My First Million: Unpopular Truths From The Pod, Gourmet Gifts, and 4 Side Hustles

Dude, yes. That's like people who call themselves a contrarian.

It's like, dude, if you got to label it, you're probably not it.

All right, we're live. What's up?

What's up? Let's jump in. What you got?

You tell me, you, I think I've been driving the last handful of sessions.

I'm going to ask you to drive right now.

Oh, okay. Okay. I thought you had a good topic here.

I was going to let you, let you start with that.

Well, which one do you want to do? Oh, let me bring one thing up.

Dude, this guy made fun of me the other day for having a course

and it hurt my feelings.

A friend or an internet stranger?

Uh, a little bit of both and it really hurt my feelings.

Do you feel like, because all right, so I built a business before,

I built a few businesses before,

so a few that I've gotten to seven figures,

a few that I've gotten to eight figures,

I've sold things, I should feel confident about this.

And then you and I both have courses.

I'm going to actually launch another course that I think can be like a,

like a million dollar plus a year income stream for me and my family,

which is awesome and it's fun.

It's never good when you have to save for me and my family.

Like if you have to justify feeding your family,

that means there's, that's just the insecurity poking out, poking out of there.

Well, it gives context and what I mean is,

is it the contact, the question that I'm going to ask is, is it worth it?

Because part of me thinks, well, if I'm such a big shot,

I shouldn't talk about it.

I should just have shit and not teach it.

But then I'm like, but I like doing it and it's a significant,

like it pays for my whole life.

So do you, again, the only question I was just, do you like it?

You like doing it?

Yeah.

All right.

Then that's enough, right?

Like who cares?

But do you feel like you feel like a fraud sometimes too?

Or at least you've never said that to me,

but you said that when we were interviewing that one person,

you're like, I kind of feel like a fraud every once in a while,

or I forget what you said.

Not a fraud, but I do feel like I make fun of myself about the course thing,

because the same thing.

Self-conscious is a better word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, you know, I would say somebody who is like,

somebody who is really locked in, and I'll use the word locked in,

because it's not about how much money you have.

Like, but it's true.

Somebody who's really, really wealthy would not do a paid course.

I don't think.

I don't think somebody who's like super wealthy probably should be

or would be doing paid courses, pretty unusual to do that.

Well, I think that's actually wrong though,

because like Warren Buffett had a course at Columbia.

I mean, there's a lot of examples of like.

Yeah, but I don't think Warren Buffett did his course.

Like, I don't think he was pocketing a bunch of money

doing a direct sales course type of thing.

Like, if I went and taught a guest,

if I was a guest lecturer at Stanford, right,

I drove 45 minutes away, I go guest lecturer at Stanford,

I'm a teacher there.

I would be doing that for different reasons,

and it would feel totally differently than me being like,

hey, I have my power writing course,

go sign up and pay for it.

I don't know why it is, it's just different.

It's a different thing, but I would say two things.

I said locked in because also,

if you have like a main thing that is totally an obsession for you,

you're loving working on it, there's so much,

there's more to do than you'll ever have time to do,

you really wouldn't take the time to stop, pause,

and go sell a course.

This is my opinion about myself, I should say.

I would not go do that.

So to me, as long as I'm still doing courses,

it's me part of my wandering around phase,

trying to figure out what I really want to do when I grow up,

what I want to do with my life, what I want to do with my time.

I know that if I get locked in on,

oh man, I really love this project,

I'm just building brick by brick.

This is something that I'm really excited about.

There's no chance in hell that I would push pause and teach course,

even though my courses are like, it's two weeks out of the year.

So it's not a lot of time, but even those two weeks,

I probably wouldn't do if I was in that position.

In the same way that when I was building my startup,

I had no podcast, I had no angel investing,

I had no courses, I didn't tweet,

I didn't do shit when I was building my startup for like seven years

because I was fully locked in on that.

It's only after we sold that I started doing a bunch of these things

and that became the new business was the podcast and other things.

I think I'm going to keep doing it, but...

I think you should totally keep doing it.

You said you like it, so keep doing it.

Do you want, can I tell you, maybe I'll just go through a list.

Let me share a little thing I do during my course

because during the course, the writing course,

some people will be like, you know, okay, I get like,

this lesson was really great.

I feel like I now have a much better idea

how I would write to like kind of grow viral or build my brand.

But there's a part of me that just feels like,

you know, they'll ask a question that's like, how much content

would you say is too much, you know, so it's too much to post.

Or would you say that like, you know, I should wait,

you know, until my product launches to start doing content

or like they ask all these questions that are sort of like...

Self-promoting and a self-conscious feeling.

Self-conscious.

There's just a layer of self-consciousness around the whole thing.

Or like, you know, what do you,

what do you say if you post something

and then somebody comments, do you take it down, blah, blah, blah.

Do you, you know, how do you deal with, you know,

a negativity or blah, blah, blah.

And I always just say the same thing.

I go, I'm going to answer your question, but hang on.

What, what time is it?

I want to make sure we don't go over what time is it.

And then they're like 9.34.

I'm like, no, no, it's me o'clock.

And you forgot that it's me o'clock.

You know, you're thinking about what everybody else might think

or what they might say and how they might feel and what might...

Bro, you forgot the main thing.

It's always me o'clock.

You just got to ask yourself, do I like this?

Do I want to do this?

How do I feel about doing this?

Remember, it is always me o'clock.

In fact, I want to get watches made or a clock on my wall

that just, just reminds me it is me o'clock.

Should I wait to go do this thing?

No, it's me o'clock.

Should I care what other people are thinking?

No, it's me o'clock.

How do I feel?

That's what I'm going to do things based on.

Dude, there's this funny picture of Fidel Castro,

you know, like the dictator of Cuba,

and he's wearing two Rolexes at the same time,

both at the same wrist,

just because he's just like, he's just wants to flex that hard.

Fidel knows it's me o'clock.

You need to get two watches on each hand that say,

wait, just let me make sure this other one's not broken.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel.

Dude, I know.

So your question to me, I don't even need to answer.

I just got to remind you, it's me o'clock.

You do what the hell you want.

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All right, you have another thing on here that was like...

The 10 list?

Yeah, the list.

I'm going to read the title and you go from there.

So it just says,

a few non-popular things I've learned from this pod.

Pretty good headline, 8 out of 10.

Thank you.

We'll accept.

I'm going to say each one,

and I want you to give me your reaction,

and then I'll explain a little more context.

But all right, the first one.

Well, can you give context on the whole thing?

Like, where did this come from?

Or why did you even think of this list of non-popular

things you've learned from the pod?

I see a lot of things online of people talking

where they try to explain rules.

Like, you do have to work this much,

or you don't have to work this much, or...

And the reality is, is that there's a million ways

to get the same things done.

So for every example of one person succeeding in one way,

there's going to be lots of examples of them

succeeding a totally different way.

So I think it's silly to have rules.

