.

But yeah, it was a very strange book. People say they love that book. And I'm convinced

that anybody who says they love that book hasn't actually opened it. Because when you open it,

it's not even like a book. Have you actually opened the book? Yeah, I read the whole thing.

And I found it very hard to even remember. It's hard to read, dude. It's like rules.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like the table of contents, except it's long. It's a very challenging book to read.

But what I remember from the book, and then hanging out with Chris is like,

oh, you read a lot of Munger because you guys are sort of similar in that framework. And

another thing Buffett does is like, he'll say things. I forget exactly what he phrases,

but he's like, you know, why kill a mouse when we can go and shoot an elephant?

Like he'll say things like this or he'll like, create some analogy.

We're picking up pennies in front of a steamroller or, you know, do these things.

He said that to me. We were talking about something and he goes,

so is that like diametrically sword that slays the beast? And I was like,

I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I was like, I don't know what that is.

What are you saying in English? And he's like, no, like, you know, the story of Dio,

whoever there's some Greek guy. And I was like, no, I don't know any of these things. What are

you talking about? Yeah, it's like, dude, I need an analogy for your analogy. But I've noticed that

Chris, the limited time that I've been around him, he does the same thing where I can tell who

he's read and he's really good at what he does. And I think he's also naturally like that. He just

like thinks and frameworks and analogies and things like that. He can take complicated things and

make them quite simple. Totally. And I think he's really, really like super curious,

which I really respected about him. Like I felt like when he was asking questions,

he wasn't doing it to make conversation. He was doing it because he actually really wanted to

know the answer. He was genuinely interested. And I think that comes up, comes off. And I think that

is a huge like saving grace for, I think people overthink how to be in social situations. And

like, you know, the easiest hack is just simply genuinely be interested in the other person.

Everything else will work itself out. That's how I felt about Chris. And I really like that.

We had an interesting different conversation. I'll share one, one little tidbit that that can

take a dinner conversation from surface level to a lot more interesting. And I forgot who was

talking was the CEO of something. And she said something and I go, I go, let me ask you a question.

A little bit of a weird question. Can I ask you? And she's like, yeah, I go growing up.

I said, what you said was really interesting just now. And it made me wonder why you,

why you wanted that so bad. Growing up, whose love did you want more, your mom or your dad's?

Oh my God. And, you know, she immediately like, it's like, take it, take it back by the question

and then kind of answers. And then, and people open up about their like, they open up about their

relationship with their parents. And also like, it's kind of like, where'd that chip on your

shoulder come from is really what this question is asking. And I stole this from Tony Robbins.

Tony Robbins asked this question and I saw that like, in most of, he does these like

live kind of coaching sessions or whatever with people during his events. And he had asked this

question and it immediately found like the actual answer to the, to the problem. And since then,

I've like kept this question in my back pocket and I ask it from time to time. It's a very revealing

question. Hard to say without sounding like just like a pretentious prick. Did you have like your

like glasses, like in your mouth? Like, yeah, exactly. The tip of the fray and the tip of the

glass needs to go into the mouth and you have to be wearing a turtleneck. But if you do have to

have a turtleneck on, it is such a good turtleneck question. That's ridiculous. And it worked.

Oh, it worked. And then the whole, the whole table kind of shared their answers to it.

And it went from like, all right, we can either sit here and we'll go one inch deep or like,

we ended up 50 feet deep. And I felt like everybody actually felt like they knew each

other. And it was like, after the fact, it was like, so what do you do again? And it's like,

you know, you're trying to kind of reverse the order of how most of these like kind of networking

dinners go. And I've been to a lot of these. And so like, I appreciate something that can

break out of that surface level, you know, surface level stuff fluff. That's not really that

interesting. Dude, I was at this one dinner recently. And this guy who was a younger guy,

and he was like a fan of our stuff. So he was, and he like clearly like was learning how to

interact with people. Like he was like an internet guy who like read how to win friends and influence

people. And the first thing that he said to me, my wife was like, he was trying to do what you

did. And he asked us, like, when did you guys first have sex? And what was it like? And I swear

to God. And I like, I was so frustrated. And I was like, I'll answer your question, but you got

to answer mine first. How much money is in your checking account? How long is your dick? And

what was it like when you saw your parents having sex for the first time? And he was like, what?

