My First Million: Using Shame & Rage When Setting Goals, Octopus For Breakfast Story, and Flipping Disadvantages

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.

I love shame.

I think shame and rage are the two best fuel to like get something done that people never

talk about.

I like I still do things to make Aaron Coyne my eighth grade girlfriend angry.

Like I'm still in my head.

I'm like, what's going to prove her wrong?

You know what I mean?

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, let's travel never looking back.

All right.

You want to tell us about this game or what?

Well, first of all, I think we need to spice up the intro.

I think the intro needs to be like right now we're just casual with it.

We just come on like it's just a conversation and people love that they love the authenticity.

But you know what, you know what works when you become a cheese ball and you just start

performing and make it a show and you give a proper intro and you do all the things.

This is my first million, the podcast that has two future trillionaires that come at

you.

Oh, by the way, did you see this guy who went on LinkedIn and then quoted the Manifest Cowboys

thing?

Wait.

Whoa, what happened?

I tagged you in it.

Some guy was told.

He's told a story.

You used LinkedIn.

Oh, bro.

I'm on LinkedIn right now.

Are you really?

Excuse me?

What do you mean?

Like trying to get popular?

I told you I hired that content remixer guy, Brandon, and so Brandon's been amazing.

What he does is he just takes my old good tweets, he posts them on LinkedIn and people

on LinkedIn, bro, it's a gun to a knife fight.

They're like, wow, incredible content.

This is, wow, what a conversation, it's stimulating because, you know, LinkedIn is like the most

boring content farm generically, right?

They're like, I've been over here fighting on Twitter against like, you know, fucking

professional tweeters who are researching eight hours a day and like creating these like epic

threads.

And, you know, I just come off the dome, bro, like, you know, I'm that painting at the

top of the Sistine Chapel, I'm just off the top.

And now I bring that to LinkedIn and it's a whole new, it's a habanero pepper for them.

And so it's a ghost pepper.

It's the last wing on Hot Ones and they don't know what to do with it.

And so this guy's been posting.

So I just get to check the notifications and I'll be like, oh, shit, he posted that thing

from like a year ago that I said and people on LinkedIn are loving it.

But today it's getting popular.

Yeah.

I think I added like, I don't know, a thousand followers this week or something like that.

Dude, by the way, I knew this woman named Candice.

You maybe knew her too.

And she was an entrepreneur and she owned a bikini company and she was like, you know

what?

And this was in 2015, 16, 17, she goes, I'm going to start posting like stories about

our bikini business and like, you know, how things are going.

And so it like, like new product updates, whatever.

And it was all like, you know, hot ladies and bikinis, you know, like big boobs and

stuff.

It looked great.

And LinkedIn was just like, what the algorithm?

It went crazy.

It broke people's brain and she eventually got banned and she obviously did the right

thing of like making a public fuss about it.

It's like, what?

I'm just talking about my business.

What's wrong with this?

What's wrong with my content?

I sell bikinis.

I've got it.

And so it worked awesomely for her.

And so I think that if you have a business that is like related to something like, you

know, like that, you can kill it on LinkedIn.

But anyway, so you're crushing it on LinkedIn right now.

Yeah.

So this guy, yeah, this guy, Thomas Angel, give him a shout out.

He, he posted, he goes, it says, quote, I don't do business.

I manifest.

Hashtag MFM.

And then he goes Sprouts Farmers Market was number one on our vision board when we launched

our everything latte at altitude functional beverages.

I guess that's his company, altitude functional beverages.

So he goes after 13 months, we're now in 10 stores, blah, blah, blah.

We're great.

We're great.

We're great.

And he goes, thank you to the OGs.

Hashtag manifest cowboys.

And then he tagged us.

And I totally forgot you had said that on the last part and I was like, wow, that is

incredible.

Manifest Cowboys is one of your top five little creations.

And like, I just feel like we need to go all in on the only podcast featuring two trillion

millionaires.

The manifest cowboys, the men who never age, haven't seen a wrinkle in my life.

Same body fat as your milk, 2%.

Like that's how we need to go.

And then we say, Hey, iTunes, play that back 15, go back 15 seconds, play that again.

Did you pick up that 2% nonsense?

That's beautiful.

Again, off the top.

I told you, I'm good early in the morning.

We just, we moved our podcast to an early morning recording and I just have like an

extra 10% juice early in the morning where I'm a little crazy.

That's so funny.

I just roll out of bed and these are the thoughts in my head.

Dude, you're like a rapper right now.

You keep rhyming.

I like this.

I saw this hilarious clip of, it's actually my favorite form of marketing is you take

a clip from something else, so you've seen this one where it's a bar and the whole bar

is watching something on a big screen and it's like, the original clip was like from

the world cup and like the guy scores a goal and you just put whatever on there, right?

Like I'll put the milk road, the milk road like shows up in your inbox, like, you know,

the email pops up and then the crowd just goes crazy.

And so I saw a version of that, somebody did it with Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan talking

to somebody and he's like, have you seen this and then the guy's like, no, he's like, pull

that up.

And then they just replace it with this TikTok of this young chubby white boy rapping and

he's really horrible, but it's hilarious.

And he's like dancing and rapping at the same time and Joe's like, God, how do they

do it?

And like, they show the reaction, but they've spliced it together and I saw one of those

and so that just really, you know, made my morning.

I spent so many hours in the morning and at night just scrolling through Instagram and

TikTok and just laughing constantly at all these just young people are so funny now.

I don't think when I was younger and like that age doing stuff like this, no one was

this funny.

Like the amount of funny people is it's way higher now.

Me and my sister, we said each other, maybe she says we like 25 TikToks a day, I send

back maybe 10 and like the caption on each one isn't like, it's not like, oh, you got

to watch this.

Oh, this is really funny or that's so true.

It's every, every like seven lines.

She's just like, people are too good.

Like how would, how are they so talented?

Like because TikTok is the greatest talent show ever created.

It's America's funniest home video every hour on the hour, right?

It's like, it is this giant talent show.

And when you watch it, you're like, I am nothing compared to these people, I am the dirt on

their shoe.

They scraped me off before they walk into their house.

Like you feel so dumb.

And I just like, I can't, I don't understand how they come up with these, how they film

them.

Like where the, where the inspiration comes from, it's too good.

It's so good.

And the subreddit, the fighter and the kid that you and I like, just like the commenters

are so funny.

It's like every, every top comic, it's like one of the best jokes done by a comedian that

I like.

You know what I mean?

Like it's like, that's how high caliber it is.

I just, and it's almost like the way that I describe it.

