My First Million: Two Side Hustle Ideas, The Top Trait of Successful Entrepreneurs, Building a Compound with your Friends, and More

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 3/24/22 - 1h 8m - PDF Transcript

All right.

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

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

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

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

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

company on your own.

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

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

All right.

Back to the show.

So it was like many years of failure, verge of death, last chance game, sells it to Zynga

then for $210 million, and I've noticed this little trend, which is winners can take it

to level 12 when everybody only thinks of level 10 is possible.

All right.

Dude, I got so many texts and messages saying that the Andrew Wilkinson podcast was their

favorite in a very long time.

I don't know why.

Dude, everyone just loves Andrew and has nothing to do with us or the pod.

It's not a compliment to us, it's just a compliment to Andrew that we're like a pass-through.

We're like the LLC pass-through entity of that compliment.

That's cool.

And I'll take that.

I just didn't feel while I was doing it that this was going to be a thing that people are

going to reach out to me about.

You know what was funny?

We talked about getting hacked on that podcast, like your hack story and then Andrew had a

hack story of a zero-day exploit.

Since then, a couple of people reached out under anonymous accounts.

They were like, and one guy who I know, he's like, I'm actually like, X Israeli cybersecurity

and he's like, I thought that episode was very good, very entertaining.

What does that mean?

He's like, you weren't wrong.

And I was like, I don't even want to know what I wasn't wrong about.

I'm just like, I get afraid to even talk at that point.

I'm like, okay, just say nothing and just let it be.

I had a guy reach out, said he runs a firm that basically works with families and helps

make sure all their stuff is protected.

And I think that's a hack.

Like I'm nervous.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, dude, I don't know, man.

Like I don't know who to trust anymore.

What would a hacker do?

They'd say they could help me with this problem.

Of course.

Of course it's a hack.

Even if I meet him in person and I'm still nervous.

So dude, I'm like Trump fake news that fake, fake, fake news that you're a hack.

You're a hack.

That's a hack.

Everything's a hack.

That's how I feel hardcore right now.

You've got a lot of, a lot of topics, some of them look pretty good.

Yeah.

All right.

You want to jump into one of those?

Yours.

Yeah.

I've got, I've got a few things, but yours are all interesting.

I saw you tweet about Dan Porter.

You just have like our hardcore about this guy right now.

I met him like seven years ago and he seemed cool, but you're like, you're going hard.

I'm like a super fan of this guy.

So, and I wasn't until I talked to him, I had one call, I was going to tell you about

this.

I had a call with this guy, Dan Porter, and he's like my new hero.

I think I told him on the call, I go, you're my hero.

And then I side-channeled Ben during the, during the call and I was like, I think this

guy's my fucking hero.

And then today Ben texted me and goes, Dan Porter is my hero.

So both of us are, we're, we're fully fans of this guy.

So I don't know if you, you seem to know him, but maybe we can kind of summarize who this

guy is.

So I know him, he's a little bit older than us.

I think he's probably in his fifties, if I had to guess.

So he's been around and done a few more interesting things than we have and he's kind of seen

a bunch of cycles.

So if I remember correctly, his first thing was either like a game or some type of Facebook

application called OMG draw.

Is that what it was?

OMG pop.

And what was that?

No, no, but that wasn't the first thing.

So okay, let me, let me give you the, this guy's career, which is partly why he's my

hero.

All right.

So I talked to him and I'm going to go in, I'm going to go in and I'll go in, I'll go

from the origin story.

Okay.

So his first thing he did was he basically, I don't know if he was the co-founder, but

he was like one of the early creators of Teach for America, like the big program Teach

for America.

No way.

He was like one of the first or second people to like, to do it and help basically build

that program.

Then he goes and he works for, I think he worked for Richard Branson next.

And so he worked for Richard Branson at Virgin.

I think he worked at like, I don't know, some other place, Sony, then whatever, then he

works for Branson.

And at Branson thing, he was like doing a bunch of their kind of like new brand launches

or whatever at Virgin.

Then he goes and he creates this company OMG pop.

And OMG pop was basically like, they tried like 13 different things and like none of

it was working and it was all like kind of fun, social type apps.

And it was like, I'm basically about to shut down.

And he goes to the investors and he's like, he's like, well, let me just take one last

shot at it.

I'm going to do one more game and I'm going to design the game.

And everybody was like, you know, you, you are not a game designer, why are you so cocky

about this?

He's like, I'm just whatever.

I'm cocky.

I'm going to do it.

And like, I'm going to go down with the ship.

Like, you know, if I fuck up this last game, I fuck up the last game.

And he wasn't financially successful, right?

Like this was like, he was still clawing his way.

Yeah.

Like he didn't have some huge, huge cushion to fall back on.

So he, um, he designs this game and he's like, well, I don't know shit about designing

a game.

So I'm just going to like design a very simple game.

And so he designed this game that went viral that you probably heard of called draw something.

So at one point in time, draw something was the most popular app in the app store, most

popular game in the world, I think, during that, during like this brief period where

it just exploded.

But at first it like didn't work.

Uh, or like, you know, like actually like it was a simple game, he launched it and it

like started to work.

And he's like, oh my God, like, look at this, we got like thousands of downloads.

This thing's like kind of working.

And then like the growth stopped right away.

And they were like, ah, just another failure, another, another failure for us.

Let's chalk up another L.

But then they realized like the developers were looking at the like logs and they were

like, oh, there's something weird going on.

Like this isn't right.

And they realized like they had like a basically a bug in the game that was causing it to like

stop growing, stop working and stop growing.

And so they were like, oh, we need to fix this.

But I don't know if you remember at the time, uh, this was in like 2012, maybe or 2010.

Yeah, like exactly.

Like kind of like early mobile days.

And the app store at that time had like a one week, like review process minimum, it would

take one to two weeks just to update the app.

So for an app that's going viral, that's like, let me just wait, you know, seven to 14 days

to fix this problem.

It's like, well, you're dead by then.

So, so he calls up one of his investors, uh, I won't name him, but he's like a well-known

guy to look at Valley.

He's like, look, I know I get one ask.

I have one favor.

This is the one favor.

We need our app reviewed and like updated like today, tomorrow, like we need 24 hour

review.

And the guy's like, all right, you're correct.

You get one ask.

This was it.

Never ask me again.

He hangs up the phone and magically the apps reviewed like less than 24 hours later.

And it just takes off.

And so like it grows like crazy millions and millions of players in this app.

It was basically two people draw stuff and you have to guess what it is before the drawing

is done.

Yeah.

It's like, no, it's like a virtual picture.

Yeah.

So like I, I see a word and I have my like finger on the phone.

I'm just going to doodle like the, the, the word you're not going to see the word.

You're only going to see my doodle.

But it, the trick was that it, it didn't just show you the final picture of mine.

It showed you a blank page and then it showed you how I was drawing.

Right.

So I want to erase stuff.

And so it looked, it felt like you were watching me go through it and struggling to do it,

which is like a real like kind of human psychology thing, which is one of the reasons I love

this guy because he has so many stories like this and he shared so many nuggets with me.

And so, um, so you would see the word and you'd guess the word or whatever.

And this thing goes viral.

Like Miley Cyrus is tweeting about it and Debbie Lovato is tweeting about it and it's

like featured on TV.

It's like going crazy.

And so he's like, all right, well, um, uh, he starts getting like, you know, you know,

knock on the door.

It's Zynga knock on the door.

It's Facebook.

It's people wanting to talk to him about buying the company or whatever.

And he talked to me, he told me a little bit about how he negotiated the deal.

And basically his investors were like, you know, he was like, all right, let's sell this

thing.

And he's like, you know, I think it should be like 200 million or whatever.

And I think the first offer that guy was like a hundred something million or in a quick

message from our sponsor, you know, I was thinking about the shortest day of the year

earlier, and while we technically have the same amount of time as every other day of

the year, the lack of daylight makes it feel so much shorter, which is exactly the same

kind of feeling as working with disconnected tools.