I go, yeah, that's weird, right? I don't want to talk about that. Don't be weird. And he clearly

had like read like a book on how to do this. And then he like saw something you said and thought

that would have been a good idea. And it wasn't, it was a total mess. There's something that you

got to do, right? You can't just ask out of the blue. Oh, he did. The only reason this question

worked on ours was because when somebody's explaining the chip, like they have this chip on

the shoulder, you're basically, it's a natural question to ask, where did it come from? And

then they give you some bullshit answer. You say, all right, let me ask you a different question.

And you dig in that way. You can't just go up to somebody and be like, hello, I'm Sean. Nice to

meet you. Hey, I was curious. What's your deepest darkest secret, right? Like it doesn't really

work like that. Yeah, it was weird, man. It was weird. It was one of these guys. It was horrible.

But you pulled it off. All right. What else you got? Okay. Oh, I'll give you one other

Chris little gem that came out of the talk was telling a story about somebody else. And

and it was kind of a story that was like, what do they call it? Like a romp?

Which basically like a romp. It's like, it's like a, it's like a tale about like your, you know,

you could tell a tale of like your drunken days and this, the crazy thing that happened. We almost

got arrested. Then we ended up fine. But it's like, it's a story that doesn't have a lot of like,

it's not like a meaningful story. It's an entertaining story. And so persons tell this story

about like this business romp. So somebody was like going to get rich and then they like went

almost from broke and then now they're okay. And like, you know, whatever happened. And the takeaway

was, you know, that, you know, that person, they said, they could have sold the top and made a

bunch of money, but they said, you know, well, if I had done that, then I wouldn't have blah,

blah, blah, blah. And he said something that has stuck with me, which he goes,

do you think that's the right lesson to learn out of that? And he goes, he goes, I wonder that

sometimes he goes, people always talk about like how the lessons that Chris, a question I often

ask is like, is this person somebody who's learning the right lesson out of things? And I thought it

was so funny. It was like a blunt thing to say. And so I loved it already. The second thing was,

it's so true. I look around the people around me in life that I encounter. And very rarely,

like if, like a lot of people have experience, go through experiences and think they learn a

lesson. But if I was to measure like the hit rate of, are they actually having the correct takeaway

out of a situation? It's shockingly low. And I think that that is one of the greatest indicators

of success is, are you actually able to learn the correct lesson from your life experiences?

Nobody's 100% on that because we all have weird things where we'll blame other people or we'll

glorify ourselves and not realize that we just got lucky. We'll do weird things like that.

But I realized, oh, I want to only be around and work with people and hire people who are high

on this score. I don't really care how much experience you have. But if you don't take away

the right lesson from the experiences that you have and that you're going to have, your rate

of learning is just going to like, it'll be a different rate, or you'll just end up in some

weird trajectory where you'll just do dumb shit because you're taking away the wrong lessons

from your life experiences. And I just never heard somebody say that out loud. And it really

stood out to me. And now I see it everywhere. That's a really good question. I wonder if that

is something that he came up with or was inspired by. I mean, that's a hard thing to do. That's a

really unique question. He said it kind of as an offhand comment. This one wasn't one of his

frameworks or go-tos, I could tell. He literally just asked the question because he was curious.

He hurt. It was kind of like when somebody starts a sentence and your brain is trying

to fill in the blank of the last thing they're going to say. And then they say something totally

different. And you're like, that is not where I thought you were going with that. That's what

happened in the story. It's like 90% of it kind of made sense. And then the last 10% of the conclusion

was like some other weird conclusion. And he was like, what? Is that the way that was the conclusion?

I feel like the conclusion should have been X, but you're saying their takeaway was Y.

What? And so I don't even think he really meant it that way, or he really put that much weight

into it. But that was my golden nugget of that dinner was that one question. And I can't, I

literally can't stop seeing it everywhere now. Like my kid does something. My wife does something.

I do something. And I started to think back. I was like, in what areas did I take away the

wrong lesson? Like, I don't know. If you think back in your life, can you think of an example where,

if you're honest with yourself, it's like, yeah, actually, I kind of learned the wrong. I kind of,

did I even learn the right lesson from that? Was that the right answer?

There's a few things like, you know how that phrase like fail fast?

Like, I used to believe that that was cool. And then I'm like, I'd rather succeed fast.