It's like, it doesn't matter if you're into the outdoors or not.

When you see a big mountain, you're like, oh, wow, that's epic.

You know, like you appreciate the epicness.

That's how I feel like when I watch TikTok, I'm like, I don't even like this thing that

they're talking about, but how on earth did someone come up with this?

And it's just that over and over and over again.

And I'm in awe.

I'm in awe constantly.

Yeah.

People talk about how these things are a waste of time.

I don't know what their TikTok feed is like.

My TikTok feed is incredible.

It is the most entertainment per second I've ever experienced in my life.

It is funny.

It is like insightful.

I'll learn stuff all the time, little life hacks, how stuff works, watching a TikTok

about like, you know, how a farmer like, you know, farm squash, I'm like, oh, I didn't

know that.

Right.

Like I'm just learning stuff that I didn't even know I wanted to know because I would

never click the YouTube video, but bro, if I go on YouTube now, it's like, you know,

when you go to a city and they're like, uh, you know, there's like by the tourist destination,

they're like, oh, you want to get on this horse carriage?

You know, it'll be for a funny picture and like, you know, it's a romantic date and you

got to like do this old, slow, uncomfortable thing because I might as well, you know, you

got to do something different.

Life's too good now.

That's how I feel when I go on YouTube.

Like I'm getting back on the horse carriage after I've experienced like an F1 car and

I don't know how YouTube's going to survive.

Dude, speaking of like this type of stuff, speaking of like, uh, uh, entertainment and

like doing epic shit, I'm reading this book about this woman named Elspeth, Elspeth Beard.

That's an interesting name.

And in 1979 or 1980, I think she was 22 years old and she's just like, says, fuck it, I'm

going to ride my motorcycle around the country or sorry, around the world, around the globe.

So like you like get on a ship and go to America, ride it all across America, get on a ship

on the other side, go to whichever continent is on the other side of California.

Is this your female pen name?

Dude, I did it across America, which is soft.

That's soft.

Like there's a McDonald's every 50 miles, you know, she did it like in Iran and shit.

You know what I mean?

Like there's levels to this game.

And she did it in 1979.

And so like she was like, we couldn't even get maps.

But anyway, I was reading it and I was like, I'm such a pussy.

Like why, why don't we live more?

Do we need to live more epic adventurous lives?

She did this thing at age 22 and now she's like 65.

She's still giving talks on about it and making money because we are all so weak and

we refuse to do like these interesting, it's not that hard nowadays to ride a motorcycle

across the world.

It's not that hard.

You take six months, you buy a $20,000 BNW and ain't going to break, use your iPhone

and a hard, but I just a thought it was interesting that she did this thing at age 22.

It's kind of like whenever I like see people like, um, whenever I see like the Rolling

Stones perform, I'm like, this motherfucker's 80 years old and he's playing a song that

he wrote when he was 18.

That's longevity.

That's good.

That's the kind of what she's doing.

So I'm like, I'm amazed that you could do one thing at a young age and live off of it

forever and be, we're soft, man.

We got to do more epic stuff.

Like we're just sitting in our houses all the time doing this lame stuff all the time.

We got to, we got to be more adventurous, right?

What would you do?

I've always wanted to walk across America.

So I would do that.

I've already ridden my motorcycle across America.

I've driven across America a bunch of times.

I think I could drive my motorcycle across.

What was genuinely hard?

So not like, um, it sounds hard, but what genuinely was hard?

I, um, with, with riding a motorcycle across the country, it was easy, man.

Just in general, other stuff you've done.

I mean, anything you've done.

What's the actual thing that you've like, that's been really hard?

Doing an Iron Man.

That was like legitimately hard.

Like I felt pain.

I think it'd be fun to like ride a bicycle or something like that across America and

I think that would be genuinely tough, like physically and emotionally tough.

I did an Iron Man and that was like legitimately hard.

I felt like I was in pain for almost the entire time.

It sucked.

Dude.

So, uh, Ramon and Suley, they texted me Ramon was like, guys, we got to do this Iron Man

in Hawaii.

He's an idiot.

I'm signing us up.

And like, he caught me when I was in that, when I had that trillionaire 2% body fat energy

and I just, oh, two words, all caps.

I'm in.

Did you really say that?

He literally was talking about a ride a bike.

No.

He was typing his speech bubbles and I just, I just responded.

I go, I go Ramon, say no more and then he stopped typing in the iMessage.

Okay.

Three hours.

He booked it.

He booked it.

Didn't it?

Three hours pass.

Yeah.

He starts sending me like PDF ticket reservations and he starts sending me stuff.

I'm like, and I now realize what I have done and I realize your boy is not as hard as he

thinks.

He's not as tough as he thinks.

He's not as in as he thought he was in and even out of swim.

Have you ever swam before?

I have a 15 foot pool and I can swim in it, but I never, it's like a one mile free like

an ocean freestyle swim just to start the race and so I go and so I then I had to backtrack.

So I just came quick.

I go, Hey, I've seen the first one, but can't wait for the second one.

They go, what?

Iron man.

Right?

That's what we're talking about.

The movie.

He goes, no, bro, you're not getting out of this and I hear, no, I am.

And then he's, and that's, I didn't have a reason.

And then he's, so then every day he's been texting me like, Hey, here's this cool link

to how to train.

And I'm like, I'm not opening that link because if I open that link, there's no, if I know

what it, what it entails, there's no way I'm going to do this.

So I was guilt and to do this by him and I trained for six months and I did pretty good.

I did all right.

And he got last.

And you're very, very fit and you're saying it's hard.

If I trained hardest for a year, I would not be as fit as you were before you trained for

your iron man.

I would be the before photo.

And so it doesn't make sense.

And so then I just told him, I go, if I don't talk to you anymore, I don't have to do it.

And so we'll see if this just for the listeners and they know how stupid, like it was like

the three Stooges.

We went down there and I trained.

I was a division one athlete.

I trained.

I did fine.

I was great.

But they, and I hired a coach.

I did everything the right way.

These freaking idiots who we went with, they bought, they bought the bike the day before

when they were down there.

And like the night before you set your bike up at the place and they leave it there and

Suley and Ramon were like, Hey, so how do we use those pedals with that attached to

your feet?

We bought them.

How do we use them?

They were like setting it up there and Suley, the something I who we went with, he did the

swim.

He did the entire thing and backstroke because he didn't know how to swim with his head underneath

the water.

And they assigned a kayaker lifeguard to him because they were so afraid that he was going

to drown.

I swear to God.

And of all the 9,000 people there, I'm not exaggerating.