And so I will see these things of people posting

of like, oh, you know, like they say,

it's a 10-year overnight success.

And in my head, I think, man,

I know people who have had overnight successes

were like literally in three months,

their life has changed.

And I think it's silly to not acknowledge that, you know?

And so that's how I kind of came up with this list.

All right, hit me. I'm excited now.

All right, the first one I just said.

So an overnight success,

which is like one or six months,

it's absolutely possible.

And those exist and they're real.

All right, give us an example.

For example, we covered this company called Broomate.

B-R-U-M-A-T-E.

And I think in like year two,

they got the 20 million in revenue.

And year one, they got to like eight million.

And I know a few people that have had other companies

were like in the first six months,

like it kind of just took off and it worked.

So we interviewed, who else did we interview?

Well, I would say your current stealth company

we haven't talked about yet, taken off right away.

Yeah, it succeeded like pretty quickly.

Now, how do you count that?

Do you count that overnight success?

Or do you say, I've been preparing my whole life for this?

Right? That's the, that's the counter argument.

I'll say like I built up a reputation

and I'm trading off that reputation.

But there are times you and I have like talked to people.

For example, I had this guy on who you weren't here,

but you know him, his name is Val.

You know Val V-A-L, Val?

Yep.

He had a company where in year one,

it made like 10 million in profit

and it was selling like ringtones on the internet.

And like just some people just have the it factor.

And then also like luck is real.

So that's another thing.

Luck is real.

Sometimes you just kind of nail it.

And it just works.

Not always.

And most of the time it doesn't,

but every once in a while it just happens.

And so I think for people to say overnight success

isn't real.

I think that that's nonsense

because I know a handful of people who are like 19,

20 year old kids who they like within a few months,

they've got something making many, many tens

or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in sales.

And it just works.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that.

I agree.

All right. Here's another one.

I think at least in the beginning of your career,

where you live, it actually really, really matters.

It's incredibly important.

And the people who don't move some places,

I think they are at a disadvantage.

100% agree.

I did this.

I was sitting in Australia and I wanted to do startups.

And I was, I went to a local startup like event.

And I was like, okay, I'm like looking around.

Everybody's being super nice, right?

It's Australia.

Everybody gets along great.

And I just thought of my head.

I go, who's the most successful entrepreneur

in this room?

And it was this one old ass motherfucker who was like,

you know, had built something in the 90s

and he just like stuck around.

And then nobody else pretty much.

And then I was asking some questions.

I was talking and something.

And the organizer was like, dude,

you should give a talk next month at the meetup.

Like, this is great.

We would love to have you teach.

And I was like, teach, I'm 23.

I've done nothing.

I was like, at first I was flattered.

And then I caught myself two seconds later.

I was like, oh, wait, this just means I'm in the wrong pond.

I do not want to be a smart guy in the room.

They should be like, dude, you should shut up.

You don't know anything about anything.

That's the type of room I want to be in.

And so I literally went home.

I went on, I think like T-Mobile or whatever.

I activated a phone plan and I got a 650 area number,

error code, because I was like, I need to just mentally,

before I even move, I need to go to Silicon Valley now.

So I changed my phone number and then I booked a ticket

and my mom was like, where are you going to stay?

Do you have a job?

I was like, I don't know.

I'm going to figure it out.

But I have a better shot of figuring it out there

than I do from here.

And that was my whole mindset.

And Tony Robbins has a thing he says about this.

He goes, proximity is power.

And I am a huge believer that proximity is power.

I have done pretty crazy things to just get in proximity

of people that I think are awesome.

Like, I will take jobs that I think

are like the worst job of all the job offers I have.

If I know that it's going to get me

to sit side by side with somebody awesome,

because I know six months next to that person

is going to do more for me than, you know,

like a better hire paying job would have done.

And this goes beyond business.

It's beyond business.

It's just anything.

If you want to make it in the movie industry,

you have a higher likelihood if you at least

spend a handful of years early on in Hollywood.

Just putting in the time matters.

You know, if there's like these funny stories

about Bill Murray, he lives in like North Carolina

or something, and he's like totally out of the loop.

It's like, yeah, that definitely works.

There are examples of that.

But I think it helps.

Increase your odds.

Yeah.

You want to increase your odds of success.

The second one or the third one.

Luck is incredibly real.

You know, I remember like early on in my career,

I was thinking like, there is no such thing as luck.

It's just hard work.

And I'm just going to do it.

Nah, shit's real.

Shit's real.

I remember I've said this story a bunch of times,

but when we were selling our company,

Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot at the time,

got in a life-threatening accident

two weeks after we closed.

And there's a world where two weeks before,

if it happened, it could have ruined it.

I think you've had a couple of examples

where if one or two things happened

before or after selling a business,

like within like a month, it could have changed things.

Getting sick really matters.

Being born like in a healthy place,

in a healthy family, like things like that.

Luck is totally real.

And I think that we dismiss it too often.

I agree with that.

I would say luck is real.

I would also say a big part of luck is in your control

and a small part of luck is outside of your control.

So most of the luck you experience in your life,

there's a whole bunch of things at the beginning,

being born in a certain place,

healthy, your parents, whatever,

those are outside of your control.

A lot of what happens after that is in your control.

And we've done the, there's a podcast episode

called Four Levels of Luck where we talk,

you know, on Framework Friday,

where we talk about actually manipulating luck

to be, to go towards your advantage, if that makes sense.

There is a set of actions you can take

that will increase the amount of luck

you end up having in your life.

And this is not like, you know, hold crystals

or something like that.

It's like more practical, tangible stuff.

Okay, the last part of that that I'll say is,

I remember when I was, I had moved to San Francisco

and I met Michael Burch, the guy I came to work with,

because again, proximity is power.

I just took the job because I was like,

oh, I get to sit next to this guy.

This guy's like a billionaire

who's built four successful internet companies.

Well, what is the thing I want to do?

Build a successful internet company?

I think this is the place to sit.

And I was talking to him and I was trying to figure out,

like, did this guy just get lucky or what happened?

Because a lot of people, I think, would look at him

and say, oh, he got lucky.

Because the thing he sold two years later, Bebo,

and he sold it for $850 million, two years later,

a year later, AOL wrote it off for like, you know,

a giant tax write-off and just like,

and nobody uses Bebo now, Facebook won and Facebook beat it.

And so some people would say, oh, he got lucky, right?

You know, he sold it for whatever.

And I definitely don't think that's true

because he's built like multiple companies

that have been successful.

But what I figured out, the thing I ended up

figuring out was it's not lucky that he won,

but it is lucky how much he won.

So he was going to be successful either way.

But whether that number was 20 million, 80 million,

or 800 million, there was a large degree of luck and timing

that was outside of his control that contributed to that.

He could just as easily have been an 80 million guy

versus an 800 million guy.

And that I don't think was necessarily in his control.

That was right place, right time, right circumstances.