Yeah, like, I'd rather not fail. And like, how could I succeed faster than I fail? And I remember

thinking it like for years, I was thinking, well, it's okay, I tried something. And I'm like,

but like, if I'm a baseball player and I take lots of swings, but I don't get any hits,

like that's bad. That's not good. That's very bad. So the lesson here is I should swing

and also have a high batting average. And I remember thinking like, oh, just shots on

goal. That's all that's all that matters. But I'm like, no, I need a score too. And so for years,

like I thought it was okay to fail. I'm failing fast. I'm moving fast. I'm breaking things,

whatever. And then like, maybe I shouldn't break things. And I should actually like,

succeed fast. And I remember like that, like it changed like five years ago.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I could think of a bunch of examples of my life where I've,

I think messed that up. But now we're going forward. That's not the case.

Did you learn the right lesson when you got roasted by some people for posting your private

chef? Dude, you posted this picture of this nice looking food. And people are like,

dude, your blood glucose is going to spike and you're going to be so unproductive because

you're eating rice. I thought that was pretty funny. Also, that wasn't rice.

Whatever it was, people were like giving you a hard time. I thought it was pretty funny.

You only clapped back a few of them. There's three or four reactions. Reaction one. So what did I

do? I posted a tweet that was just like a delicious meal. I was so happy I was having this meal.

I said, best life decision was hiring a family chef. There were four reactions. There was the

predictable positive, which was, ooh, yum, looks good. There was predictable negative, which was,

hey, douchebag, people are struggling in the world. You're posting this like nice flex,

you know, asshole. There was the predictable next question, which was, how much does this

actually cost? What goes into this? Which is a fine question. No problem. And then there was

just like whatever, the random or the interesting. I think the person who had the right answer from

it, which was, you either should just move on if it's not interesting to you or if it is interesting

to you, you should be like, yeah, that's something I want in my life. Let me bring that back to the

front of my brain as something that I kind of want. I thought it was very funny. The reason I

say that is because I didn't even know I wanted that until I met somebody who had a private chef

and I was like, wow, this is incredible. So you're telling me like, instead of them having to cook

three meals a day and they're, you know, also they have a wife and kids, like, you know,

instead of their whole family having to cook three meals a day, do grocery shopping, do the dishes,

to end up with a meal that doesn't taste as good, isn't as healthy and takes up, you know,

probably on average three to five hours, you know, per day, if you average it all out, including the

groceries and the cleaning and the cooking and the all of it. And, you know, but by the way,

three hours out of your like, you know, people have only have like 16 waking hours, right? Like

this is a, this is a really significant chunk of time per day. When I saw it and I was like, oh,

that's a goal that I didn't even know I should have, but I want that and I want that way more

than I want, you know, a ski home and Tahoe or like a fancy car or those types of things.

And then I for, I didn't do anything about it for a while because I assumed, oh,

you got to be like a billionaire to have that. No, you can get them for as cheap as maybe a

thousand a month, maybe. And then I was like, oh, let me do the math. Like, how much do you

actually need to do this? And then I did the math was like, oh, I think I could do this now. And

then I just did it and my life got way better. And so I posted it because a, just whatever,

it's Twitter, I didn't really think too much about it. But like, you know, there is a benefit

in seeing somebody's like, somebody do a decision in life or have something in life that is attractive

to you and brings it to your attention and makes you think about, do I want this? Do I not? Can

I have this? Can I not? You know, I think there's some value in that too. So anyways, that's my

story on the tweet. I thought it was pretty funny. I thought it was hilarious. I was frustrated you

didn't like holler at some of these people. I almost started replying to them for you.

Yeah, I haven't decided if I'm a heel or a face yet. So to use wrestling terms, like, I'm tempted

to just be a heel. It's way easier. In the tech world, I would say like, what's his name? The

dude who loves Barry? Keith for boy? Yeah, I call them out. I don't like that guy.

Well, you don't like him because he's a heel, which is funny. You know, he basically doesn't mind

pissing people off, telling people, telling people off whatever it is. And like, that's his brand.

And he has some people like, man, I love it. It's got to tell us like it is or he's funny or,

you know, he must be, you know, he basically has this aura of I'm better than you, like,

like many great wrestling villains and he'll tell you how much you suck. And so people,

some people hate that. A lot of the majority people hate that. And then there's a minority

people that love that and find him like interesting. And either way, you can't ignore him. He's like a,

you have to take a position because it's so polarizing. It's not just like, you know, vanilla.

And I would say you actually do a lot of what he does where I don't think you think you're doing

it because you're like, I didn't say anything bad. It's like, bro, you put a period at the end of

that line that just, you know, you put the period there. You're saying like, that's a middle finger.

That's not a period. Do you know you're doing it when you're doing it or? Not all the time.