They got literally last place last like 9,000.

And they were miserable.

And the next day they're like, this is sick, bro, you want to do it again?

It was the craziest shit on earth.

These guys are idiots.

They also asked me if I wanted to go climb Mount Kilimanjaro with them.

And I was like, no, no, I'm out.

No, I do not want to do that.

Yeah.

The problem is they're like, I don't know, seven to 10 years older than us.

But they're like in a midlife crisis and we're getting dragged into their midlife fighting

against father time, you know, thing.

And now we are doing these things as well.

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Actually, this is a topic I wanted to talk about, which is.

How to set goals.

I think you had something on your thing about setting goals.

Something about that.

Yeah.

So let's talk about this.

So I don't know what you wanted to do, but I had this idea of what is your approach to

setting and hitting goals?

Is that what you were going to say?

Yeah.

Well, let me like go on a little rant here.

So I've been doing this thing called intro.

You know that intro thing?

Like you just like talk to people and it's actually really fun.

That's why I do it.

I do it from Friday at 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Oh, really?

So if they just turned off the money, you do it because it's so fun?

No.

I've been doing it because it's fun and I get paid $2,000 an hour.

Obscene amounts of money.

Yeah.

So both.

It is.

It is.

It's fun money.

Envelope money.

And I've been doing this and a question that I ask people constantly and they never rarely

have answers to and they act like I'm like profound for asking this.

I'm like, dude, this is like table stakes, which is what does success look like in five

years?

Like specifically, like if this is a money thing, like how much money do you want?

How much revenue?

How many users?

Whatever.

And then I've been working with some family members and they're like, want to get their

finances in order.

And I'm like, all right, well, how much do you spend every month?

How much do you want to spend every month?

And then let's work back from how much income you think you need.

And I think the vast majority of people, they don't write shit down.

And so I did this one intro call with this guy and I was like, hey, so here's this app

that I used for a long time.

It's called My Weekly Budget.

Just every time you spend a cent, just write it down and just do it for four weeks and

then just look back at how much you spend and like, oh, I never thought about that.

And he messaged me and he goes, I've been writing this down for like two weeks.

I had no idea I was spending this and that and this I've been saving thousands of dollars

now that I know.

And I do the same thing with weight loss.

I say, I want to weigh this much weight, therefore I have to burn.

I can only eat 2,100 calories and I'm going to just going to write down whatever I eat.

Just writing things down, both goals as well as like the things that you're doing.

So you kind of like have an idea is the easiest way to get to where you want to go without

really changing a significant amount of your behavior.

You have your notice that?

I have noticed that.

Yes.

And I do that.

I think I think a lot of people think they do that, but let me go into a little more

detail on some some stuff I do that I think is maybe a little bit different.

All right.

So I'm going to give you a couple of bullet points.

Here is how I set goals so that I can actually hit them.

And this is coming from some guy who is, you know, frankly, pretty lazy and, you know,

I don't, I'm not like you like I'm not like, oh, I need to lose weight.

I must have a 500 calorie deficit.

Or it is done.

I will now like, you know, track this thing.

That always felt like too much work to me, but let me tell you what does work for me.

By the way, you're seeing the exact opposite.

It's less work to do it that way because then you don't think you just like do, you just

do what you're supposed to do.

It's a classic thing that somebody who has discipline and willpower says like, oh, it's

easier to just do it right.

The first time.

Yeah, we know, bro.

If we, if we know that that's true, we just don't live life that way.

Like it's okay.

You know, I speak from the procrastinator's perspective.

All right.

So here's some things that I do that do work for me.

First is, and you tell me if you do this or not, I set picture goals or movie scene goals,

not just written goals.

So for example, sometimes it's hard for me to figure out like, let's say it's a financial

goal.

Okay.

How much money do I want and when?

And then I kind of like, I'll pick a number.

I'll be like, is that too high?

Is that too low?

And I got to make it real in some way.

So sometimes what I'll do is if it's a number goal, I'll do the math to add it up.

I'll be like, okay, here's how I want to live.

I want to spend this, this, this and this.

What does that actually come out to?

And I'll go bottoms up to create the goal or I'll just simplify it.

I'll be like, I don't know.

Numbers and logic is a little too hard to understand.

I'll go on Zillow and I'll just find the picture of the house I want.

I'll be like, this, this is my goal.

And I can just look at that picture of that house and it has a whole feeling and a whole

like set of assumptions that if I was living in that house, like life is pretty good.

That is my motivating goal.

Like I'm more motivated by a picture or a little movie scene in my head than I am by

just this like kind of written text that requires my brain to do a bunch of like work to try

to like make life out of this, out of this text.

Yeah, I do it.

Yeah.

I guess I just described a vision board.

Okay.

Cool.

So that's the first thing.

Pinterest.

Yeah.

Great idea.

All right.

It's like an Uber.

But yeah.

Uber.

Okay.

Let's keep going.

The second thing I do, floor goals and ceiling goals.

So I don't set one goal.

I set a range.

The floor goal that I'll set for any project is like, are I at a minimum?

This is like the minimum that it would take for it to feel like a win.

And so I just would write that down.

I'll be like, all right, this is the minimum goal.

And what it was happening was normally I was writing a goal, then I'd be like kind of beat

myself up.

Like I'm not ambitious enough.

So I need to set a more audacious goal.

So I set a bigger goal, bigger, bigger goal.

And then I would like, you know, inevitably like sort of under deliver on that.

And now I'd have to like, basically I'd either be disappointed because I didn't reach my

like super ambitious goal, but still clearly a good thing happened.

Or I would have my super ambitious goal and secretly in my head, I'd have like my backup

goal that like, I wouldn't tell anybody because it wasn't so cool, but like I knew logically

that that was good.

So then I just started writing it down.

Here's the floor.

Here's the ceiling.

Ceiling is the F. Yeah.

Like what would make me say F. Yeah.

That really worked out.

And so like, I'll give you an example, I'll give you an example after this, but all right,

floor and ceiling goal.

That's the next one.

Do you do anything like that?

Like a range?

No, but that's a good idea.

I just, no, I just like put the, maybe I kind of do, I say, here's what I think will happen.

But then I say, in the best case scenario, I think this might happen, but I'm not expecting

that.

Right.

That's how I started this podcast.

I was like, the floor goal is if I just invite a bunch of cool guests on, well, I'll

probably like, if I do one of these week, 52 guests, let's say half of them are cool.

Let's say half of those cool people become kind of like buddies or friends or, you know,

we like each other.

Cool.