Our work days, the same length as always.

But before you know it, we spent three hours just fixing something that was supposed to

be automated.

Thankfully, HubSpots all in one CRM platform can serve as a single source of truth for

managing your customer relationships across marketing, sales, service operations with

multiple hubs and over a thousand integrations and an easy to use interface HubSpot lets

you spend less time managing your software and more time connecting with your customers.

Learn how HubSpot can help you grow your business at HubSpot.com.

He had raised, um, let me, let me look, um, Ben, can you look up on CrunchBase?

Just a CrunchBase OMG pop.

See what they had raised.

All right.

So they raised $16 million.

So a hundred million plus the guy's going to make some money.

Everybody's going to be happy.

He has to present the deal to his board or whatever.

And they're like, you know, take it.

And he's like, yeah, I don't know.

I think we can get more.

And they're like, no, dude, you need to take this deal.

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

I think we can get more.

And he goes back and he basically like, you know, pulls a Hail Mary sells it for basically

double what they were going to sell.

So so for, I think the reported amount was $210 million.

So and this was within like three months of that game launching.

So it was like many years of failure, verge of death, last chance game sells it to Zynga

then for $210 million.

And he told like, even as part of the deal, he told me a bunch of fun things.

So one of the nuggets that I loved that he told me was like, I've noticed this, this

little trend, which is winners have a higher like winners can take it to level 12 when

everybody only thinks of level 10 is possible.

Let me give you an example.

When this deal was being announced, I think Zynga had just had like their first like, like

slow growth quarter or something like that, they had just done their earnings call and

like this game had like taken away like, you know, some significant steam from Zynga's

games because they had gone to the top of the charts, it was the game everyone's playing.

And so Zynga needed, they had like a 10 million user shortfall and their earnings and their

stock was going to take a hit.

And so Mark Pincus, who's the founder of Zynga was like, all right, we need good news.

We need good news now.

Like this, the market needs some good news and we need to get this deal done.

And so he was like, all right, okay, the lawyers tell me this deal is going to take, you know,

whatever, let's say a month.

He's like a month, why a month?

They're like, well, we just, you know, like even if we're working all of our lawyers,

you know, you know, 10 hour days, like this is, you know, 12 hour days, this is still

going to take us a month.

He's like, okay, cool.

So we hired two law firms, one for the morning shift and one for the night shift.

So they would have a 24 hours cycle, working on the deal until it was done and they got

it done in half the time.

And this is actually something.

So then he tells me this other story.

He's like, you know, after, after Omg Pop, after Virgin, he gets, he gets recruited to

be the head of digital at WME, the big agency that that's, and that's when I met him.

I called the email them and I flew out to New York and so Ari Emanuel is the guy who

runs runs WME, which is what the show, the show on charge, they based the character Ari

Gold off of Ari Emanuel, so he's this hotshot agent or whatever.

So he tells me, I was like, why'd you join an agency?

Like why'd you join like a Hollywood agency after that?

He's like, well, I wasn't going to, but he's like, I didn't even know who Ari was.

I didn't know WME.

I, like I just kind of knew that there's, there's agencies out there, but I didn't really know

who this guy was a big shot or whatever.

He's like, he wanted to recruit me.

Like one of our investors basically told him, oh, you got to hire Dan.

And so Ari was like, got to hire Dan, heat seeking missile, you know, just, he takes

it to level 12.

So he's like, he literally called me like every day for five months straight until

I like finally was like, okay, I got to stop this, like, okay, I'll take the job basically.

And like, I don't know how much of that is this like a euphemism or like, you know, exaggeration,

but like,

I've heard Ari Emanuel in a couple of articles.

They say that's what he does.

He'll call someone every single day until he gets what he wants.

And I think that's a, I've been picking this up as a thing, like when I'll give you an

example of you, you, you actually do this.

When we were like, all right, we're going to make like our own podcast studio is like,

yeah, cool idea.

And everybody kind of nods and okay, what's one level better than that?

Somebody's like, oh, you know, I'll take charge of it.

I'll come up with the plan.

And then that person usually goes around asking what the budget should be like, you know,

they kind of push the ball forward, nudge it forward with their toe.

And then somebody else is like, okay, I'm going to get this done and I'm going to get

this done in two weeks, which seems like aggressive, right?

You go from no studio to a fully functioning podcast studio.

No, I'm like, let's go to speaking.

Yeah.

You were like, okay, what are you doing right now?

And I was like, I'm on the phone with you.

And you're like, cool.

What are you going to do?

Like right after this, you ready to go?

I'll kick, I'll pick you up.

And I was like, what?

I guess I could find a babysitter for my child and like, I guess I could.

And so we, and then all of a sudden an hour later, I'm in the car with you, we're driving

to fucking Ikea and you walk in and you're like, Hey, Ikea guy, we need like an awesome

studio couch.

And he's like, okay, and you're like, here's $500 in cash.

Where do I spend this?

Like to get the couch.

And they were like, what the fuck is going on?

It's a different level of intensity.

And sure enough, by like the next day we had those two red couches that were like, you're

like, I need a couch.

You had a vision.

You're like, I need a couch that's going to pop in the thumbnail of a YouTube video.

And so like, I want it to look like this.

And then we had it.

And then you're like, cool, you know, our accounting person is going to paint the room

today and then like, you know, this next person is going to do this.

And like, all of a sudden, like the world just bent to your will.

And I'll have another, I'll give you another example.

Me and my buddy, Sully, we invested in this company and I put 50K in, he put Sully put

like 100K in.

And so we were like, all right, great.

Now a couple of months go by and we're like, dude, these guys like, are they, what are

they doing?

And so we like check in with them and like nine months later and we're like, Hey, what's

the latest?

And they were kind of like, you know, doing their thing, but they weren't, they didn't

have like a clear plan and they wanted to raise money.

So they were like asking us for intros and we were like, cool, send us your deck.

And I sent this, the deck has sucked.

And we were like, Hey guys, this deck kind of sucks.

Like I don't want to make intros like let's work on your deck.

And they're like, Oh, thank you.

We'd love some help.

So we get on a call and we get on a call before we get on the call.

Okay.

That was like, they're like, let's do a call.

What times are free for you next week?

Sully goes, I'm free in like 45 minutes.

Can you get to it?

Can you get to a computer by then?

And they're like, uh, yeah.

In the 45 minutes between then he sent three emails with like slide one, this sucks.

Slide three.

What is this picture?

This is stupid.

Side five, present it this way.

Slide nine.

And he just had it before, like before the meeting, he'd done the meeting.

Then we get into the meeting and he's like, all right, guys, I sent you guys a bunch of

stuff.

Uh, like let's open a PowerPoint right now and just fix it.

And they were fixing it.

And he's like, okay, cool.

Um, there's like these three things that are missing.

Um, like, all right, let's do a call.

Like in four hours with the deck fixed with those three things that we're missing.

And um, let's do this call every morning and every afternoon.

We're going to do two calls a day for the next five days or until this deck is amazing.

And these guys are just like, what?

And I was also like, what's the, what's the results of that?

Well, they've gone on to raise the, honestly, the result of that was I think by day four,

they were just sort of like, I hate you.

Like we disagree or like, you know, this is just too much for us.

They kind of like backed off and we're just like, cause by the end of that, we were like,

not only does your deck need to change your business strategy needs to change because

like the deck can only just tell a great business story, but you don't actually have

a great business story.

So we need to fix that too.

And like, you know, and it was like, we are kind of like, you know, the delivery wasn't

the softest.

So I don't think they loved the calls at first it was like, wow, this is really constructive

feedback.

And by the end, I think they were just beaten down and I'm like, whatever, was Dan, was

Dan Porter a guy who took it to a level 12?

Is that what you're saying?

How he pushed it?

So he told me the stories of Ari doing it.