You know, the right person had the right drinks

at the right bar next to the right person.

And I think that, you know, the magnitude of success

is a lot more based on luck, not the existence of the success.

He was going to be successful no matter what.

All right, and I'm going to jump around.

Another one, Ivy League-ish schools.

So I don't know how we're going to define that,

but like a top 20 university is totally worth it.

Even if that means that you have to go into a lot of debt,

I think it's totally worth it.

I think state schools, where you get some type

of in-state tuition and you still get a college experience,

totally worth it.

Most everything in between, if you have to go into debt for it,

I think it's absolutely not worth it.

You're like, where I went to school?

Where I went, I went to Belmont University.

I was fortunate.

I got a little bit of a scholarship

and my parents paid for it for it.

100% not worth it.

It was at the time, I think 30 or 40 grand a year

and it's a no-name university that it's just completely irrelevant.

100% not worth it.

But I know people who went to,

my wife went to an Ivy League school.

I know people like you went to Duke

and like you have a handful of connections.

If you go to Stanford, you have all these connections

that seem 100% worth it.

And here's another like thing.

If you have Stanford on your resume,

you're going to at least get the interview.

This is true.

If you look at how people recruit,

they just got to scroll through an Excel sheet

and it just says where you graduated.

Bellarmine in Kentucky,

that costs $60,000 a year or whatever it is.

That is not the same as Stanford or Dartmouth.

Like you're just automatically going to have an increased likelihood

of getting that interview.

But even more important than that,

you're going to meet people who are,

have been, maybe been around the world,

have rich parents.

Like that stuff actually matters.

And actually those connections

and that influence on your life,

it really actually matters.

And it's worth going into debt to debt.

I kind of disagree here.

So I went to Duke,

which is not technically an Ivy League school,

but is like considered up there with,

Ivy League is actually like a sports thing,

but like, you know, whatever.

It's considered like a top school.

And it wasn't worth it for me

because I was not ready to figure out

how to make it worth it, right?

It's, it's what you make of it.

It is not going to be handed to you just by showing up.

And I had the total,

I had totally the wrong mindset.

I thought I'm here.

I got to, I don't know,

do the thing I've been doing to get here,

get good grades, you know,

eventually graduate past the test,

you know, go to med school,

do whatever I'm supposed to do.

It was like a track.

And there are some people who made it worth it.

The people who were like,

yo, we got these resources for free

or I'm going to go and meet these,

these two professors

or I'm going to get exposure

to these other classes

that I want to learn about,

or I'm going to use my time here to socialize

plus spin up some side hustles.

Cause man,

there's no better time to find co-founders

and build a startup than when you're in college.

Like there were some people who had that right mindset.

The light, my light bulb is not on, right?

Like now I got this floating ass light bulb.

There was no light bulb on at that time.

And so I misused it.

I think the majority of people misuse it.

I did have one phone call that was really important.

And I'm just going to say it out loud here

because if there's somebody who needs to hear this,

you know, I got lucky that my dad gave me this phone call.

Maybe your, maybe your dad

doesn't have the same sort of wisdom that my mind did.

So I'm going to say it out loud.

I called my dad my second year into college

and I was like, Hey, he's like, how's it going?

And I was like, Oh, it's, it's okay.

He's like, what do you mean?

Like how's your, how's your, you know, how, how school?

And I was like, well, grades aren't great.

He's like, Oh man, what, what happened?

And I was like, no, they're not terrible.

I'm not failing.

I just like, you know, I'm a B minus student here.

And like, you know, I've been getting A's in high school.

So B minus was like, no, not very good.

He's like, all right, that's all right.

He's like, are you trying?

And I was like, yeah, I'm trying.

But man, like everybody here is smart.

Like, you know, everybody here is just as smart as me, if not smarter.

And they all work harder than me.

And I'm trying to figure out this whole hard work thing.

But like, you know, just to be honest with you,

it's like these guys just live in the library.

And I just don't even like, I just figured out where they go.

They go to the library.

They go to office hours.

Like I was, I didn't even understand

where people were going with their free time.

That's what they were doing.

Were your, was your dad paying?

Yeah, parents are paying for it.

So this is what I told him.

I go, you know, you're paying a lot of money for me to go here.

And, you know, I could go to UT, you know, state school.

It'd be, I think 10 times cheaper or something like that.

Like five times cheaper.

Maybe I was like, you know, if you want me to try,

like I'm willing to transfer, by the way, just because like,

I don't think I'm going to do that well here.

And so I don't think it's worth it for you to pay this amount of money.

And so I told him that and he goes,

why do you say that, you know, you're not like good there?

And I was like, well, like, dude, my, my,

this guy who lives next door to me,

he's like a freaking genius.

He's like a, you know, he just gets the physics up right away.

And then he's also good outside of class.

Like, you know, in the summers, he goes in,

he drives an ambulance in the Palestinian warfront just for fun.

And like, yeah, that's how he spends his summers.

Like, you know, I'm over here picking boogers with you.

Like, you know, I don't, I don't even know what to do in December.

These guys all got plans and internships and this and that.

And like, this guy's uncle works at JPMorgan.

So he's doing that thing.

And I was like, and he goes, yeah, that's the point.

He goes, that's why you're there.

You're not there for the classes.

You're there because when everybody around you is like that,

it will just raise your standards.

You won't even know what mediocre looks like.

You think you're mediocre, but that's because you're hanging out

with exceptional people.

If I take you and put you in a state school,

you're not going to have as many exceptional people around you

who for them, that's normal.

And he goes, so, you know, the point of being in college

for you to go to that school is not,

so you could graduate at the top of the class

and get the best grades and be the smartest kid in the,

in the classes.

It's so that that becomes your network

and that becomes your normal.

And he's basically said something to that effect.

So you've proven my point, by the way.

That's pretty deep.

You're kind of proving my point.

I know, I know.

So I'm saying like, that is the, the saving grace of it.

I don't know if that light bulb went on for me halfway through.

Then I started to focus on, oh yeah.

Then once I realized that, I started to get to know those people.

Before that, I was like, oh, these, they're just different.

I'm going to stay away.

And like, I don't know.

I got to find people who are like me who are just basically

bumming around here who don't know what to do.

Instead, I was like, oh, the point is to be hanging out with these people

and become more like them and not feel like I'm competing with them

or intimidated by them.

All right.

I've got a few more and I'm going to actually merge a couple of them.

So another one, having a technical skill.

If we're talking about internet companies,

this mostly means like being able to like code or design.

In my case, it was writing, which actually I think counts,

but it's a little bit less more important.

But having a technical skill, like in training to have a skill set

is a massive, massive advantage.

And I think being a generalist is not,

that is just a bullshit excuse,

but you should actually be good at at least one thing.

And particularly coding or design would be better,

but copyrighting counts as well.

And there's a few other things.

Sales actually I think can count,

but you need to be good at something.