So I'll make like maybe 12, 15 new friends that are like kind of heavy hitters enough

where I can invite them on a podcast.

I was like, that's a win.

That alone is a win.

It's enough to like do this, do this podcast for, for, for, you know, once a week.

And so that was my floor goal.

My ceiling goal was, well, what if people actually listen to this?

Wouldn't that be sweet if people would, you know, on their commutes and they would listen

to this and, and you know, we'd have this big audience of people who'd like listen and

trust us.

That would be amazing.

Right.

And so now I use that methodology for risk taking.

So I say, should I quit my job and start this company?

Well, the worst case scenario is that it's going to take me six months to find a new

job.

Therefore I'll have six months of savings lined up.

And if I just so happen to build a successful company, that's gravy.

That's awesome.

But I just, basically I'm taking the risk that I'm going to, I just, I'm assuming that

I'm going to find a new job and have six months of savings.

Great.

That's my baseline.

I'm fine with that.

So floor and ceiling.

That's the second part.

Okay.

Goals and anti-goals.

So I stole this from Andrew Wilkinson who stole it from somebody else probably, but

it's really easy to set a goal and not acknowledge some of the common trappings you could get

even if you accomplish your goal.

For example, in college, my buddy dated this girl.

Her dad was like a partner at a big consulting firm.

And he was a partner.

He guy would make, you know, a million, two million dollars a year probably.

He was, he made it to the top of his like, of top of that ladder.

But also he was, you know, every single week he would fly out Monday through Thursday.

He would come back Friday, be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

He would leave again Sunday night.

And he was just gone for like half of her life growing up.

And so that's an example of achieving your goal, but maybe hitting an anti-goal as well,

which was you probably didn't plan and set out to say, I don't want to see my family.

You know, my kid growing up for the first 18 years of life, I'm only going to be there

half the time, but it just kind of came as a byproduct of trying to hit their goal.

So now I set out specific anti-goals like, Oh yeah, I want to do this podcast, but I

don't want it to feel like a bunch of work every week, right?

Like I'm not trying to make this my job.

I want this to be a fun hobby, right?

And so an anti-goal might be all of a sudden I'm drowning in work, trying to edit this

thing and upload the thumbnail and write the show notes and do all this stuff.

That would be an anti-goal.

If the after pod recording took five hours a week or, you know, 10 hours a week to go

to produce it.

And so by identifying the anti-goal upfront, you can make a game plan that solves it.

Do you do that?

I do it a little bit differently.

I don't call it an anti-goal.

No, I say, here's what, here's the price I'm willing to pay to achieve the thing I want

to achieve.

So for example, when I was, I said, um, when I'm going to start this company, the hustle,

I told my wife, I go, when we were dating, I go, just so you know, the business is going

to come first for the next handful of years.

Because then when we get married and have kids, I'll have more time for that.

But like right now business is first and I'm going to give up vacations.

I'm going to give up the price I'm willing to pay is we're just not going to have that

much time together unless, if the business gets in the way.

Right.

Baby, tell me again, uh, who's number one on my priority list?

That's right.

Say it again.

Say it again.

Yeah, tell me.

It's Valentine's Day.

Who's my date?

The hustle.

That's right.

That's right.

You got it.

You got it.

You understand.

You got to confirm.

You got to double opt into this shit.

So I always say, here's the thing I'm willing to, I'm, this is, this is the price I'm paying.

You know what I'm saying?

You want to look good?

You don't want to pay above that price.

Yeah.

You want to look good in the nude?

The price you got to pay is you've got to eat this crap chicken and like not have fun

there.

You know, you got to pay a price.

Right.

I like that.

All right.

The next one in your face daily.

So now we're on number four.

We had to be paying to the picture.

That's kind of the mood board, the movie scene, the floor and ceiling method, the goal and

anti-goal method.

And now in your face daily, this is one where I think a lot of people make a mistake.

They write down the goal at the moment they're motivated and inspired and they, they read

that book, they watch that video, you know, they got their pen and paper out, they write

it down, then they close the book and then they just go back onto autopilot for the next

like 17 days and they can't even revisit their, they don't revisit their goal.

So my big thing is I need to see it daily.

Right.

The goal is like the barista.

You know, if I'm going to get coffee before work every day, I'm going to see this face.

I'm going to see my goals face every single day.

And so I will set this up in Slack.

I will set up, I'll just use the remind function and I'll say remind me every day that my goal

this week is for Milk Road to add this many subscribers or to go viral with one post on

Twitter or to, you know, to chase down that investment that I'm really bullish about and

make sure we get in this round.

And I will set that reminder so that it pops up every single day.

And it's only me who sees that, but now I do that with my team.

At the end of every, you know, either daily or weekly, I will repost the goals that we

had for the week and just be like, you know, here it is.

Make sure you keep this top of mind or as my next, my next method is the tip of your

tongue test, which is if you can't say what you want, if it's not at the tip of your tongue,

what you're going for, you're not clear enough about it.

And like you are not giving yourself the best chance to succeed because you can't articulate

your goal at the tip of your tongue.

Ben, can I, can I pick on you for a second, Ben?

Are you there?

I know he's like at the beach.

So I may not have the best audio video.

All right.

I think I got kicked out of my last spot.

I can, I can try.

Okay.

Try it.

Ben, with your podcast, how to take over the world.

What is the goal?

The goal is to be a top 100 podcast overall in the Apple podcast ratings.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Sam, critique that real quick.

He's missing one critical element.

Do you know what it is?

Probably the input.

The input meaning what?

Like, you, I think for a goal setting, it's probably a little bit easier to be input oriented

so like what you're willing.

I'm going to do X.

I'm going to do X, you know, because you can't exactly control the output.

So like it'd be more input oriented.

I would also probably say if, for podcasts, I would put a download number on it, but I

don't know.

What do you think?

Right.

Or a time box, right?

Like by when?

Oh, a time box.

Yeah.

By when?

Do you have 10 years to do this or one year to do this?

That's a critical element to a goal is to be, it should be pass, fail, like it should

be easy to figure out did this happen or not.

And if you don't have a time box, you can't, you can't ever judge it, right?

So Sean, do you have your, do you have your computer open?

Yeah.

Go to my Twitter handle and what's my bio say?

I have made this for the past month or two and it's been working wonderfully and it's

exactly what you're talking about.

Oh, perfect.

You go, I own the hustle, sold it to HubSpot, I tweet about this, I do the podcast, then

he said, losing another five pounds this month, parentheses, August.

Yes.

I always, whatever the goal is, I put it up there in Twitter so I see it every day.