He told me the story of Richard Branson doing it.

And then he had stories of him doing it and he was like, cause we were, we were asking

about the milk road.

He reads the milk road every morning.

And so we were like, all right, you know, what would you do about this and this and

this?

How did you do that early days of his latest project?

So I should introduce that.

So he, after the WME thing, he's like, he started this new company called overtime, which

I don't know if you've,

Which is like taking over the world, but I don't even entirely know what it is.

Right.

Like their social handles are all over the place.

They're huge on social.

So basically it's like, if you're into bad, it started with basketball, now they have

like football and other things, but it started with basketball.

And basically what they did was they just create like a media company, but instead of

the way, like, okay, ESPN is a TV channel.

And then like Bleacher report and others were websites.

And then there were some newsletters.

And these guys were like, no, we're just going to be like an Instagram account and we're

just going to become the biggest Instagram account for basketball culture.

And what does that mean?

And it's like crazy dunks, like high school prospects.

That's really where they like found their foothold was they were like, okay, forget

the NBA.

Like a, like Hoops culture.

They're really interested.

Like who are the next?

Who's the next LeBron?

And it turns out there was this kid Zion Williamson, who was this like tank looking guy in South

Carolina that people had heard of.

He's got a cool name called Zion.

The guy's built like a fucking, you know, crunch bar and then he can fly.

Like he's like, you know, he's like a flying bus.

And so a crunch bar.

Like a double crunch crunch bar.

I would have thought like thicker than a snicker, but all right, we're going to go.

Perfect.

Okay.

Um, so he, so they started.

So they were like, okay, they put up a video of this guy and it was like, it immediately

went viral.

He's like, okay, cool.

People want to know about Zion ESPN.

They're not sending a reporter down to like Greenville, South Carolina to like cover

this guy's high school game against West Bishop Baptist.

Like it's like, but we can do that.

And so he, he basically, and he said this thing when he would, when I was talking to

him, he was very calm guy, but he had that, that level 12 intensity.

I could tell it because he goes, he goes, I decided I was going to do this.

And then I just applied my will against it.

And I was like, only somebody who is like knows they're a force of nature would even

say something like that.

And he wasn't pitching me.

Wasn't selling me.

He was just, I was trying to figure out how the fuck did you build this into like a household

name in such a short period of time?

And I've seen so many people.

How do they, and how do they make money?

Do you know?

They have a couple of different ways.

So they think they have like, you know, probably like sponsors or whatever, but they now have

their own basketball league.

So he's like, he basically created his own version of like a, like a, instead of the

NCAAs, it's like you can come play in the overtime league.

So right now he's like living in Atlanta where they're doing the season.

And like, and I told him, I was like, dude, you look like a high school science teacher.

Well, yeah.

So if you, if you guys look up Dan Porter, when I hung out with them, he was like,

dressed cool and he looked like the cool guy, but he looked more, he's more similar to

Malcolm Gladwell than he was a basketball fan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's more of a Gladwell than an ex.

That's for sure.

Yeah.

Like he would never think this is the guy that's like steering, you know, street culture

and hoops culture at the grassroots level, but he is.

He really is.

Like maybe he would have launched a poetry league over a basketball league.

And I asked him, I was like, I'll show you like a crazy, no, actually I love football.

And I was like, what, and he was like, yeah, you know, like, and so he told me about the

approach that he took of like, he's like, I was at WME.

And he's like, you know, I, I, we heard these stats, which was basically like the foot,

the NFL was really worried because they're like kids choose their favorite team and league

at like age 10 or 12.

And then that's like, who they're a fan of for life is like, that's my team or like,

that's my player.

And like they're, they're fan of them for like decades and he's like, then we asked

like, how do you decide?

Is it because of the city you're from or whatever?

And they're like, no, Madden, like whoever's the most fun to play in Madden or like whoever's

colors I like, and he's like, oh, shit.

And the NFL was also like, oh, shit.

And the local sports owners were like, oh, shit.

Cause if, if every kid in Philadelphia isn't growing up an Eagles fan, if they just like

Michael Vick, cause he's fast in the game of Madden, then like, that's a fan we just

didn't get.

They're not going to buy tickets jerseys.

They're not going to like come to the games like, this is not going to work.

The model will break at that point.

And then also TV networks were like, yeah, kids aren't watching TV.

So like we got to figure something else out.

Like what are they doing?

They're playing video games.

They're on social media.

They're on Instagram.

They're on Tik Tok.

And so his theory was like, oh, okay.

So we need to build the sports media brand on those networks.

And then we just have to find the thing that clicks and what clicked for them was these

like young up and coming basketball players.

And then he like came up with the craziest, like they would basically he's like, all right,

we need the clips, like we need those clips faster than anybody else.

And so they came up with a crazy idea, like crazy ideas, which was like they would find

they would in their social media, they would just like, Hey, who lives in like South Carolina?

We need a photographer.

So like the number one Zion clip submitted to them, these clips that got millions and

millions of views basically built their brand, which is like a multi hundred million dollar

brand now was done by a guy who was like, I think like a plumber on like weekdays and

he would go to the games and like the number two clip submitter was a student at Zion school

who had broke his leg.

And because he was in a wheelchair, they put him like courtside every game, like instead

of going up in the bleachers, so he had like the best spot.

And so that guy was submitting like these amazing clips on his iPhone and like that's

what was going viral right away.

And then he's like ESPN or whatever would hit us up and they'd be like, Hey, like can

we license your videos?

We'll pay you for this license.

Like it'll be like Getty images and he was like, fuck me, dude, I don't want to build

Getty.

And he's like, how about this ESPN?

You can have it for free.

You just have to tag us and put our watermark on it.

And they're like, idiot, done.

And so then they ended up promoting the shit out of overtime, like overtime was everywhere

because of that.

It was like seen as credible because it was on ESPN all the time.

I would have bought, I would like to build Getty, Getty is like a billion dollar year

subscription business.

Yeah.

I think it's just like, again, he's doing it for fun.

He's like, you know, he's doing the thing he enjoys.

And ultimately, if you don't want to build a stock image and video library, if you want

to build like the brand, it's like fundamentally different.

How long did you talk to him for?

Dude, I talked to him for an hour because I was like, each thing I had seen them doing

and I was like, okay, I've seen that, um, like, again, I was like, how'd you get the

clips?

And he would tell me that he's like, we built an iPhone app that he's like, I talked to

the guys who take videos and they're like, Oh dude, we don't know when the dunk is going

to happen.

So we just have all these like shitty clips.

And so they built an app that was just like on all the time and it was like TVR like Tivo

is like, you push a button, it's like, Hey, something cool happened.

And it would just grab the last 15 seconds and the next 15 seconds, it would throw away

all the other video.

Right.

You just like look at like the decibel, like the volume change or something or like, for

example, he's like, um, I was like, how'd you get it to be cool?

I was like, cause cool is so hard.

I was like, I don't even know how to ask this question, but cool is super hard to do.

You guys pulled off cool and you don't strike me as somebody who's just like naturally super

fucking cool. So like what's, I think you thought about this.

He's like, I did think about it.

He's like, he's like, basically I studied like mute, like music, um, religion.

And I forgot what he said, um, British sports teams.

He's like, I just studied those.

And I was like, all right.

So like, he's like, I wanted to be more like, you know, what's it called, like the, the

grateful dad or whatever.

Like, he's like, you know, I saw what do they do is like, they all had like, um, like a

thing they would say or like a symbol that they would do.

He's like, so we would, he's like, so we created this like, Oh, symbol for overtime that we

would get everybody to put up their Oh, like, and we, like any cool up and coming player

would be like, yo, can you flash the Oh, and they would do it and they would put that in

the videos and it would train people like this is what, this is what the cool players

are doing basically is like this sign or like he would say, I'd always have them say, shout

out to overtime at the end of the video, shout out to overtime, shout out to overtime, shout

out to overtime.