And I think that most people don't do that.

Great at something.

You need to be great at something.

You got to like train for years to acquire a skill

and then go beyond that, but you need a skill.

And I think it's a massive advantage and people dismiss that

as being a generalist.

And that's just like self masturbation.

That is a bullcrap excuse.

In reality, you should be,

you just try to get great at something.

You know, it's the funniest version of a generalist.

So generalist already is like,

you're teetering on the edge of just being a bullshitter.

Yeah.

It's people who call themselves a polymath.

Have you ever heard somebody call themselves a polymath?

That's bullshit, dude.

Yes.

That's like people who call themselves a contrarian.

It's like, dude, if you got to label it, you're probably not it.

You can't be the one who calls yourself a polymath,

nor can you call yourself a contrarian.

It's other people who got to point it out.

That's when that label works.

It's like you can't nickname yourself brain.

It doesn't work that way, you know?

You either answer your brain.

I'm super humble.

Yeah.

No, no.

That's not how that works.

Other people can call you humble.

You don't get to call yourself humble.

Yeah.

So polymath is like the,

you've fallen over the fence like dumped,

and now you're fully in bullshit land

when you're calling yourself a polymath.

So, okay, that's my rant on that.

I think you're 100% right.

You got to have some skit.

What do we say?

You got to have some attributes.

Yeah.

You got to bring some attributes, man.

You got to have some size, strength, time.

You got to have attributes.

You can't just be a dope.

I hired a guy that I thought was going to be great

because he was like, you know,

saying all the right things, hustling,

he was saying all the right things.

And within a month, I realized,

guys got no attributes.

He's got to have some attributes.

What are you good at?

What can you do?

Oh, man, I can help with anything.

Okay, you can help with anything.

What problem can you go solve?

What are you great at?

If I hand you this thing,

what can you just nail this part of it?

I would also consider myself somewhat of a generalist,

but it's, you can only really,

what people mean when they're actually

a good version of a generalist is

they're great at one thing,

but they decided not to just specialize

as that one tool for the rest of their life.

And they've decided to go broader,

but they got that in their back pocket.

One or two core skills.

They're amazing at paid marketing.

They're amazing at copywriting.

They're amazing at building, you know, coding.

They're amazing at sales.

And they could just do that as their job.

And they could be, you know,

and the top 10% of people,

if they did that just as their job,

not the top 1%, right?

Because they're not specializing and being like,

I'm going to hone this craft every day

for the rest of my life.

But they're in the top 10% already at that.

And then they're in the top,

like 30% at four or five other things.

That's a real generalist,

not somebody who's just average at everything.

Or good at nothing.

Or good at nothing, right? Yeah.

Or in your case,

you called it a DNB, you remember that?

What's that mean?

She goes, she was talking about this

when she was on the top and the OC and she goes,

all these other girls are just DNBs.

They're just do nothing bitches.

And I was like, wow, that is an incredible phrase.

And so in my head, when I hear of a generalist,

I'm like, let me make sure you're actually not just a DNB.

Yeah, dude, a dude, nothing bitch.

Like you need to do something.

Or like in your case,

your skill set could actually be like charisma

and like attracting and recruiting people

and like putting them in the right direction.

That's a skill set.

You know, leadership is a skill set.

Getting things started,

that and being like the initial match

that gets like a fire started.

I think that's a skill set.

But I think having a skill

and that actually being great at something

that's really important.

All right, I'll give you a few more.

Assume that people don't change.

I think that's like a safe, that's like a safe rule.

You know, we have this attitude.

Maybe it's an American thing.

I don't know where it's just like, you can change.

And I do believe that's possible.

You know, I've had demons in the past that I've overcome.

I know a lot of other people who have had things

that they've overcome.

That shit does take place.

It's fairly rare.

And if you are a person that talks the talk

and you don't walk the walk, you will never change.

And if I meet someone like that, I just assume,

oh, they're just always going to be like that

and they will not change.

No amount of encouragement is going to make them change.

Sometimes that happens.

Assume it won't.

And that's, I used to have a different attitude

when I started my company.

I'm like, oh, I'll just get these people

and I'll teach them how to be great.

Yada, yada, yada.

As I've grown with this pod and talk to people,

I just, the people who act a certain way

have always acted that way.

Yeah.

My sister says this.

She goes, no, no, people change for the worse.

They will decay more often than they're going to be like

turning it around and like, you know, going from A to B.

And so I think you're right.

That is the working assumption.

You know, innocent until proven guilty.

You know, same till proven different

is how I feel with people, right?

Exactly.

You got to show that something is changing.

I am not going to assume.

And I'm not going to be that, you know,

the stereotypical like the woman who wants to fix him.

It's like, don't, I'm not that.

I don't want to be that when I recruit people anymore.

No, I'd rather just recruit people who are great

and like just let them do their thing versus

somebody that I'm going to train and groom

and turn around a project.

It's like, why do all that effort?

No bonus points for making it harder.

All right.

The last two.

So I actually don't think necessarily that the time

and effort put into a project is going to dictate the outcome.

I think to build a company that like makes you

potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars

in some cases, you don't necessarily have,

you can achieve that by having balance.

But I think to have these massive outsized

world changing companies, things that create tens

of billions of dollars in 10, 15 years

and have a meaningful impact in the world,

like a Tesla or something crazy like that

or a Stripe, something like that.

I think that working 80 hours a week,

raising lots and lots of money and having zero balance

is 100% needed.

That said, I think you can still achieve a huge amount

of success compared to the average Joe

and actually do it working 40 hours a week

or in some cases after a while, less.

And that's like an interesting dichotomy,

but I think it's true.

Yeah, I'll go with that.

I like that.

What else you got?

One more?

Last one.

And this is one of the very few irreversible decisions.

So having some type of success

and taking a meaningful amount of risk

before you have a family, meaning you have less time,

you've got less responsibility.

Unfortunately, it's an irreversible decision,

but getting an early-ish win early in your career

is 100% a huge advantage.

And you are at a massive disadvantage

by having a young family and not having achieved something

and then wanting to go achieve it.

It's not impossible, but taking those risks early on,

people should be encouraged to do that more

because it is life-changing.

Yeah, I think so.

Paul Graham has this essay that he wrote.

I don't remember the name of it, but he basically was like,

assume, I forgot the exact metrics.

I read this a long time ago.

I was in my early 20s and it stood out to me.

He was like, assume you start out with seven points

as an entrepreneur.

And the seven points is your capacity to take risks

and achieve what you want.

And then he's like, for every one of these things,

minus one, mortgage and whatever, minus one.

Kids, minus two.

And he's basically like, you can still do it,

but your margin of error and the difficulty

that you're going to have.

And the stress.

And the stress you're going to have pulling this off.

Like, assume you are sort of sapping your life mana,

your points in terms of how much ammo you have

to go attack this thing.

It's being sapped by each one of these factors.