And the thing that you didn't mention that I love doing is I love shaming myself.

I love shame.

I think shame and rage are the two best fuel to like get something done that people never

talk about.

I like, I still do things to make Aaron coin, my eighth grade girlfriend, angry.

Like I'm still in my head.

I'm like, what's going to prove her wrong?

You know what I mean?

Like, how am I going to win and like prove that she was wrong for breaking up with me?

So I think rage is awesome, but I think like shaming yourself or like guilting yourself

or you put it publicly and you have to do it.

The other thing that I do constantly that works wonderfully is you have to like set

appointments or put something on the table.

So for example, I have these a couple of bad tattoos I want to get fixed and I've been

wanting to do it.

I've been so lazy.

You just, you got to make the appointment.

You make the appointment.

It's like, fuck, I can't bail.

I already put down money on this thing.

Like I have to do this.

You know what I mean?

And I think those things really, really help.

Yeah.

Like my Iron Man competition coming up, but shame and rage, that's a pretty good, I mean,

my first million is a good name.

Shame and rage would have been a great name for this podcast.

Dude, shame and rage is such a good fuel.

I don't know what like people say, like you don't be angry.

I'm like, no, fuck that anger.

I love anger.

I love anger.

Anger gives me so much goodness.

Like I'm still like, what is the phrase chips on shoulders, but chips in pockets.

I love anger.

Anger is such a good, a good emotion to drive you.

I used to do that.

I used to, I used to have a thing that I've taken off this list, which was use your own

psychology against you.

So it'd be like, oh, if I state publicly what I'm going to do, then I feel the pressure

to go ahead and do it.

Or like, yeah, if I use kind of insecurity or anger, that could be like a fantastic fuel

for accomplishing my goals.

But I personally don't do that anymore because it makes the process of doing the thing kind

of unpleasant.

It is effective for hitting the goal.

Well, that's because you have this really big problem.

You've got a huge problem.

You know what your problem is?

I'm too happy.

You're emotionally stable and happy.

Yeah.

You've got, that's a really big issue in your life is you're just too emotionally stable.

So you know, like, I'm sorry that your parents were wonderful to you, but that's just the

price you have to pay.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Sam goes around to his house just like shaving half an inch off every table.

Just trying to get it to have a little bit of instability in it.

He's like, it's better.

I want the plates to slide, baby.

Yeah.

You know, I had the advantage of, you know, having a problematic childhood.

You, you, you, you had, were disadvantaged by having a perfect little life.

All right.

I'm going to finish my goal thing real quick.

I got three more.

All right.

Last three, the most important three are I don't move unless I actually believe that

it's going to happen.

Yeah.

So a lot of people will say, and I would say, Ben, you don't have to come back on.

But people will say things like Ben just said, and I would say at least half the time, if

they are honest with themselves, I want to be a top hundred podcast in the world by,

you know, by, you know, in 12 months.

If I say, what do you, what do you think are the odds that that's going to happen?

They'll be like, well, it is, you know, hard and it is risky, you know, and they'll sort

of like, if it comes down to it, their belief that it's actually going to happen is quite

low.

And I don't let myself move unless I actually believe that it's going to happen because

there's this like, there's a virtuous and vicious cycle.

Belief drives action.

If I really believe that some shit's going to work, if I really believe that this person's

going to say yes and buy my product, I will pick up the phone immediately and call them.

It's only when I don't believe they're going to buy my product that I sound like, well,

I'll call them after I finish this PowerPoint day.

I'm going to actually, you know, Friday's not a good day to call because of this and

hold on, let me just go clean my room real quick, you know, because that's, you know,

I just want to get that done.

I'm going to be a better headspace.

Like it's your belief that drives the level of action you're going to take, like massive

belief equals massive action.

Massive action equals a good result and a good result reinforces the belief.

This is also what happens to people who become, have a lack of confidence.

They don't believe.

Therefore they take timid action, timid action creates shitty results and that just reinforces

to them.

They're like, see, I knew it wasn't like, I kind of knew it wasn't, I knew it was going

to be too hard.

I knew, I knew this wasn't like the odds were against us.

And then it just happens again and again.

So I don't move until I work myself into a spot where my belief is super high.

Last two, baby goals or giggle steps.

So I've kind of learned that like, if you have a big goal, you got to set a baby goal

or a giggle step.

A giggle step is a step that is a trademark, giggle step and just a tip or you're too.

I met, I met this woman and she, she created this phrase.

She was like, Hey, you know that book, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I was like, yeah.

She's like, it's, it's all right.

And I was like, Oh, you mean like the best selling book that's like, yeah.

So like three million copies this year, like one of the greatest self-help books, you know,

in the last decade in terms of sales, she's like, yeah, it's okay, but it's missing the

most important thing.

I was like, what is it?

She goes, he's, he got it kind of right that you need to set like a simple first step,

but it's even his is way too hard.

Like if you want to set a habit to floss your teeth every day, you actually want to start

with something so simple, it'll make you giggle because it's so not a goal that it's achievable

and you'll actually do it.

And so she's like, so all you would do if you wanted to floss your teeth every day is

literally put one piece of floss, floss next to your bathroom and like next to your sink

and just floss a single tooth and then put it down and walk away.

And it's like, Oh, what's that going to do with single tooth and it's like, it'll literally

make you laugh.

It takes away a lot of the fear and the built up like scariness of it going down this endeavor.

Who's this, who's this lady?

I hate that I forgot her name now, but yeah, I met her.

I think at Betsy, Betsy something, I got to find her last name.

I don't remember her last name.

That sounds made up so far.

And it also might not be her first name and I might be the worst person in the world,

but like giggle steps is good.

Given see if you can Google that pull up her pull up her full name.

I've only met her twice.

Okay.

Last one is, last one is you got to revise up or abort down.

So I think what a lot of people do is as things get hard, they start to compromise the goal

and they'll start revising it down, down, down, down, down to the point where it's not even

motivating anymore.

It's like you sort of took the edge off the goal and yeah, now you kind of don't fail,

but you also don't really succeed.

So my rule is I either revise up, meaning I, oh shoot, I think this could be even bigger.

Right.

This podcast we've revised up.

It's now bigger than I thought it could be.

And so now I've revised up.

Okay, it can actually be, you know, X millions of listeners every month.

Hell, we're already at, you know, one point something 1.3, 1.5, something like that million

per month.

Why can't this be last month?

Last month we are at 1.7.

I think.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's bigger than I would have guessed.

Right.

One, if one was my original goal, I'm revising up now, or I'll just abort down.

I'll say, you know what?

This isn't going to.