Or he's like, you know, um, he's like, I personally replied to like, he's like, he's like, our

team has replied to like a million DMs and then we'll screenshot those DMs and we'll

put it out there so that people see that we reply to DMs and you get more and then he's

like, you know, so they know, oh, shit, this is a brand that actually replies.

Or he's like, we would, um, like people would comment on our stuff roast me and then we

would go to their problem profile and roast them and he's like, these little things made

it different because ESPN would never do that.

He's like, so we just wanted to be counter to what like the big brands would, they would,

what they would never do.

We would counter program against them.

And he was just giving me example after example of like either stuff that virgin did, like

when building their brand or overtime did building their brand.

And I just thought it was fucking unbelievable, dude.

I thought it was super hard to do.

And did he crush it on, draw something?

Is that, did he make a lot of money from it?

Yeah, of course.

210 million bucks, right?

If you only raised 16.

Well, I don't know.

Self or 210.

That's pretty good, right?

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's always a little more to the, sometimes there's more to the story.

Yeah.

But there's enough margin.

I didn't ask him, you know, how much is in your bank account.

But definitely, you know, I think he did well off that.

And yeah.

So, so anyways, I thought it was unbelievable kind of the things he was doing.

And then, you know, the, the, the last piece of it that I thought was really impressive

was he was like, you know, what did he say?

He goes, he gave me one insight that I really liked.

He goes, you know, fundamentally your brand is not about like, your brand is not about

like, you know, your logo or your icon or all that stuff.

It's kind of like how you come across.

So, he's like, when I read the milk road, it seems like you guys are having fun doing

all this stuff in crypto and he's like, don't underwrite that.

Like, we're here to have fun is a manifesto.

It is a approach to life.

It's approached to an industry.

It's approached, it's an approach to a type of business.

And like, when he, when he said that, it like clicked for me, I was like, yeah, I think

that's why people like this podcast too is because we like, they can tell we're having

fun just geeking out about this stuff or making fun of each other or, you know, making this

Malcolm, Malcolm X, Malcolm Gladwell joke or whatever.

It's like, they can tell we're here to have fun.

And therefore they know it's okay to have fun here.

And like, that's what this is for.

And that's going to be fundamentally different than, you know, like, I don't know, 20 minute

VC or like these podcasts where it's like, you know, like, oh, thank you for being here.

You know, fantastic.

You know, tell me, you know, what do you think about for, you know, your fun side?

And, you know, the information gathering that goes on in most interviews that you're doing

a, a, a Harriet Prussia, push up my glasses, 20 minute VC, he's, he's British here and

just one long time fan.

And finally interviewer and we just say like, Hey, what's up?

So how do you pronounce your name again?

So what do you do because I've seen you online and you just look like you're a bum, but like

what do you do?

Do you do any work?

And how much money do you have?

That seems super easy.

Is it as easy as it looks like you're doing nothing, right?

What's up?

What did you want to talk about with athletic greens?

I didn't have a ton.

I bet my message is the guy I was going to, do you know much about their story?

So, uh, athletic greens, they basically make a powder.

Like it looks like a protein powder, but it's not protein.

It's just like vegetables grounded up or something like that.

And you suppose, I mean, right?

I mean, I don't know about like literally how they get that, but it's like vegetables

and vitamins in your body.

It's like all the shit you would get if you ate your vegetables properly, but instead

of having to eat your vegetable properly, you put one scoop of this and like a liquid

and you just drink it and it's awesome.

And they bootstrapped it for like eight years and they recently raised money at, I think

a billion dollar valuation and it is freaking expensive.

I have it at my house.

It's like a hundred dollars a month.

It is really expensive.

Yeah.

They just sent me a, like a, whatever, like a free thing to like use it.

And so I just started, started drinking it because I'm, I'm definitely the type that

wants that.

Like I'll trade the, I'll always take convenience over, you know, um, kind of like the hard way.

Basically, anytime I can get a convenient like hack, I'm going to, I'm going to take

it.

So it makes sense for me.

It makes, I think it makes hundreds of millions of dollars.

I think 150 million dollars of recurring revenue from their subscriptions.

And they just hired Kat Cole, who was on the pod.

She was like the former COO of whatever some food brands group.

And um, and now she's, I think COO of athletic greens.

I, they're, they're, you could tell they're like gearing up to go public.

They're like, you know, getting it all, getting all their ducks in a row.

But also I, this guy Rob, who listens to podcasts, he sent me a link.

He goes feature for Billy of the week.

And one of the things he had in there was that, um, they, uh, the guy who's behind

it, this guy, Chris Aschenden, he bought, yeah, I think he's a controversial character,

right?

Or maybe not controversial, but like eccentric.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know much about him, but I heard he bought Tim Ferriss's original brain quick

and supplement company as part of like athletic greens or something like that.

Like he met, he met him in a coffee shop in Argentina and like ended up buying his brain

supplement business or whatever.

Really?

He, I know Tim sent it or sold it, but I didn't know he sold it to that guy.

Yeah.

I think he, I'm pretty sure he bought it.

And then, uh, and then Tim is also, I think pretty in like one of their key influencers

for athletic greens as well.

Like they're one of the key people they sponsor.

Yeah.

I mean, um, I've known about athletic greens for a while, but I, uh, I didn't, uh, I didn't

realize how big they're, or how bad they're, or how good they were doing.

Can I pitch you two ideas and you tell me which one you like better?

All right.

These are two kind of like side hustle ideas that I think could turn into something big,

but they're businesses that are not hard to do.

They would immediately make somewhere between 500 K to two, two and a half million dollars

probably within a year or a year or two of your business of doing it profit.

I like that.

All right.

So the first one is I'm going to call it, um, baller doctors.

Okay.

What's baller doctors?

Baller doctors is you're going to go to med schools all around the country and you're

going to put fucking, you know, ads slash flyers up and you're going to say, Hey, before

you graduate, do you want to know how doctors become millionaires?

Um, you know, faster, you know, some, you know, the average doctor becomes a millionaire

in 12 years.

I can show you how it's done in five and you basically host a seminar and you, you definitely

lean into the get rich quick stuff because, you know, people are curious, but you, you

build in enough trust, but you don't bury the lead.

You're like, look, even doctors are greedy.

Even doctors are greedy.

Even doctors like money might be the, the better name for the seminar.

Um, and, and you're going to host a seminar and basically you're just going to break down

the business of most doctors spend all their times with their head, all their time with

head in, you know, heads buried in books and think about customer, you know, patient care

as they should.

But at the end of the day, a lot of these guys want to go out, they want to own their

own practice or they want to figure out, should I be joining a practice?

Should I go to a hospital?

Should I, um, you know, start my own?

How do I get the money to do that?

How much money did this make?

And I think if somebody just made a sort of business in a box, uh, seminar where they

just explained, look, here's how it usually goes.

You put in this much.

It takes you this long.

Here's a sample P and L with where your costs look like.

Here's how you make money in your practice route.

Here's how you could do a group practice.

Here's how you join a, if you join a hospital, here's where you are after five years.

Um, like, did you know this by the way?

If you're a doctor and you work in a nonprofit, which most hospitals are nonprofits for 10

years, all of your student loans are forgiven.

You get your money.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Same if you're a lawyer, if you're, my sister did it.

If you're a lawyer for, uh, the government, you get a lot of, you get for loan forgiveness.

Right.

So basically you just do like a personal finance slash business crash course for doctors and

you do that all around the country.

And then some percentage of those, they actually are going to go to you for like, you can create

the, there's, they'll pay for the session or they'll pay for like the upsells.

You might do the session for free.

And then you say, by the way, I have like the detailed guide with all of the business

like templates in the, in this thing, uh, you know, plus like, you know, whatever.

I got all your, I got all your docs and templates and it's all fleshed out in detail.

This is, you know, $4,000 and you know, you could buy that mastermind thing.