And I don't remember what all of them were,

but it's worth, you know, go and find this essay.

Because I think he's actually true.

It's an uncomfortable truth.

People don't like this because it doesn't sound

politically correct.

Cause like, you know, the politically correct thing to say is,

you can do it.

You could do anything.

And you could argue, and you should, by the way,

if you're 40, you shouldn't be listening to this part.

You should be saying, screw that.

I got all the wisdom.

I got my purpose, my kids.

I got the experience.

Oh, you know, that a 20 year old will never have.

I have, and yes, you have different advantages,

but objectively speaking, it is much easier to take risks.

And if you were going to just play it out in an ideal scenario,

you would take your risks earlier when you have less to lose.

You have less pressure, less stress, less financial obligations.

It's just a more like game theory, optimal way to play.

You don't have to play it that way.

But it is, I think, sort of objectively speaking,

and a preferred way to play.

But, you know, if you didn't play that way,

it's okay.

You can still win anyways.

So that's the list.

That's my unpopular truths.

My not awesome stuff to discuss,

but I believe it to be true that I've learned from the pod.

And I'll end with all of those rules or whatever I described them as

can be completely broken.

And there's tons of examples of all of them being not true.

But that's what I believe to be true.

So that's my list.

Okay, I like it.

Let's switch gears.

I want to do a topic about, I think you know Mark Jenny.

Mark Jenny is a great friend of mine.

He's an amazing, amazing, amazing entrepreneur.

He's an awesome guy.

We're going, I'm going to meet him next week.

We're going down to stay at one of us.

He has this like luxury Airbnb portfolio.

And you should follow him on Twitter.

Well, you want me to give his background?

You know his background?

I know a little bit of it, but go give it the story.

So if I remember correctly, I think he was raised.

He had a, something was a little wonky with his childhood.

I think like he didn't have a dad or a single single household or

something like that.

So he wasn't, he wasn't raised in like a very privileged place.

And then I, at one point, I think he was even homeless and he lived

out of like a storage unit or something like that.

He started a bunch of different companies like info marketing stuff

and everything did kind of okay.

Then he started RV trader, I believe, or RV share, RV share,

which was like Airbnb for RVs.

He eventually sold a large portion of it to KKR, I think a large

PE company and he probably made many, many tens of millions of dollars

a lifetime of money.

Now he has a new thing that he's been doing for the last,

maybe five or something like that years where he buys,

I think he owns 20 of them now.

He's got a huge portfolio of Airbnb's and these are high-end luxury homes

that sleep like 20 people.

It's like two acre, like a two acre plot with like a fancy four or

five, 6,000 square foot home with like basketball courts, tennis courts,

mini put putt.

And he's built this like really, really good business making millions

of millions of dollars renting Airbnb's and he's doing it right.

And he's got a small team and it's a proper company,

not like a side project.

Yeah, I think what is it?

Like a $50 million luxury Airbnb portfolio at this point.

Yeah, I mean, I'm friends with Mark.

So he tells me lots of stuff.

So I'm trying not to say any of the numbers because I forget what's

public and what's been private.

So anything that you, I'll let you actually say any of the numbers

because you're probably getting it from public.

Yeah, that's just what he tweets out.

So you should follow him on Twitter.

He's a good follow and it's cool to see like,

he'll post like a before and after photo of these properties.

He's like, here's what it was.

And then we added a McDonald's play place in the backyard.

And it's like, he does like dope stuff, like, which I like, you know,

he's not just like...

And he's totally unheard of.

I'm a home slipper.

He's got like maybe 2000, 3000 followers on Twitter, I think.

Like he's not like a popular, like a big name person.

So he tweeted this out the other day and I thought that this was a great,

we haven't done a blue collar side hustle in a while.

So I thought this is kind of a great little,

almost like a blue collar side hustle that he said he had done.

I don't know if you saw this.

He was talked about one of his very first like sort of side hustles

that he did or early, early hustles was selling dollar bills for $15.

Did you see this?

Yes.

Yeah, good.

Tell us, tell the story.

So he tweeted this out.

You can kind of look at it, but here's the headline.

Great headline.

Great headline.

Guy sells $1 bills for $15.

Here's how, right?

And so here's what he did.

So he basically, he's 15 years old and he says he sees a dollar bill on eBay

that instead of, who's on the dollar bills?

Washington or something like that?

Instead of whoever, let's call it George Washington.

It's Michael Jordan's face in the middle, right?

And he orders it is he's like, oh, love Michael Jordan or whatever.

And this is funny and gets it.

And it's basically, it's a normal dollar bill,

but then there's just like a sticker paper over the George Washington.

And you could just like do that.

You could just go to office max and like do this.

And so that's exactly what he did.

He goes to office max.

He's like, I need to be able to create these because what better businesses

there to sell dollar bills for $15.

And so he's, he goes there and then he goes, he puts them up on eBay.

And he, oh, he first, he looked on eBay.

And at that time, eBay was showing like how many, how many items a seller would sell.

And he could just keep track of it.

Like, okay, this week that, oh, wow, they're selling like, you know,

a hundred of these, like that's amazing.

So he starts doing it.

He creates an eBay account.

He starts selling these and he starts averaging a hundred,

a hundred bills sold per day for $15, which includes the shipping costs.

General profit is about 1500 a day.

About 1500 a day.

He's, he's profiting basically a thousand dollars a day doing this.

And then he, he ramped it up and he got it to, I think,

$10,000 a day in sales.

And he became the largest seller of custom novelty collectible dollar bills on

eBay.

But it's a real dollar.

It was a real dollar bill.

It's a real dollar.

Yeah.

And you just add the, the sticker on top so you could sell.

Legally.

I guess so.

Why not?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I just thought there'd be some weird rules around money.

No, I think you could do it.

Like, you know, people sell these like coins and whatever.

It seems, it seems legit.

So then what he would do, he's like, you know, here.

So they had to start thinking of growth hacks.

How do I beat these other eBay guys at doing this?

So what he would do is he would do one of the auctions and then he would direct

message everybody who didn't win the auction, offering him the bill at

whatever their highest price was.

And so he's like, you know, whatever eight was your top price on it.

I'll do it for eight.

And so he started like just racking up as many sales as he could doing this.

So then he became the top ranked seller, which helped him in the organic

search as he was going from there.

And I kind of love this.

And I loved it for a couple of reasons.

One, it's just another example of these little nuggets, these little

stories that shows you there's a trillion ways to win.

There's a trillion ways to get rich, right?

Like he was doing basically $365,000 a year of sales or whatever.

You know, he was doing really, really well at that time, you know,

just selling a hundred of these a day.

How old was he?

Did you say he was like a kid?

He's in his teens.

He was 15, 16 years old.

That's amazing.

And, you know, probably didn't last forever, but these little, these

little arbitrage opportunities that come up.

And then I started thinking, okay, like what would somebody do

if they were doing that now?