Maybe some of the time, but I think I'm kind of a stickler with language. Like I like using

certain words. So if someone like says something and they end it in a question mark, my reply will

be like, I don't know if you're asking a question or if you're getting me to agree with you. If

you're just stupid. Or do you know what I mean? Like I just, like, or when people like sensationalize

things, like, well, they'll say like, well, this happens all of the time. Like, for example, someone

replied to you and they go, I've been seeing a lot of this lately. My example, what I want to reply

with is like, oh, okay, well, what are some other examples? Do you like, I, it's like, I just don't

like when you say, I think I did. I was like, like, what? Yeah, just curious. Like, like, what are

you talking about? I'm a stickler with language. I don't like when people say this always happens

or this never happens or these people are everywhere. Like things like that. I don't like

that phrase or this is so common that is becoming an issue. I'm like, well, I actually don't think

that it's any more common than it has ever been. Anyway, so I'm an asshole about that.

You want to do one more topic? Yeah. Do you have one? No, I blew my load early. Oh, wow.

And the internet thing. Why do you think it is that I generate so many more ideas than you?

Let's go. Let's go. Did your mommy not love you? Your daddy not love you. If we look at

the three years that we've done this, I think it ebbs and flows. I think that each person goes on

a chance, dude. Dude, each person goes on a three month run. Dude, 100%. I think you talk more,

but I don't think that I don't think that you necessarily bring more topics. Right. Right.

I think that when you believe that, but thanks for your permission. When I was selling the hustle,

you carried me. When you were selling Milk Road, my shoulders got tired. That's all I'm going to say.

Yeah. That's all I'm going to say. So I think it ebbs and flows. There's a guy who basically

took every idea from the podcast and put it in a database. That's how I know I win, because he

took every idea from the podcast and put it in a database and he said it was 75% me, 25% you,

but that's specifically on ideas, not topics. But that's maybe ideas. Yeah. Yes. Like this

Bernie guy, that's not an idea, but come on. You're definitely the king of the building of the week.

I think you somehow know a bunch of these old ass motherfuckers in different spaces and you find

these guys. I don't know how you find these guys or how you think of people. Just Wikipedia, bro.

Yeah, but why do they even get on your radar? You'll be like, this guy used to own this coal mine

and then he bought the shoe factory and then he owns like, you know, you ever read the St. Louis

post and I'm like, no, he owns that. I don't know how you found this guy, but you know,

more power to you. I just fucking books. Can I give you, okay, let me give you a couple,

let me do an idea. I'm going to go rapid fire. I'm going to just empty the chamber here on some

things that have been on my list. I have a D to C idea that I'd like to do, but I'd like to do,

I mean, I'm not going to do it, but I want to invest and advise somebody who does it who's

really good. Wait, do you still ever want to launch an ecom store? I don't know. I'm torn. I

don't want to operate it myself, but I do want to like incubate them. I do want to like incubate

them and hire a CEO that would run them in theory, but that might also be difficult. So I have a

gut health one. So gut health is, this is nothing new. So let me just start this by saying, oh,

bro, this, that exists. Yeah, I know it exists. Almost every D to C idea you've had exists.

Gut health is a trend that is going up, up and up and it fits a sales model that really works

with D to C. What do I mean by that? So what works in D to C? A great D to C product is one that is

going to be high margin. So can you get to 75, 80% gross margins? Well, with supplements, you can

get to 80, 85% gross margins. So that's fantastic on the product itself. The next thing that works

in D to C is that it's a repeat purchase or it's a consumable. So something that somebody's going

to buy many times, they'll shop from you again and again, because either they ran out, they ate it,

they drank it or the deodorant stick ran out, whatever it is. Unlike a mattress. Unlike a mattress.

So you want something that people grow out of or run out of. And so high repeat purchase rate,

well, supplements have that as well. Health and wellness has that as well. You want something

that is a problem solution fit. So basically, you want something that is not just like a kind

of nice to have fashion item. What works better in what sells better is something that you can

just say, do you have this problem? We have the solution. And this is why you see, if you go scroll

down to the bottom of a New York Post article, you're going to see a Toe Fungus ad. Why is a Toe

Fungus ad always there? Because guess what? People have Toe Fungus. It's a very easy problem

to point out. And people are looking for a solution and willing to buy something that

tells them that promises them that it's going to go away. So promise. Do you remember the best

promise solution ever is Claude Hopkins. He invented the advertising for toothpaste in the 1920s.