That, that, that's a weird word to use to describe this word, you know, eject, maybe

is the better way to say it.

I will, I will just eject out of, you know, the plane.

If I feel like, you know what?

Now that we have given it every throw and everything we've got at this and we've learned

new things, we have new information that tells us that this isn't going to work, rather

than compromising down and getting stuck on something we're not even really excited about.

If we're no longer excited about it, I'll just, I'll change the goal completely or I'll

leave the goal aside, I'll just go do something else because the new information has kind

of shown me something to, it's just a check to say, don't just continuously dial it down

because it's very tempting to do and it's very easy to slip into mediocrity.

So I kind of, by forcing myself with something harsh, which is, all right, would I just quit

this?

It's like so harsh that it forces me to like, no, stick with the real goal and find a way

to make it happen or change, you know, based on what your new understanding of reality,

change this completely.

Don't just like, take it down a notch and another notch and another notch and another

notch and now it's all of a sudden not even that special to begin with.

So those are, those are my how to hit goals, those are the things I do to hit goals.

I remember years ago, you, when we were just kind of trying to, we were coming up trying

to make it happen, you said that you go, I think $6 million is the number I need to

feel financially like secure or I don't remember what word like stable or like that I need

to never work again free.

Did that goal change as you got older?

Were you right or wrong about that goal?

I think I was right, but I was wrong in one key aspect and actually I said it on the podcast

early on and our friend Narendra DM me and he was like, you're wrong.

You're wrong.

Six won't be like six is not enough for you.

And I was like, well, I don't know, I like, I do the math.

He's like, it's not enough.

Like, you know, first of all, maybe your target return of what you think you're going to make

on that six, you know, as your, because the idea is if you have a certain amount of money

invested, what can you, and it's going to earn, you know, it's going to compound at

some rate, 5%, 7% a year, whatever it is.

Could you live off of that compound interest rather than, and the principal would never

go down.

You would never have to withdraw lower than the principal.

So you would, you'd be financially free.

You don't need new net income coming in because the money you have is working for your money

now and you don't have to go work for your money.

And you thought that was six.

I thought it was six because I had done some kind of thing now.

Now I think the number is like the real number is probably closer to 10 or 11 and the aspirational

number is like 25 and up because then it's like, oh, it's not even close at that point.

So the reason why I'm bringing that up is the interesting thing about goals is I used

to think if I, if I achieve this thing, whether it's financial or body or whatever, that like

I'm going to be changed.

And I realized that pretty much across the board, every goal that I achieve, I'm like,

oh, this was not as cool as I thought I'm going to create a harder one.

And at first I was bummed, but now I'm like, oh, no, that's not like, cause it's just

the chase.

Like I'm born to hunt.

You know what I mean?

Like I have to chase a goal and I have to accept that when I hit my goal, it's not going

to change much.

It's just going to be a cool benchmark to go to the next one.

And so with goals setting lately, or the last couple of years, I've been like, oh, but

just know that this isn't going to change anything, but it will be exciting to chase

after it.

And so that's what I've, that's an interesting thing that I've learned a little bit with

as I've gotten older with goals.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And specifically financial goals, your lifestyle creeps up.

So like before when I did the, let's say 6 million number, I was like, all right, 6

million, if I earn 5%, if I'm getting 5%, let's say they, I think the S&P like kind

of average, you know, return is 8% or something like that.

I was like, okay, let's say I can get 5.

What would be, you know, that's 300K a year.

Cool.

At the time, I think I was spending under 200K a year in my burn.

I was like, oh, that's good.

And I have like, you know, 30% buffer.

Well now I spend, I think more than that.

And so because lifestyle creeps up, it's like, you know, I started to pay for more stuff.

I started to buy more things.

I started to travel a little bit differently, started to do all the things that people do

and now.

You don't travel differently.

You don't, you just don't travel.

But when I do, I travel a little bit differently.

The point is lifestyle creeps up.

And so I think that's the thing you have to do if you're, if you're not trying to be

really disciplined in your lifestyle, which I'm not, I think life is to be enjoyed and

I want to enjoy it to the fullest extent I know.

And so as I learn new things, new ways to enjoy, I want to do those things and not feel

limited by money.

I think you got to account for that.

You got to like over buffer.

Are you looking to buy a house now?

I'm looking at either buying or renting a new house.

Yeah.

Dude, renting is so awesome.

I've been loving renting, man.

Don't buy.

Me too.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's sick.

The only downside with renting is just like sometimes you don't, there's not enough inventory

for like, what you got when you were the burbs, but like if you're patient, you could just,

you can find it.

And right now the market seems to be, at least where I'm at in California and Bay Area, the

market seems to be moving where everything's getting marked down.

So everything's down 20, 30% except for stubborn sellers who haven't realized yet that they

need to mark down.

And then even those aren't getting offers and then they're pulling their thing off the

market because they're like, okay, it's not selling.

Now this just looks bad.

And they're like switching to, okay, we'll rent this or we'll just stay in it or whatever.

Like the market is very quickly turning here to like a buyer's market is what I'm kind

of seeing.

Hmm.

All right.

I have something interesting to share with you.

Have you heard of this company called Woot, W-O-O-T?

Of course.

Yeah.

Woot was like an internet staple, OG staple.

It was one of the cool websites where it was like, you'd go and there was a daily deal.

It's like buy this TV for like $22 or something.

So Ethan Brooks at the hustle kind of told me about it, but I had read about it for a

bit because the founder interested me.

He's this guy named Matt Rutledge and Woot was like, like you said, they wanted the original

like daily deal sites and it was acquired by Amazon.

And the story is really interesting.

I remember reading this a couple of years ago.

So Matt Rutledge is this guy from Dallas and he flies up to Seattle to meet with Bezos

like, you know, right when it closes and they get a Sunday breakfast and they're like Rutledge.

He wrote, he's like, Bezos had like a weird energy this whole time, but whatever.

I'm sitting in this meal and I finally just say, so Jeff, why did you buy Woot?

And Jeff like had just ordered breakfast and they have the meals in front of them and he

looks down at the meal.

Then he looks at Matt and like 15 seconds passes and Matt's like, should I just like

ask him if he wants to like move on and we just like skip this and Jeff looks down at

his meal again and then looks back up at Rutledge and he goes, you see, you're the octopus that

I'm having for breakfast right now because Jeff had just ordered like eggs and octopus

for some reason.

I'm weird ass breakfast and he goes, when I look at the menu, you're the thing that

I just don't understand.

Basically he had never ordered octopus for breakfast before and he's like, this is weird.