So here's, I'm going to give you three ideas of how you could do that now.

First, I think you could probably do the same thing.

Yeah.

What's old is new.

What's out is in.

And I think you could probably do the same thing either on eBay or Etsy

or find one of the marketplaces and you could try to win doing the same thing.

I went on Etsy and actually you could see that there's people doing this on Etsy

right now and you could see, you know, how they're, how they're doing.

So possibly you could go do the same thing and compete, especially if you could

pick a different, you know, celebrity face to put on the thing.

Like Trump is the obvious one, but if it's not Trump, like maybe there's

some other, some other ones that you could do.

But Trump dollar bills is my first idea of how I would do this.

Second idea.

Okay.

Well, let's, let's remix it.

Right.

We want to keep 80% of the idea.

We want to change 20%.

So what's the 20% change?

I would try to piggyback off of whatever's trending in movies or music

or something like that.

So for example, remember when super bad came out and there was like the

McLovin ID, his Hawaii ID, the rainbow on it.

It's like this kind of iconic look.

I think you could just do McLovin IDs at that time.

Like if that was the movie that had come out now, I think you could take a prop

from a movie or like in Pulp Fiction, they had the bad mother effer wallet

or whatever, like, I don't know.

I had one.

I don't watch a bunch of movies now.

Yeah, exactly.

I wanted one of those.

And you could just like jump on that trend and be like, cool.

Like for the McLovin, it's like, upload your photo and we'll send you yourself

as a McLovin ID and maybe use a little of these like AI things to like

create the avatar where it looks the same.

But I think that's one that you could do.

Really cheap to print and laminate.

And then you, you know, you can send these out very cheaply because they're,

they're so thin.

And then I saw some other ones.

If you go on TikTok, you'll see things that are like this.

And for example, I think the second biggest Etsy store, maybe the first

actually now, I think it's second or first on the planet is this thing

called Caitlyn minimalist.

I'm guessing you've never heard of this, but no, what is this?

I got a whole thing coming on the pot of my Etsy deep dive, but,

but I'll just give you a little sneak peek.

The top selling store is Caitlyn minimalist.

And what she does was how she got her break was she was like making jewelry

for herself for friends.

We're like, oh, that's cool.

And her friend has a special request.

She goes, my mom or dad passed away.

I forgot which one.

And like the last thing that wrote me was like this note.

Is it possible to like get their signature in their handwriting as like a

bracelet?

And she's like, yeah, you just like, I can do that for you.

And she just gave it to her for free.

She was like, oh, this is so meaningful to you.

I'll just give it to you for free.

And she was like, overwhelmed was like, this is the most meaningful thing

in the world.

And so she's like, oh, wow, people just want like, you know, their name,

their parents' name, their kid's name, and ideally in their own handwriting,

like done in jewelry.

And so that's how do you do that?

You like send her or is it all digital?

You like send her a picture or you write the name, you know, depends.

If you want to match the handwriting, you got to send a picture of the,

of this, of like a piece of paper with the writing on it.

And there's some tech that just then like tells her, like, etches it in that

look, right?

Oh, so it's not like made out of metal.

It's a metal plaque or it's like a, it's like a dog tag.

And then she like, no, no, no, it is, it's cut.

It's like the name is cut and it's like, whatever.

It is like, you know, whatever.

Somehow, somehow cut.

I don't know exactly her manufacturing process, but these little like custom,

custom name things, I think work.

And I was on TikTok yesterday when I was thinking about this idea.

How big is it?

Oh, it's huge.

She's done like probably 80, 90 million in sales is my, my estimate.

Oh my God.

So she's done two million transactions.

I would guess her average transactions, like, you know, something 40,

50 bucks, something like that.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's like $80 million in sales lifetime.

And I was on TikTok and I was scrolling and I saw another one of these,

which was, um, you, it was a hoodie.

It was like, here's a perfect gift for the holidays or for Valentine's Day,

whatever.

It's a hoodie and they're like, take a picture of you and your whatever,

your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whatever.

And it basically takes like, let's say it's a picture of you and your wife

and you're kissing.

And it just like, it'll, it'll, it'll stitch like a silhouette of that.

Yeah.

As like into the hoodie.

So it's like a meaningful gift.

But again, it's like this kind of what they call mass customization.

Right.

So if you can do mass customization, if you can figure out a manufacturing

process to do this, there's a lot of opportunity to sell somebody these

like kind of gimmick gifts that can and will work.

Do you remember a T-Spring?

T-Spring.

Yeah.

It was like the print on demand type of.

Yeah.

It was a really cool T-shirt company started by this guy named Walker

Williams.

And they were like one of these companies that was like, oh, this is going to be

one of the fastest companies ever to get to a hundred million in revenue.

And the way that they got popular was it was on demand T-shirt printing.

And they figured out this hack on Facebook where you could target people

that have your like by last name.

So it could be like the one thing we all know about Smith's is that they

love to party or they also did by location.

Like the one thing we know about people who are raised in Boston is that they

love blank and had a T-shirt that said, I'm from Boston and I'm proud or I'm

from Boston and I love blank or I'm a proud Smith or something like that.

And the engagement on those ads was crazy.

So their cat was like stupid low.

And that's one of the ways that they grew.

And it's just like that.

It's that thing from Dale Carnegie, the most beautiful word in any language is

the person's name.

Right.

And I think it's like name, location, and maybe like where you went to

school and then followed by like your friend's names.

And if you can figure out how to like incorporate those into ads or click

your rate is crazy pets face.

So there's another one, which is pet socks, pets face on socks.

I think I have a pair.

Jungle creations was the name of it.

So if I remember correctly, at one point they did like a million dollars in

like a week selling, you'd basically go on the website, you'd upload a photo

of your pet's face and they would print it on socks.

And they would just drop ship that to you basically.

And 2018 they did 17 million in revenue.

They did 17 million in revenue doing basically pet, pet face on socks.

And so that's the same thing, you know, celebrity face on dollar bill,

pet face on socks.

Right. Like we have a buddy who is doing the pet portraits.

Right. Like a painting of your pet.

That would just be like mass mass customized produced.

There's a ton of these like little opportunities.

Yeah.

And the click through rates on these things are like kill it for the ads.

So yeah.

Yeah. That's an interesting idea.

Let's see if anyone actually files through with it.

But Mark, Jenny's amazing, man.

He's awesome.

Let me give you another idea.

All right.

So I was doing, do you do like gifts like company gifts for the holiday or

something like that?

Do you like send out gifts?

No, no, that wasn't, that wasn't a me thing.

Do you, are you doing that?

It's like a warm, tender person who might, you know,

give, give exactly my love language, bro.

Words of affirmation are silent nods of approval.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A pat on the back is the greatest gift.

The greatest gift is the lack of criticism provided you today.

So I was thinking about it.

I was like, oh, you know, and I remember at a, you know,

previous company I worked at the office manager,

she was good at the stuff and she would get like everybody's address

and then she would send these Harry and David gift, gift baskets.