And with it comes like a coaching call whenever you're ready.

You can always, you can always hit me up and I'll help you with this stuff.

All right.

That's business one.

I could play off this.

So let me tell you about this.

So there's this blog that I read, it's called the white coat investor.

Have you heard of it?

Not that, but I'm in a Facebook group called white coat investors, which is I think probably

the same thing.

It's doctor, doctor's investments.

So if you go to it, you'll see it's a little, uh, stale, like it's probably been around

for a while and it gets a lot of traffic.

I read it because they just talk about people earning high income and like the, like the

lifestyle and I, it's fun and a lot of my doctor friends read it.

And it's incredibly under monetized.

And interestingly, I looked at this, she like 400,000 a month, I mean, look at this thing.

Maybe six, maybe 600,000, maybe, maybe more.

I think a lot, but if you look at the drug, the traffic source, it's like a good ass myth.

Yes.

Like 600,000.

Should we bleep this out?

This is a gym, bro.

This is a gym.

Why are we, why are we giving this gym?

Oh, here, here, let's find out how much traffic.

Here's how you do it.

So you go to the very bottom, you see where it says advertised with us.

Like it.

Oh man.

This is amazing.

So they get a million page views a month.

So I think, and interestingly, if you go to, I looked at the stats for the fastest growing

YouTube creators this year, as well as the fastest growing TikTok creators and something

like three of the top 10 were dentists and then a couple other were doctors and it's

usually young doctors who talk, who make jokes and lifestyle content on TikTok, all about

like the doctor lifestyle.

So they make jokes that like you and I probably don't understand, but I don't know, maybe

like a joke about like sleeping at the hospital or something.

And they, they've gotten millions of followers.

So I think there's a world where you could do that and sell a high end membership that's

thousands of dollars and do exactly what you're saying.

I completely agree with you.

I think this could be a good business.

I don't think you could do it.

I think it'd be real, if you did it full time, you maybe could do it in a year.

But yeah, it's a, this is a good business.

You're part of a white coat investor.

Yeah.

I'm looking at their Facebook group.

You're part of this Facebook.

Yeah.

I love joining random niche Facebook groups like this and just see 77,000 members.

I can, I would bet my life I could make three to $5 million a year with a Facebook group

for doctor investors.

Oh, it's a, okay.

Listen, it's even better.

It's a closed Facebook group that gives physicians, dentists, physical therapists, attorneys,

pharmacists and other similar high income, high income professionals.

It basically helps them.

But dude, how did you get into this?

Did you tell them that you're a lawyer?

Yeah, I just said I was a doctor.

Look at me.

I look like a doctor.

Obviously.

Cause you're Indian.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot to accept, bro.

Yeah.

Oh, hurry.

Yeah.

Right this way.

We've been waiting for you.

That's awesome.

This is a, I agree with you, winning, winning idea.

So if somebody wants to make a plan on this white coat investor site, I would love to,

you know, buy this website and do something with it.

Or if somebody wants to make a group that's like this and go for it, DM me or email me

or email Sam and let's, let's do this.

This is a good one.

Yeah.

And he, they also have conferences.

So they have a, a white coat investor conference.

Um, it's a, this is a good, this is, I completely agree with you.

You know who could have crushed this niche and they didn't want to?

Was our buddy, uh, the, what's the YouTuber Ali, uh, what's his last name?

Yeah.

He could have done this.

Yeah.

I agree.

Um, yeah.

He chose like a worst market.

He's like, I'll teach people how to become, he's like, YouTubers had to be better at YouTube.

It's like, teach doctors how to be better at money, if you, if you, if you're not passionate

about the other.

All right.

Okay.

So if you like the first one, here's the second idea, the family, I would say I love

the first one.

Family legacy summit.

Okay.

So basically there's a huge number of businesses that are owned by, you know, kind of like

boomer generation that they would love if their kids would take on their business and

like kind of grow it.

Kids maybe, maybe interested, maybe not.

The kid kind of feels like, ah, I should, I guess that's a smart move.

But I just don't care about, you know, where the, you know, making treadmills or whatever

we do, you know, like our family business.

Um, so they're kind of one foot in, one foot out, but, but even then they're like, okay,

the parents like, all right, no problem.

You don't have to take it over, but like, I got to do something with this and you should

know how this works in case I croak and like, you know, you should know how the books work

and like, you should know some things.

So basically what you do is through some kind of cold outreach to, uh, boomer own businesses,

you're going to offer them an invite to the family legacy summit.

It is a two day conference in Florida where you're going to have speed.

It's got to be Orlando.

You've got to be in, or Jort Lauderdale.

Exactly.

Um, like, you know, for obvious reasons, the local Jort Lauderdale or Orlando.

Yeah.

We get it.

There's got to be a buffet.

The family legacies of it, all you can eat, of course, yeah, with new balance, white sneakers

as a sponsor.

Sandals and socks allowed.

Um, so basically, sandals and socks allowed, yeah, preferred, yeah, Sunday loungewear.

No socks, no service.

You got to have your socks on with the sandals on the way, so basically you invite people

out there and it's just education.

It's just a give, give, give.

Maybe there's some ticket thing to cover the cost.

Maybe you have sponsors.

I think you could cover the whole cost with sponsors, but it's just invite only.

Your business has to be of a certain level of maturity.

So it's, you know, doing over a million dollars a year.

Your family business who's thought about this question of should we pass it down or not?

You and your kids come out.

So they come out and at that, you're going to do a couple of things.

This is now, this is now the door that opens more doors.

So you could upsell them some services.

So estate planning, accounting, whatever, that sort of thing.

You could offer like upsell masterminds or like a kind of a master's program, which

is like for the kid to like take it over or whatever, something like that.

You could just buy businesses that like the kids not going to do it.

This is lead gen for amazing businesses that you could potentially buy out and you sell

those leads to private equity or you buy them yourself.

And yeah, it's a way to build a power network in like one year, you'd have like some amazing

connections because there's going to be a guy who owns, you know, a furniture, you

know, a wood, a wood furniture company in Tennessee that makes $22 million a year.

And like those people, you'll be your buddies because you're actually helping them with

like one of their core life problems that they have, which is what do I do with my business

and this like stinking kid who's not, not taking action.

Do you remember Brent Bayshore?

He came on our pod.

What's his, what's the name of his thing?

Permanent equity.

Permanent equity.

Permanent equity.

He's based out of Columbia, Missouri.

He has this conference every year called Capital Camp, which is a great name.

And how is he doing?

He's basically doing this.

Is it?

Well, he's buying boomer businesses.

How's that going?

I think it's going phenomenal.

I think it's going absolutely great.

And our friend Cieva, of which I think we're both investors, enduring ventures is doing

a similar thing.

Maybe it's a little bit smaller, but it's also newer.

And they are buying like, can we talk about what they bought?

They've come on the pod before and they're pretty public about stuff.

So they're buying companies like pool construction companies.

So it's like, you know, pools are this like amazing business that you could, you could

do and they bought one and like, it's called dolphin pools or something like that.

They bought it in Arizona.

It crushes it.

They hired this one operator who's like really good, who took it over from the original owner,

the boomer owner.

And basically it's grown like crazy and that's like one of their cash cows now.

And I, and they also bought a internet web, like I got in the country, like they don't

have like AT&T or Time Warner or whatever.

They have like local providers and they bought one of those and it's doing well.

And I have family members.

So my dad's an entrepreneur and none of his kids, they bought five different internet

service providers.

And they're all doing, I think pretty good.

And so my dad owns a small business that none of his family is taking over.

My father-in-law owns a small business who, and it is a really, it's a killer business.

I mean, and they, he somehow, our new brother-in-law is now going to take it over and seeing the

turmoil that he had to go through in order to, he was like, well, I spent 40 years building

this thing.

And I guess if no one that I love wants it, I'm just going to shut it down and it was

like kind of tragic.