And he said, rub your tongue over your teeth. You feel that film? Now brush with our toothpaste,

crest. Now rub your tongue over your front teeth. That was the best problem. That's like an easy

to understand like, oh, I see exactly what you mean. And this solves it. Why that one's even

better is when you get to be the one diagnosing the problem, you have way more authority and

you're basically creating a new problem category for people that they weren't fully aware of.

And so this happened. This is why I like gut health a lot. Five years ago, I didn't hear

anybody talking about gut microbiome, leaky gut. I personally gut. I'm sure there was love that.

I love that phrase. It's beautiful branding. I have a family member who's like, oh,

I'm super worried about leaky gut. And I'm like, what? And she's like, yeah, I bought every book.

I watch these YouTube videos and dude, it scares the shit out of me. And like now I drink apple

cider vinegar. I do this. I do that. And I'm like, hmm, interesting. Somebody just like

created a problem, taught you about it. You might or may not have it. No way to know.

It's a beautiful word. And you bought a bunch of solutions and it was branded in this way that

sounded horrible. I don't want a leaky gut. It's spooky. It's what it is. It's a spooky phrase.

Just like cleansing. It's like, I'm going to do want to juice cleanse. Like, bro, I don't think

like this juice is like a pipe cleaner and it like is going through pipes. I don't know if that's

how it works. So I bought this domain, drink guts.com. And I have this idea for this brand

called guts. And guts is basically a drink. It's like, it's like a protein powder.

And you drink it for gut health. It helps with digestion. So a lot of people who are either

constipated or going to the bathroom all the time. It helps with weight loss. It helps with

sugar control. It helps with those sorts of things. So yeah, so I think I think you made

this brand and I just knew an amazing marketing CEO. And so I'm looking for that.

Have you heard of Alipop? I've heard of Alipop. I've drank an Alipop before. Yeah.

So Alipop is basically, it looks like a soda or a seltzer. It looks exactly like this. I'm

drinking spin, spin thrift right now. It's just like water with a little bit of fruit in it.

It looks just like that. Except it says like probiotic on the can. Yes. Which always turns

me off by the way. I'm like, nah, I don't want that weird stuff. Oh dude, turns me on. Probiotic?

Dude, who's antibiotic? You? Dude, I'm antibiotic. I'm not probiotic. I'm neutral in the

biotics at least, but I'm definitely not pro. But you know, how do you feel about oxidants?

Oxidants? Are you pro oxidants? Dude, what's it Michael Scott say? He goes,

I wouldn't say I'm superstitious, but I am a little stitious.

Alipop, do you know how big they are? I think they're huge, dude. I see them in every grocery

store. 100 million plus. And they're doing a very similar thing. There's a new one by the way called

poopy or poppy. You seen this one? No. What's poppy? It's like an even more,

it's like a gut health soda or like a probiotic, like LaCroix. And I see that one popping up at

Whole Foods now. Dude, when I think probiotics, I think diarrhea, like you're going to do something

to my poop. Yeah, so that's where the branding opportunities come in to fix that.

Guts doesn't exactly help your cause here. I know, but I think it's a loud splashy name that can be

almost like so bad it's good. I don't think it's very trademarkable. I think that's the problem

with it. But I kind of want to work with a designer just to make a fake DTC like packaging of this.

I kind of want to crowdsource this idea through MFM. So basically I'm like,

let's find a marketing CEO through this. I have a guy in mind. Let's get somebody who's a design

agency. Like let's make the packaging for fun and see what we could do. Somebody who's like a

supply chain guy. Let's go find the formulation lab. Like let's just like crowdsource this idea.

I think that would be a lot of fun. Dude, here's something I want to test. So this what you're

saying reminds me. So we're in the 55th minute or something like that of this pod. And you're saying

like something where you want to, you're saying a call to action. I'm curious how many people you're

going to get. Last episode or two episodes ago, we were talking about my Airbnb and I said

MarathonRange.com. I go, yeah, I have it's Airbnb. You can see it at MarathonRange.com. And I just

kept talking. I was curious how many people went to the site. Do you have a guess? Oh, I mean,

I would guess it's low. I'm going to give you the homey guess. I don't know. 100 visits?

So we set it at minute 38 or something like that. Like not in the beginning. It got like

three or 4,000 views. Nice. Not one booking, by the way. Not one booking. Not one.

To be quick. Yeah. One time I shared it on Twitter and it got two million impressions.