Have you ever had a Harry and David gift basket?

No, what's that?

Oh, dude, imagine somebody's at the door.

Who could it be?

You go to the door.

Hey, we have this amazing, huge gift basket for you.

You take it into your kitchen.

You're like, wow, what's, what's going to be in this gift basket?

Sam, take a guess.

What's in this gift basket?

Chocolate, I guess.

Could be chocolate.

Could have been chocolate.

It's not chocolate though.

What else could it be?

Like local foods like bricks of salami and cheese.

It could be salami and cheese.

There's a little bit of that.

There's a little bit of chocolate.

There's a little bit of cheese in there.

Pears.

They had these jumbo pears and they know because pears are the most underrated fruit.

They are the official fruit of my first million as far as I'm concerned.

I agree.

These huge, delicious pears were in there and I was like, what the hell is this?

And I was like, what is this giant gift that I received?

And why does it?

Why is it so awesome?

It's all the way to Harry and David, Harry and David, right?

So they, they do gift baskets of all kinds, but this one was a giant pear basket that

we got.

And I still remember this thing and I was, dude, you came over to my house.

I don't care if you're the cleaner.

You're just a guy walking by.

I was slinging pears to you because I had the juiciest pears that were going to go bad.

They were massive and I needed to offload these things.

And everybody asked, oh, wow, where'd you get this?

I said, my company sent it to me because they love me.

And that's how I felt.

And so I thought, I always remember this experience.

And so then I started digging.

I was like, what's up with this Harry David thing, by the way?

Oh man, they're huge.

Harry and David sold to a company that you know of 1-800 flowers for $142 million back

in 2014.

And they have a couple, you know, main brands of this thing.

Harry and David, which is these gift baskets, they have Wolferman, which is gourmet English

muffins and other foods like that.

And they have stockyards, which is, you know, prime, you know, prime meats.

And Harry and David, it's a super seasonal business fall and winters when they get a

lot of their orders.

And they got 50 retail stores that like, you know, help them fill the stuff.

And it got me thinking about Harry and David.

It got me thinking about 1-800 flowers.

I did a little deep dive.

So 1-800 flowers starts off as a phone number 42 years ago.

Literally it was just 1-800 flowers.

And it goes on to build basically like a $600 million plus business.

They, you know, for a long time, it's just the phone number.

Then in 1995, they start e-commerce because they're like, oh, we need this.

And they basically have like thousands of locations and fulfillment centers, not all

owned by them, but like fulfillment partners.

Somebody can send flowers to you.

And basically these guys are, it's like a bundle of 14 brands.

And let me just give you their revenue last quarter.

So last quarter, what's that?

Publicly traded.

They did 485 million in revenue last quarter.

So that, that means they're now a, what, what is that?

500?

Well, and that's not even a popular quarter.

Probably, probably their February revenue, like Trump's like the, you know, the winter

is probably their biggest.

Well, let's say it's probably a billion and a half a year.

This is pretty, pretty safe to say the gift baskets, which are the Harry and David section,

they're doing, they did 148 million last quarter.

So that means that's probably like a $500 million a year business.

Florals was 300 million and then yeah, basically they have like whatever, they have some other

stuff.

They got Cheryl's cookies.

They bought her for 40 million.

They got, you know, personalization mail, which is something I don't know.

They bought for 250 million.

They got Sherry's berries.

You know,

Sherry's berries.

I love Sherry's berries.

It's great.

Popcorn factories bought that for 30 million back in the day.

So they own all these brands.

So I'm like, okay, this is great.

Now I've also been doing this food gifting thing lately because I'm like you.

I'm not a big gifter trying to get better at it.

Inspired by our buddy Ramon and who is a prolific gifter.

The best gift or someone absolute savage of a gifter.

So he got me thinking, man, he really highlighted my gifting deficiencies.

So I said, I'm going to start sending gifts, but I'm not a big plan ahead guy.

So day of where do you get a last minute gift that can get to that person's house same day,

same hour?

Maybe, maybe it's 11pm.

I'm trying to squeeze it in before midnight.

Door dash and Uber eats.

That's what I've been doing.

I will just door dash you food because food is, you know, the universal love language.

Yeah.

But what are you going to do?

Send me a pizza at 11am.

That's stupid.

I'll send you a pizza and wings.

I'll send you four slushies.

I'll send you boba tea.

I'll send you a Cinnabon.

I'll send you, bro.

I got options.

I got, I got a whole like menu of my gifting foods that I'll go to because I got to know

what you like, right?

Like, I know you've got that sweet tooth, right?

I might hit you with 16 pints of ice cream and you'll be like, this is Sean, this is

simply too much ice cream.

I'll be like, I know because I love you that much.

Right.

So I'll hit you with these kinds of, these kinds of gifts.

So I think that somebody should build a one 800 flowers type of brand because the things

I'm gifting, they're not made for this.

They're not made to be gifted, right?

The Cinnabon is not made to be sent to a friend for their birthday, but I think somebody should

build basically birthday eats or last minute gifts on door dash.

I completely agree.

As a, as a cloud kitchen, I'm just getting stronger as the idea builds.

Uh, as a cloud kitchen nationwide, it is optimized for gifts.

So baskets that are nicely like put a bow on it, handwritten notes.

That's got to be a part of it.

Yeah.

So something that's going to be able to give you a note or even a little like little

blanket that shows that this is a card, that this is for the occasion and help me help you

help me gift to somebody else is how I feel about this.

Now the cloud kitchen is already good.

But if you remember back in the day, we had the idea of not just a cloud kitchen, but

a cloud kitchen where you partner with a celebrity.

So this is where I need your help.

We need our celebrity partner.

Who is going to be the face of this last minute gifts brand, this gourmet gifts brand that

we're going to create launched nationwide across Uber Eats.

It sounds like it comes to mind.

It sounds like a rhetorical question.

So I have a feeling you have someone in mind.

Honestly, only person I thought of was Ryan Seacrest.

And I don't even know why, but I just thought I might as well go with the hardest working

man in Hollywood.

I haven't seen his face in that app.

I think he would like to be in that app.

So I'm thinking Ryan Seacrest.

White women like you, you'd be fine.

Universally, universally not hated, you know, like a recognizable face.

But who else could be, who else could be the guy or the guy, like, you know, Mariah Carey,

she's seasonal.

Maybe Mariah's, maybe Mariah's is, is, is maybe she needs to get out of the song game

and get into the gift game.

I don't know, but I do think this is actually brilliant.

I've tried to order one.

I'm the last minute gift guy too.

And I'll try to order one 800 flowers the morning of Valentine's Day.

And oftentimes they don't let you, you know, they're just like, it's too late.

If you really loved her, you would have done this two days ago.

Yeah.

And it's, it's, it's super annoying.

So I'm totally on board.

I, I, I think this is awesome.