And it's like, I'm literally willing to give this to a family member and they can make

many millions of dollars a year if they wanted to do this.

It's just, it's free.

You can have it and people didn't want to do it.

And so I've seen this process and it is like an emotional, it's, it's a really, it's a

huge challenge and this is very, a very interesting market.

There's some stats about how many, do you know how many boomers are retiring in like

the next-

It's like some absurd number.

It's absurd.

It's like, it's like, it's like a quarter of the country or a third of the country.

One of the biggest wealth transfers of all time is about to happen.

It's the, like that, that group of people, when they pass down their inheritance, it's

going to, it's like many trillions of dollars, I think.

I don't know if that's, that might be hyperbole, but I think it's something like that.

Some ridiculous number.

And then that's like a lot of people that are just not going to have to work, but also

don't know what to do with it and similarly there's many, many businesses.

That was when Enduring first pitched it, they were like, they just show me the stats.

They were like, there are this many boomer businesses where they want to retire.

They don't want to run their business anymore and their kids don't want to take it over.

And like those businesses are up for grabs and they're like too small, like they're not

sexy as a startup and they're too small for big private equity.

And so we're going to be like basically like permanent equity where they're going to be,

they're just going to buy it and hold these amazing businesses for a very long time and

they keep doing that one after another.

Like I think Siemens Aver, they've rolled up like almost a hundred million dollars of

business equity off of a two million dollars starting equity amount.

Like we, it is crazy.

I invested in, I didn't have a lot of money when I first invested into it, but at the

time it was like 10 or 15,000 or something like that that I invested in, it was like,

that was a big deal for me and it's just been like, it's just been growing and growing

and growing.

No.

So they, so they were like, they were like, Sean, like you've helped us like think through

this idea and like, they knew like, I like this stuff.

I'll be helpful along the way.

So they're like, you know, we want to offer you like, if you invest, we'll also offer

you like an investor, an advisor or like, like an advisory grant that'll just match

your investment.

And, and I think they thought I was going to do like, you forgot to file the paperwork.

No, no, no, no.

I think they thought I was going to put in like 25 K or like max or like 20 K something

like that.

So they're like, okay, cool.

You got like 20 K of equity.

We'll give you 20 K worth of advisory shares.

But I was like a big believer in what they were doing.

So I put in 200,000 and then they were like, they're like, oh, and I was like, look, you

don't have to like, I get it.

You don't have to give me 200,000 of advisory shares.

But Xavier was like, no, a deal is a deal.

And like, I was like, if we didn't sign anything and like, dude, I'm totally okay with it.

But he's like, no, like, like we will, we'll honor that.

And also like, I know you'll like, you'll deliver.

And so since then, I've had this like immense desire to deliver on that.

It was actually the best thing he ever did because he got me to basically work for him

for free for this one, like for this act of goodwill.

I am like, I will, I see your goodwill and I raise you 10 times goodwill on my own side.

It's going to, that's going to end up being a great, one of your better investments.

I would think depending on, I don't know when you got in, were you with, were you both,

were you both?

Yes.

Then that's going to, I think it's going to crush.

Exactly.

Right, other than say, conservatively, that's probably up 20X, you know, like something

like that in valuation.

You think that's up 20X?

Because if they go raise now, they basically have, I don't know exact numbers, but like

somewhere between 25 to 50 million of revenue, the closer to 50 million in revenue from these

businesses now that they've acquired off of 2 million in equity.

Yeah, that's crazy.

But we, when we got in, I think it was like a 20 something million dollar valuation.

So it wasn't like, I think it was a last man.

I don't even remember.

It was 20.

One other good thing they did, they did a seven year vest for them.

So they were like in it for the long haul, basically.

They couldn't, there was no, no quick flips out of any of this.

I want to, I want to show you something really quick that pisses me off when I see this.

So I see it typically in media companies, but scroll down.

So I'm going to show you something that makes me really angry.

Whenever I see it, I think I know exactly what happened at this company.

So where it says Sam's topics, you see where it says Axios pro?

Click it.

So this is Axios has a new subscription service.

Now just kind of scan the website and tell them and give me your thoughts.

So first, your industry, your news, uh, somebody, uh, bullshit, uh, somebody took over this,

this website who doesn't like know anything about like conversion.

Second, there's no button, there's no button to push at the top of this website.

Like, where is the button?

And what else?

Um, let's see.

There's like a video.

How about that?

It's confusing as hell.

Yeah.

Like there's like five to 10 different products that I'm not sure, like they all lead me down

a different path.

So I'm not sure where they go.

Yes.

It's like one of those like a terrible for conversion landing page, a horrible.

So here's what, and then I gave you another one.

There's another media company because that's what I know it's called courts.

So there's this huge problem and Naval tweeted today, like good market.

If you have to have good marketing, if you, if your product isn't good, you have to have

good sales.

If your marketing is a good, and I'm like, oh, that's actually, I love you, but I think

you're wrong.

I think a great product, you still need decent marketing.

And I see a company like this and it's a great product.

I like Axios with the worst marketing.

And here's what happens at big companies.

I think it's like one of two things.

The first thing is like, there's like a room of like eight people and they like get everyone's

opinions and they're like, you know, like, let's make our, let's just like say that there's

not going to be any ads and they're going to help local journalism.

And then there's someone in the back is like, Hey, maybe we should do a commercial.

Do you think we can get the Rolling Stones to do it?

Like, like something like that happens when it's like, yeah, we'll do that.

We'll do that.

Yeah, that sounds good.

And you come up at the end of the day with nothing.

It's just complete bullshit and it doesn't mean anything.

And that is what happens here.

It's one is support journalism with a mission to make business better.

Start your free trial now, dude, if I'm a business person, I like just give me the value and

take my money.

I like the whole.

So what's going on here is the, the, the committee decision thing that I just said,

which you have to avoid like the plague and the second thing that's going on here.

It's people selling stuff that they think the world wants to hear versus what the people

want.

So like support local local journalism.

That's maybe at best a third or fourth most important reason, not a first and second reason.

And the second in the often times with in media, they'll say, Oh, well, it'll be ad-free.

It's like, dude, they don't, people don't really care that much about ads.

Like everyone uses ad blocker.

Like your value prop needs to be better in order to take my money.

And anyway, I just wanted, this is a perfect example of how big companies, even if they're

crushing it, really suck at conversion.

And I, if you locked me in the room and just let me work with a developer or a designer

who knew how to do like no code tools, I could make this page so much better.

And it would literally 20 X their business.

Not that I'm so good.

You can take a ton of, you, you could do it too.

A ton of people like you and I would could just crush this and just because it's so obvious

and this pisses me off.

And I wanted to call it off.

Call out.

Complete.

Suck it.

Suck it.

Marketing guy at these companies.

Well, I'd like it.

I like Axios, by the way.

And this is just a mistake that I see so often and it sucks because they've done all of the

hard work.

They've built the brand.

They built the trust.

They built the goodwill.

They've got the product.

That's probably badass.

They just packaged it horribly and it would take like three days to change that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Who does this good?

Who's a media company that's doing a good job of this?

Do you guys do a good job of this?

Is Trends good with this?

Well, when I was running it, Trends.co had the best landing page and I know what the

conversion rates were and it was killing it.

Trends.co, which is like the Hustle side project, made close to eight figures and recurring revenue,

which I guarantee is a lot bigger than Axios and Axios is like way bigger and better than

us.

I would say like if you look at the Motley Fool, like ugly things that's copywriting.

So look at Google Remit Safety and look up like one of his courses and it's just an

ugly 3,000 word page and that probably does way better than this Axios thing.

Yeah, I'm with you.

I hear that.

I mean, also just like in my course, we have one, in my power writing course, we have one

whole session that's just landing pages and I basically make everybody go screenshot your

current landing page, the front door where your new customers see you and I have them

all put into Slack and then I basically just shred them and I'm like, where's the button?

What does this mean in English?