I'm going to order it.

I've never seen it before.

I don't get it.

I'm going to order it.

You are the thing that I've never had and I must have for breakfast the octopus and

that's why he said he bought this guy's company and this Rutledge guy was like, dude, you're

fucking insane.

Like he didn't think about it.

Like my takeaway was Rutledge was not like, oh, you're a fake story.

That is a fake story.

You either just made that up or no, I read it in an article.

Those are quotes.

That is two direct quotes to be that is too hilarious to be real.

The exact quote here.

That is incredible.

This is this is I'm going to read it verbatim from the article.

And this is Matt Rutledge saying telling the reporter, you're the octopus that I'm having

for breakfast.

Look at the menu, you're the thing that I just don't understand.

The thing I've never had and I must have breakfast octopus.

And he just and he and that was like a 20 seconds pause for him to say that, like just

like this fucking weirdo, like, you know, like Star Trek type of guy.

And as you would expect, as one would expect from what there have been many great stories

on this podcast, many great stories, thousands of great stories, I might say.

This was the greatest story I've ever heard on this podcast.

First of all, you told it great.

I didn't know where you were going with this.

The breakfast, the looking down, the looking up, the 15 seconds.

And then that line is all time weirdo.

That is so weird of a thing to expect.

What do you expect?

What do you expect?

I was actually, I did a podcast with someone and they asked me about my successful friends

and like, what do they all have in common?

I was like, well, they all like work hard.

They all like are smart, but they're all fucking weird.

They're all weird.

And like everyone I know who's successful is pretty fucking weird.

So do you know that would say that line, by the way, that no one, no one, but that guy's

like, Bezos is like the weirdest of the weird, maybe boys, maybe boys, yeah, like I've heard

him say like, yeah, like your business is one Google away from me destroying you.

Like he says stuff like that, but this guy says, I must have the breakfast octopus, but

this company, who it's really interesting because it's basically just a daily deal

site, whatever.

And Matt is like, he said Amazon ruined it as you'd expect and like, but they did all

this funny stuff.

Like they would sell a daily deal and then the deals that they didn't sell, they would

trade this feature called the bag of crap, which is a thing that like users would just

buy blindly.

And in the FAQs, it says like, well, if you don't like it, just listen on eBay, but we

don't take refunds.

And anyway, he leaves and he starts another thing and he calls it the mediocre corporation.

That's originally what it's called.

And the underlying premise is that we're building a store that you don't need to buy anything

to have fun.

So like their copy is really, really good.

And he basically said in an article, he was like, I want everyone's expectations to be

incredibly low with this business.

So that's why we call it a mediocre corporation.

And it's pretty hilarious.

And I was reading their copy.

So now a mediocre corporation, they basically own like eight different websites.

So and they're all like daily deal sites and all of them have like 350 to $2 million, two

million visits a month.

So I bet you they're, it's actually a pretty substantial business.

And if you read the copy, it's beautiful.

It's wonderful.

It's wonderful copy.

And I was thinking about this, the, the basically as I've sold my company to a big company,

I've realized that basically for the longest time, I thought basically the only thing that

a startup has that's better than a big company and why a startup can win is like focus.

We could focus harder on stuff and we can move faster.

So we can move fast and have more focus.

And then I started reading about this guy and I started thinking about like the household,

like what made it interesting?

And the second and the third thing that I've add is that basically because there's less

bureaucracy, you can have more soul.

You can do more funny, interesting stuff.

And the reason you can is basically the founder comes up with something says like, we're just

going to do it.

Whereas at a big company, there's like middle management and they're like, I don't want

to lose my job.

So I'm not taking this risk.

I'm not going to pitch the bag of crap like feature even though that's hilarious and users

love it.

I ain't pitching it.

I'm good.

I'm not going to do it.

And I'll give you a good example.

So I love AppSumo.

AppSumo was started by my friend, Noah Kagan and, uh, no, Neville, uh, Madoro is my good,

my best friend and he like, uh, helped run it and it was a daily deal site as well.

Listen to this copy.

So they ran a deal one time where you could purchase like fonts.

I don't know how you buy fonts, but that was the thing.

Listen to the opening, uh, paragraph from the daily email that he sent out.

Neville wrote this.

If the names, Lusanda, Sands, Unico, Unicode or court, courier, new, don't mean anything

to you.

Go ahead and close this message.

You see my friend today.

We're reaching out to the community of people known as font horse.

You know who you are.

If your knees go weak when I whisper Garamond, you might be one, you might be one of them.

And I read this.

I remember years ago before I met Neville and I was like, this is, this is beauty.

This is beautiful.

This turns off the people who you want to be turned off and it gets, you know, the people

who you want to, and I was just like, in my head, I'm like, dude, you're writing about

having sex with this font.

That is so funny.

That is awesome.

You are making the most boring topic really cool.

And you cannot do that at a big company.

It's incredibly hard and it's not hard because the company's bad or good.

It's just, that's the rules of the game.

And it's just like you're playing, you know, the game on hard mode, if you're trying to

like make a big company cute.

And I would just think if this is just this company, who it's just such a perfect example,

you should go to some of their websites, their, their, their, the mediocre corporation.

They own casemates, a mediocrity.

That's one of their things.

They own the site called meh.com side deal morning save.

And it just deals.

And I thought it was interesting and the copy is hilarious.

And this is, and I've been thinking about businesses that you can build, which you

are building, and I did where it's just like one or two people can kind of be the taste

makers and that can scale and be leveraged really nicely.

Kind of like a daily email.

You know what I mean?

But as you get bigger, you, you can, we'll be able to do it all.

It's going to get worse and worse.

And I think that's just what's going to happen.

Yeah.

Totally.

By the way, the domain is mediocre.com, which is an amazing domain to have.

This is such a cool story.

I love that.

And I love that, that email by Neville, that's an amazing copy.

The, um, I think it's so true personality, personalities.

You said soul, I would say personality because it's not what personality to interact with

is such a differentiator in life, in all aspects of life, but it also works in business.

People go into business assuming you have to play some role.

You have to like put on the suit and tie and be some character.

And all you're doing is simply blending in with every other suit and tie that exists

out there.

And so they'll like, I see this all the time founders will try to play the same game as

the companies they admire, the big companies, the successful companies, they assume because

they're successful that I need to act like them if I too want to be successful.

What they forget was that before they were successful early on, the way they got successful

was through having personality, having a point of view, having some edges to them.

And those edges, they keep some people away because it's too rough for them.

It's not what they wanted.

And for other people, they're like, wow, this is the handle I need to grab onto because

I love this.