I think this is, this is, this is, can you not do that now?

There aren't any good gift basket companies on DoorDash.

Like if I open DoorDash right now.

So let's, let's open this.

I can't get an edible arrangement.

Also a great gift, man.

Edible arrangements.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

Those are good.

And I think you can get some of those, but I think we need a fresh brand.

They're like, they have the flower and gift boutique on mine, at least.

And it's flowers, you know, it's just flowers, right?

Like roses and whole foods.

Flowers and there's literally a cookie in a bath, right?

Yeah.

A bath bomb.

Come on.

Come on.

You think Mariah and Ryan Seacrests are just going to lose to this?

No, man.

It's got to be extravagant.

I'm on board.

I've experienced the same thing.

And I've also studied one 800 flowers.

One 800 flowers is a really interesting company because they will tell you all types of insights

in their annual report and they have so much intel because they own so many brands.

So I'll give you an example.

And one of their reports, they said succulents are growing amongst millennials.

And I remember reading about that like in 2018.

And I told a couple of people about it and they started succulent delivery businesses geared

towards millennials and they kill it.

You know, there's now the, the sale.

What's that other one called?

Yeah.

Who knows?

Millennial.

Millennial.

Millennial businesses.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Dude.

And they have so much insights or another insight that you can get for one 800 flowers is they're

like, we're trying to, what, what do they say?

They go, we actually don't make a lot of money from flowers, but we make a shitload of money

from like when people buy vases.

So I'm like, why aren't you like painting cool shit on this vase and getting people to

like spend more money on it?

You know, like, why, why don't I see like a Frida Kahla or whoever it is, like painting

on like this like sick vase and I'll pay you $50 for it.

Dude, one 800 flowers is actually a really, really, really good business to go and read

our reports because they have such interesting insight and they've been doing it for, I

don't know how old is it now.

It's from the seventies, I think.

And so really interesting company to study.

I love that business.

I love the gifting business, but their market cap sucks.

Why is their market cap so bad?

Their market cap is $600 million.

Is it really?

Yeah.

It's horrible.

They just like plummeted over the past.

Well, I guess everything is plummeted, but it's been really bad over the past year.

That's interesting.

I wonder if they think they're getting like, you know, disrupted by something.

Yeah.

600 million is the market cap.

That sounds.

Yeah.

And the guy who runs it's really interesting.

I think the guy who invented it, who founded it, I think his name was Jim McCann and his

son now is the CEO and Jim is like a really interesting guy.

I've had him on the, I've talked to him on the phone a couple of times.

Really fascinating person and his son is, is the CEO now.

So it's almost like a really weird family business.

Another one that falls in this category.

Have you ever studied Omaha Steaks?

No.

So Omaha, do you know what that is?

No, but that just sounds like exactly what it is.

So Omaha Steaks, it's a mail order business.

They sell steaks.

So if you want to buy someone like $200 of like prime rib and filet mignon and chicken

and like bratwurst and shit, you order from there and they send it to you and it's an

awesome gift.

And I believe it's privately owned.

They make many, many, many hundreds.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually north of a billion in revenue.

And they were one of the very first companies to take advantage of internet marketing.

And so right when the internet got popular, you would see Omaha Steak ads everywhere and

they were very, very, very progressive with like they're, they're figuring out how to

market on the internet and they're still really fascinating.

And it's a really, really interesting company to study.

I think it's privately owned.

You've never, I'm shocked you haven't heard of Omaha Steaks, but you also didn't know

who Dolly Parton was.

So like,

Yeah, you're really shocked.

Yeah.

Exactly.

But anyway, look up Omaha Steaks.

You know, I think they're in like the six or $700 million a year in range and they're

invented or founded in like 1920.

They've been around forever.

It's a really fascinating company to study.

So they, are they like in, are they mostly in stores or this is like, no, no, no, no.

It's 100% online and you got to use stuff to call them or it was like a catalog and

you like would order steaks.

The very first thing it says the classic gift and a $90 package of steaks, it's a great

gift.

Neville, my, you know, my best friend, Neville, who's also my neighbor, his mom always is buying

them Omaha Steaks.

And so whenever he gets an order of Omaha Steaks, we all go to his house and we like,

we grill them.

It's an awesome gift.

Omaha Steaks is a wonderful gift.

I'm shocked you haven't heard of it.

No, but I also feel like this could be done with like the right influencer partners.

Like just do a sort of, you know, a slightly different version of this.

This seems like the type of thing that is, you know, it's got a pretty good moat probably

because they're like, you know, they probably own the production or something.

No, that's not what their mode is.

I would think their moat is the fact that like it's been around for so long.

And so like you saw your parents gift it to people and then you're like, like, oh man,

what should I get this guy?

Like, oh, like, I guess like some fucking Omaha Steaks, you know what I mean?

It's like C's candy.

It's like, why does Warren Buffett like that?

He's like, I don't know.

Just because like that's just like the default gift that men give their wives and like people

have seen their parents do it for years and then they grow up doing it.

I don't know.

The local C's candy here near me, they opened up a nursing home in the store because everybody

there is so old.

It's incredible.

Genius idea on their part.

They're like, hey, actually, this is a funeral home in the back, you know, there's like one

in five.

You're not happy in the store.

Dude, C's candy is pretty wack.

Like I go and eat it.

It's shit.

But like it does seem kind of dead at this point.

But you know, I guess it's like a dating center for him.

Like, what's going on with that place?

Why is everyone 90 and inside C's candy?

Is that just my local one here?

No, it's always like that.

But it is like fire.

Like you get some like just some truffles.

You ever had a good truffle or a turtle?

I'm all about the turtles.

The turtles.

A great talk.

The turtle is nothing to bad an eye about.

But yeah, look up Omaha Steaks, look up 1-800-FLOWERS.

These are really interesting companies to study because like they're also interesting

because you think Omaha Steaks and you like judge them of like, or at least I did.

I'm like, oh, you know, it's just like some Omaha company.

They can't be that sophisticated.

They are incredibly sophisticated, at least in terms of internet marketing.

And so they're really interesting to go and study.

Right.

So just cap it here.

By the way, there's a bunch of fun stuff coming.

So I got to say, I want to do the studio tour and breakdown of how we did this like studio

change and what, you know, what we learned from it, what it cost, all that good stuff.

I want to do a plan for next year.

We're going to do our annual awards.

We're going to drop the new intro music.

We're going to do all kinds of different stuff.

And we're going to talk about where the pods going.

So I want to do that soon.

And yeah, I think I think in the next, the next two weeks, I think we're going to have

some fire podcast.

Yeah.

Are we going to do the Millie Awards?

What we do?

The Andrew Awards.

Yeah.

Let's get Andrew Wilketson booked again.

So we can do the Millie Awards.

And we have Austin Reef.

I'm excited for Austin.

He's going to be out here next week.

All right.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days off on a road.

Let's travel, never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.