And I have them read it out loud and I have the whole audience, I'm like, all right.

A landing page needs to do a couple of things.

People have to get it, understand what it is, they have to want it and then they have to

take action.

I said, do you get it?

It's always like three out of 10, four out of 10.

Do you want it?

Two out of 10, one out of 10.

Do you know how to take action?

And then sometimes they have, that's sometimes high, sometimes low.

If it's like this Axios one where there's, you know, the call to action of this Axios

one is this like Vimeo video that I have to watch, you know, versus like actually go and

buy something.

It's crazy.

Right.

So then, and then we redo it right there.

And literally that redo session, I basically give them like, I call them like boosters.

I'm like, imagine it's Mario, like there's little Mario, then if he gets the mushroom,

he's better.

If he gets the fire flower, he could shoot fireballs.

If he gets this little leaf thing, he could fly, like, you know, there's like this feather

thing he could fly.

So it's like, these are boosters you can add to your landing page.

I'm like, watch, just like, don't make it look nice.

Just go shove, like take, pick one of these boosters and go apply it to your page right

now.

And people in like a 20 minute session can make their landing page so much better.

And the reason I bring that up is because you're not far off from either completely fucking

up your landing page or making it awesome.

It's not like this long time consuming or high skill process.

It's like just fundamentally like knowing what to write, knowing what image to put and

then like putting things in the right order so that like the information hierarchy is

correct.

It's frustrating, right?

When I see this, I'm just like, oh my gosh, you got like for a company like Axios, they

probably have 500 employees.

Most of them are really smart and they just totally screwed up and I and so many companies

do this.

It's crazy.

Is there an, is there a good agency that only does conversion?

Oh yeah, there's tons.

I use one right now for e-commerce, but like for e-commerce, it's like super critical,

right?

Because all you're doing is converting customers or not.

And like media, it's sort of like, you know, whatever like.

I wouldn't want to sell to a media company, you know, whatever, you know, necessity is

the mother of invention or innovation or whatever.

It's basically like for a media company, it's like, oh, well, a lot of our traffic comes

by for free.

So like, you know, we don't feel a big burn out of pocket.

Whereas e-commerce, you're like, dude, I paid for this ad to get somebody to come to my

site.

If they don't convert, I just wasted my money.

This is like a big like, there's like a psychological opponent to that.

And then the other side is like on a media site, you're like, well, they read my stuff.

So like that was good, you know, like versus on e-commerce story, like they came and browsed

my stuff is not a positive.

It is a complete negative versus you're like, oh, we had this view.

This blog got 20 million views.

And yeah, only a shitty small amount subscribed to our premium thing, but like whatever, that's

fine.

And you know, I think the necessity at media companies is a lot lower than e-commerce.

So in e-commerce, there's a bunch of what's called CRO agencies, you know, conversion

rate optimization agencies.

I don't know how many do that for, for like SAS or for other businesses that could use

it.

Yeah, I think a lot could, particularly SAS.

I mean, I just whenever I see these landing pages, I get angry.

It just blood boils because I'm like, why do you think I get so happy?

I'm like, oh, great.

I can do something better than other people.

And like, I hope they never get good at this.

I hope they, I hope they continue to say hyper relevant local news for your industry, you

know, blah, like this like terrible tagline or I hope that courts keep saying support

journalism with a mission to make business better.

I hope they keep saying that so that for the milk road, I can just write like the, I can

write this thing that says, hey, subscribe to get access to the like, the fucking secret

insider report of what crypto whales are investing in.

And you know, if you pay me a dollar, I'll give you this, this awesome PDF because that's

going to work.

And then these guys are going to keep saying support local journalism because you're a

good person, good Samaritan, right?

Like, because the reason it makes me angry is because a, I'm seeing that these types

of people exist, which I already know that, but I don't want to be reminded by it and

B, I would like it hyper vigilant that I'm not in the same room as them.

I'm like, oh, you're one of those people that cares more about looking cool and appealing

to other writers that you do actually making something effective.

Got it.

Okay.

We, I'll tell you a quick story at Twitch.

We had a performance marketing team and I went to him, I was like, hey, all right,

I want to, you know, we have a team here, Twitch is big, we've got a big budget for

this stuff.

All right.

Tell me what's been working and what's not.

And like, there was like this like comedy of errors.

It was like the first one was like, oh yeah, we don't know how things are performing because

legal won't let us install the Facebook pixel.

They don't want Facebook to have our data.

So like, we don't have the pixel.

It's like, so we run the ads, but we don't know the, like the effectiveness of the ads.

It's like, oh shit.

Okay.

I was like, all right, well, like we can, we can kind of like triangulate around that

in these other ways.

Let's, how are we going to do that?

And by the way, that was like, the guy was like, I know that's bad.

We're trying to get them to change it.

It's been like this 12 months, 24 months process to get Amazon legal to sign off on us using

the pixel.

Okay.

Great.

The next thing was like, show me the ad creative.

And it was like 25 different versions of just like a purple rectangle with like Twitch

on it.

Cool.

Like, so why would somebody click this ad and like download our app?

And it was like, download now for what, what do I get out of this?

And I was like, that's like, not going to work.

And so like, watch a bit.

Let's go to the Facebook line.

Let's see, let's see how much it's changed because they got a new CMO and he's doing

awesome stuff.

Doug's great.

So I'm hoping he's like changed it by now, but I know there was like a lot of red tape,

but let me see what it is now.

So if you've never done this, go to the Facebook ad library and then you can just look up any

brand and see what ads they're running.

Let me see what they're running, right?

Twitch is running.

Okay.

They're running two ads, which like just for reference, my e-commerce store is running

like 150 ads being tested at any given time.

And okay, they've, they've improved the, the ad creative.

So it's not just the purple square anymore.

It's like a video of Fortnite, so that's better.

But like, anyway, so we were trying to come up with like, what's a good idea here?

And I had a better idea.

I go, Hey, why don't we just give like two of the streamers that are popular?

Like let's just give them our ad budget and let them do something with it.

And the very first guy is this guy in Brazil because I was trying to grow and grow our

market, market share in Brazil.

And the very first guy, he took the ad budget and he just goes, cool, he just posted on

his own Instagram.

He goes, Hey, I'm giving away a hundred iPhones.

Come join my stream.

You have to download the app.

You have to come subscribe to my channel and then, and how to go fucking crushed, dude,

his channel.

He like, he had like, I don't know, like 70,000 concurrent viewers, you know, off of giving

away, I think he gave away 10 or 10 to 20 iPhones in that, that thing, right?

So like, let's say it was, dude, I don't think you, I don't think you could train a company

to change like that.

And I asked him, I go, why iPhones?

He goes, and he goes in Brazil and iPhone is like a gold bar.

I'm giving away gold bars, basically in Brazil.

I was like, this is amazing.

I was like, how are you going to do it?

Like, do you need like a thing?

Like, are you, how are we going to track this?

He's like, well, I'll just make them download the app and then they have to subscribe to

my channel and I won't, I'm not going to give away anything until my subscriber number

hits this.

And I'm going to put on the screen my subscriber number, I'm going to tell them, no iPhones

for anybody until this number gets to 50,000.

And like, he's like, just tell them, he's like, I'm going to keep telling him, tell

your friends, tell your friends, get another phone, go get your mom's phone.

Come here, download the app and put, and click subscribe and like, that's exactly what happened.

He was there for an hour and then for the giveaway, he just like, whatever, picked a

random name and then people were like, you know, whatever.

And then we were like, all right, let's see if these people retain compared to like, you

know, normal, normal use, maybe they just came for the iPhone.

And guess what?

They came back at pretty much the same rate, but it was like so, it was like so dramatically

cheaper, so much dramatically cheaper to do this, like iPhone giveaway, or we let this

other guy run a tournament and like, he just used the money, add money for it to run a

tournament instead.

And people wanted to watch the tournament, so they came and downloaded it.