Not one booking. So not one booking. So it didn't help me at all. But I'm curious. I bet you you'll

get maybe 15 qualified people messaging you. One time you talked about this thing. You wanted a

woman to holler at you for this woman brand that you were working on. And people started hollering

at me to get to you. And like four of them were like Instagram women, like models, like wearing

thawing bikinis and shit, like trying to reach me to talk to you. And Sarah was like, oh, saw my

phone. I'm like, dude, this lady, like, she's like, what are you looking at? Like, check this out.

This lady just DMed me. Trying to talk to Sean. It was pretty funny. Yeah. I also like that you

say holler at still. It's like I still say tight when I think something's cool. I'm a dank. I'm

trying to bring dank back. I'm still watching TRL when I get home from school. So you can just

email me Sean at SeanPurri.com. I'll put it in the show notes of this, like in the description

of the podcast too. I hired an assistant that just reads all my email and triages it into buckets

that's like action item, needs a reply, read this and in case you're interested. And then

she filters out a bunch of the crap. It's amazing. How much is that per month? I went from being

horrible at email. Like I don't see stuff I should. I see a bunch of stuff that's trash.

I forget to reply to things. I'll read it on my phone. Think to reply later. Never

remember to come back and reply later. I had a horrible system. And now shout out to my assistant

Drea who's helping me so much with that. It's like literally overnight game change. Well,

I got an email from her saying Sean would like to schedule time to speak with you in Vancouver.

And at first I was like, what the fuck? Sean, are you kidding me? There's some great things.

Yeah. Really? And then I was like, okay, this is awesome. And I messaged you. I go,

where'd you get this person from? Very interesting. She did a good job. Also,

by the way, your call to action thing just reminded me. I think we should do two things,

two upcoming shows. I'm going to put it out there now. It's time for another drunk ideas episode

which is where we come up with ideas that only sound good if you're a drunk. So half baked,

kind of bad, but maybe good startup ideas. So what we should do?

Like the very long distance girlfriend. The best one ever.

Yeah, exactly. Very long distance girlfriend was an old timer. The second one is, I think we should

do our version of The Bachelor. So I think we should get MFM's most eligible guys and gals,

basically. Submit your application. We need a photo. We need it. We'll put up what we should

put up like a dating site, which is basically like we ask a couple of questions and then we take the

best and we present them on the show and then people can reach out to them and they will get

like a bunch of inbound of people who want to actually date them. And let's see if we can get

somebody married out here. Let's see if we can get somebody to fall in love.

The second time we've done that, by the way, we've had one MFM marriage, but did you?

And more than one MFM divorce.

Yes, more than one. And that's not a joke.

We give it and we take it away.

Did you see what I did that on Twitter, where I like tweeted out like 10 of my friends who

were single? Yeah, that's a great idea. We should just do that as a product.

It crushed. It crushed. All right, I'll tweet that out after this.

Well, let's do this. By the time this comes out, let's make a landing page.

Well, Ben texted me. He wants to do it. He wants to call it hot millionaires in your area.

No, we're not going to call it hot millionaires in your area. Hot MFMers. MFers. What can we call it?

So what should we call it? It could be maybe something with singles, maybe something with

let's see, what else? I don't know. We got to get creative eventually.

You're a good name. No, no, no. Don't give up. You could do this.

I don't know. We could change the word singles with shingles. Is there anything there?

That's the thing that's always at the bottom of the website. It's like hot singles in your area.

So just call it that. Like it's hot singles in your area. Too much competition on that name,

dude. That's the most competitive term on the internet. It's got to be like MFM most wanted.

But it's most wanted because they're wanted in a dating sense.

Yeah, we get it. MFM's most wanted. That's fine. That's actually great. That's actually great.

We're going to do that. Better than shingles. I don't know. I like changing words called Twitter

shitter. It's classic. And then this month, Sean, we probably should do like a merch thing.

Yeah, I'm working on it. I'm going all in on just creating great content.

I don't understand what content has to do with merch. Merch is content to me.

Like we're not going to get rich selling t-shirts, but we can make awesome t-shirts that are like

as good as great content. Like it makes you laugh. It's interesting. It's cool. It's fun.

It's meant for fun, not meant to be like, you know, our Patreon.

All right, I'm down. No, if that's Patreon, put y'all a little bit. Patreon is like

certified small boy stuff. Yeah, dude, I don't want to be like, I don't want to have a patron.

All right, that's the pod.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.