And like, those ideas were better than any idea me and my team had as to like, how we

could get downloads at what cost and using the traditional methods and what value proposition

we can write on there, like, watch and engage a live stream.

It's like, no, how about, you know, there's a badass tournament going on right now.

Come see who's going to win $10,000 or I'm giving away iPhones, you know, come watch

me over here on this platform.

It's just worked better.

That's badass.

I don't think, I don't think you can change it.

I just think that's just what's going to happen and it frustrates me.

But Ben, what do you think?

Good ideas.

We have some stuff to add to the, we have to make a compilation of all Sean's accents.

Like between Mama West and his British accent today, I think we got maybe like a Russian

accent at some point.

No, yours is the Russian accent.

Sam, you got any accents, bro?

You're the only one who's not bringing the, you know, the global flavor to it, to the

pod.

Sometimes I could sound like Kevin from The Office, where he's like a, bam, don't say

anymore.

It was perfect as is.

It was 100 out of 100.

Good.

That's about all I got.

You need to make a cameo account, but you only do cameos as Sam Parr doing Kevin.

That's all I have is like, bam.

You'd said it'd be done tomorrow.

It is tomorrow.

That's all I got.

All right, I'm out.

I just remembered one thing that I forgot to say on air, which is that I had a dream,

not last night, but the night before, a Saturday night.

And the dream was that I had a business idea so good that you forced me to quit as your

producer and go start the business.

And the business was, and I don't know what this means, but I want to start the Warby

Parker of gold.

That's a horrible idea, probably.

All right, well, what does that mean?

Maybe it's maybe some genius.

Like try it at home before you steal the gold.

Like, no, no, like I'm selling gold and it's a cool brand like Warby Parker.

That's it.

That's all.

So Warby Parker offered like glasses that used to be like $299 for $99 because they

cut out like the middleman or whatever.

They had some reason or like there was like some conglomerate that was just controlling

pricing and they were just like, oh, it doesn't have to be that expensive.

They just like did it cheaper.

You got cheaper gold or what?

Also, by the way, Warby Parker kind of sucks.

I buy my glasses on USAGlasses.com.

And if you enter in your email, you get like 60% off and it's like a $15 pair of glasses.

That's the way to go.

That's the way to go.

I fucking look like an X man in these glasses.

Why is there so much reflection in my glasses?

I couldn't even focus during the pot because you got to get the screen reflective.

You got it.

There's like it's like an upsell.

You got to get that screen reflective thing.

When he told me that, I was like, who would ever need that?

No, I'm not falling for your tricks.

And I guess I needed it.

Yours don't yours.

Don't do it.

You have that.

Yeah, dog.

How much did it cost?

I got these on.

I think I got these on USAGlasses.

I'm telling you, it's like $30 because I'll buy like five at a time.

And what's the business idea you've most wanted to go do?

You're like, oh, shit, I could do that.

You start to fantasize about like that could work and then I could make it big and that

would that would be the thing.

If I we've talked about this a little bit before.

If I could start one business in my life, the thing I most would like to do is I don't

even know if I want to make it.

But I want to live in a compound with like my family and friends like that's just like

have a gym in the middle and like a little place where we can eat and we all have houses

around it.

We all have this idea.

Yep.

Everyone wants it.

And I just don't understand.

Well, like there's tons of demand.

Why is there no supply?

So I just want to do it.

And I want.

Dude, it's not the supply of compounds.

People's wives don't want to do it.

So nobody moves in together.

Do you think that's it?

For sure.

And do you want to come to my compound?

I do.

I closed on my property like four hours ago.

Marathon Ranch.

Yeah.

Hey, yes.

MFM Ranch.

I'm going out tomorrow to shoot guns, dude.

That's the dream.

But it's not a compound.

That's just one place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It kind of sucks.

Sam.

So, so Ben, you want to build real estate.

That's compounds.

Yeah.

Isn't there just like where you live with your friends?

Yeah.

Like, hey, we're just going to build you a cluster of like 10 to 20 homes with like a

gym and a pool in the middle and like maybe some framework for like, hold on.

Let's talk about this for a second.

So this is Sean.

I don't know if your parents, your parents are the immigrants, not your grandparents,

right?

Okay.

A lot of my immigrant friends, they moved with other families and they all moved in

on the same area.

They all moved in the same area with one another.

Maybe it's only my Indian friends, actually, but like Neville and all of it, like they

all like bought a place down the street from each other and they talk about they're like

basically I had like four moms and it was awesome and we, the community raised us and

it sounds amazing.

Yeah.

I think it is amazing.

And back in India, like when we go back and visit our family who still lives there,

they have a compound like this.

Basically, they have this giant building, like it's like a building like imagine if the home

was like a donut.

So there's a hole cut out on the top, like a hole in the middle of the house.

So the middle is like a courtyard, which is like kind of your playground slash recess,

but it's in the middle of the home.

Instead of a backyard, it's like a middle yard and there's like, it's like open air to

the top and then you can go into any of the like the West Wing, North Wing, South Wing

or East Wing and like different families live in each one of those wings.

And that's like a, you know, like a home, basically that's connected by this courtyard.

That's like the structure of their house and they have like, and then the roof is shared

as well.

And then the kitchen is shared.

The chef is shared.

They're like, whatever, all that, all the like laundry, all that's like just like a central

service, basically.

Neville and I are trying to have kids around at the same time and he lives up the block.

We're like trying to plan this just for this reason.

That's pretty good.

I like, whenever I have to watch my daughter, I have a sister who has four kids and she

was walking distance.

She was just on the street from me.

And so like, if I'm watching my daughter for a little bit, I'll take her over to my sister's

house and I can just like feel within 10 minutes of entering my sister's home.

My cortisol level is just like, and my happiness level goes up and that lasts me for like 24

hours.

And so that's a lot of the reason I'm just like, okay, I just want this all the time

with like all my family and all my friends.

I agree.

I totally agree.

I think it's a great idea.

There's a guy, Mike Brown, who came on the pod that you introduced me to Sam.

And this is way back in the archives, but he had says that he was like, yeah, I started

this business, blah, blah, blah, I started working and my two brothers, you know, got

involved and I was kind of like, oh, you know, like, how's that with family?

You know, that can be tricky sometimes, you know, some bullshit question like that.

And he was like, it's awesome.

It's the best.

It's not that there's no problems.

He's like, but I just decided like my life, he said, what he said to us, he goes, I just

have a few people who I love and I want to do life together with them.

And I was like, oh, that's a really cool way of thinking about things like, who do I want

to do life with?

And it's like, then you have those people and it's like, cool vacations, businesses,

like, you know, like parties, whatever, like, you know, those are the people that I want

to do life with.

And if I could just pick like the right kind of five people I want to do life with, you

know, I think I'll have a blast.

And then the closer they are, the closer they live together, like the more convenient.

Oh, that's it.

What do you think?

Do you think that that's the right scale for it is like five, four or five other families?

That seems right to me.

I think so.

Yeah.

We had a block party on my block this week and like all the neighbors came out and hung

out and it's mostly like young people and they like, like 20 something single people

and they all like, and they had bands and stuff.

And it was the best.

So just growing up on a block with people you care about is freaking awesome.

I hated in San Francisco that I never knew my neighbors.

Yeah.

Same.

All right.

That's it.

All right.

Thanks guys.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like

no days off on a road.

Looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about how to identify trends, whether it's possible to get ultra-wealthy from cash flow businesses, why they enjoy doing hood rat stuff, and more.
-----
Links:
* Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.
* Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter.
-----
Show Notes:
(03:00) - Dan Porter
(25:00) - The meaning of brand
(19:40) - Two side hustle ideas: ballin' doctors and family legacy summit
(45:30) - Why big companies have terrible landing pages
(01:00:30) - Overtime: Ben's dream and building compounds
-----
Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
-----
Additional episodes you might enjoy:
• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
#169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
• ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More