And so, you know, before Apple was Apple, they were, you know, the homebrew, they were

at the homebrew computer club, right?

They were basically, they had the two advantage you talked about.

You said focus, I call it freakishly obsessive.

And I use that word specifically because they are obsessed with that some topic, whatever

it is, it could be Raspberry Pi's, it could be blockchains, it could be whatever.

They're usually obsessed with something that's not mainstream because not that fun to be

obsessed with something that's already totally mainstream, there's not much joy in that for

this person.

And the second is that they're freakishly obsessed, which is not only just an extreme

form of obsession, but they're willing to go to a length that other people wouldn't.

And they're willing to, like, the topic is usually niche and weird.

So you know, fonts is a good example of one of things like that.

The other part that you mentioned, which is personality, it just gets squashed out of

a big company.

Because imagine if at the beginning, when you're one or two people, the personality

of the company is basically the personality of the founder or founders.

And it's typically like a room of people and they're like one upping each other.

It's like, ha, ha, that's funny.

You're like, all right, but check this out.

What if we even went even harder?

Like, you know, like you can have that like vibe because you're incentivized to do that.

You want to grow, you want to do interesting stuff.

Totally.

You're not incentivized once the company gets bigger.

Imagine a room of one person, okay, it's just that whatever that person thinks is normal

to them.

You get two people, two co-founders, maybe they're both a little bit weird.

And so they riff off of each other, it gets going.

Now you add the third wheel, even if that third wheel was totally vanilla, they're a

total normal person, they're now outnumbered.

So they joined the thing and they're like, all right, I guess that's how we get down

here, right?

You had a phrase you go, you need to let your freak flag fly if you're going to work here.

And so whoever came in, you indoctrinated them into your weird culture to do weird shit

and do cool shit.

And that was normal there.

So the third person comes in, even if they're vanilla, all of a sudden they become flavored

too.

The fourth person comes in, same thing.

But at some point, the next, like, I don't know where it is, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 people,

somewhere in that range, I would say between 15 and 50 people.

The person who gets hired typically will spend most of their time and not with the founders

anymore.

And so now one vanilla person is spending time with a bunch of other vanilla people and

they're hiring other people who have a greater and greater percentage of vanilla, right?

It starts with, they need to be 25, 30% because hey, we need to be serious and get stuff done

around here.

And then you start hiring 50% vanilla and by the time, you know, you get to 50 or 100

people, you're hiring 100% vanilla people.

And those people now, when they, someone says a weird idea, it's crickets in the room.

It's risks come first as reasons why not rather than why we would.

It's, oh yeah, that has this one extreme strength, but it might have some other extreme weaknesses.

So don't take the risk.

That's going to offend certain people or that's going to like cannibalize this thing

or that thing or yeah, it just like bullshit excuses.

Right.

So what do they say?

What will they think?

And so what will they say?

But really what it comes down to, it comes down to, I've got a good gig.

I don't want to fuck it up.

Let's not, let's not rattle this, you know, I don't want to shake this up.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'm not comfortable shaking it up because I don't know that that's what we do here because

a lot of time has passed.

I don't hang out with the people that are like totally high conviction of being weird.

And, and yeah, like I have some, I have more to lose than I have to gain by doing this

because when I say this idea, I don't get respect in the room.

I get sort of like strange glances and nervous laughter and then, you know, somebody tells

me why my idea is a bad idea.

So I learn to just keep that shit piped down.

My freak flag is now, you know, buried at the bottom of my trunk and it's folded up

and it's in its case.

And so that's what happens at the, at the end of these companies.

Now some companies fight that off.

So for example, this is why I think a lot of people like founder led companies because

they keep that soul.

They have one person in the company who has the gravitas.

So like, I think, I think this happened at Tesla and happened at Elon's companies.

He is so publicly weird and big thinking and out there and willing to just go with it that

he kind of sets the tone.

Even if you don't on a day to day ever have meetings with Elon or work with him or you

don't get the culture from him inside the company, you get what he does on Twitter.

So he kind of, did you see his new butthole feature?

Yeah, exactly.

And so now if you're at Tesla, you're like, okay, the, the bosses, bosses, bosses, boss

likes that weird shit and it gets a bunch of play on Twitter.

And we've seen five things pay off by going overboard.

Like does a Cybertruck window really need to be bulletproof?

No, but Elon would think that's fucking cool.

So we're going to do it.

And I know Elon thinks it's going to be cool because he lets the flag fly on Twitter.

And so I see it even though I don't interact with him day to day.

So that's one way to scale that personality is to have a such a strong personality and

do it on blast.

Another version.

I remember when I was at Twitter.

Dude, but he's got to put up with so much shit for that.

And it's actually to be in his position, I've been in this position and I've like weakened

out a bunch of times where I'm like, oh, fine, I'll let you guys get your way this time.

Like, you know, like, you're going to quit if I don't give it to this, fine, I'll let

you have it this time.

And in my head, I'm like, but this is the wrong decision, but I'm only make, I'm only

agreeing to go with this even though I don't like it because like, I don't want them to

quit and like, I just don't want this headache right now, whereas he's the type of guy because

he's like, you know, like on the spectrum, he's like, no, I don't like pick up on this

social queue.

Like we are not doing it.

Like we're, this is fine.

I'm okay being uncomfortable here.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's how I'm inspired by him a little bit.

The belief in himself and also just the lack of self-awareness is important there, right?

You can't be like us.

You can't be a self-aware wolf and just have too much self-awareness.

You have to have a little bit of like, you know, you don't give a fuck in your system

in order to do this well at Twitch.

One thing happened.

I remember that I was like, super, super proud to like be there and working there at the

time.

I was like, because I gave it a lot of shit.

You know, I just do the sort of like the, the stereotypical startup guy thing where

you're like, huh, startup, cool, big company, dumb, big company, slow, big company, boring,

big company, no risk, big company, no innovation, right?

Like it's the startup caveman who's just like, you know, like, you know, small startup

good, even though a small startup is like failing and has no money and like no users,

no, no impact, no nothing.

It's like still in our head, there's like something to be really proud of there.

But sometimes at these companies, some really cool shit happens.

And I remember one was they released this campaign for Prime Day.

So Twitch gets bought by Amazon.

Amazon wants all of the Amazon companies to really push Prime Day.

It's like, it's basically its own Black Friday that they created where it's like, yo, here's

an excuse to go spend a bunch of money that you otherwise weren't going to spend.

And Prime Day is huge for Amazon.

So they, you know, the memo comes down, Twitch, you need to support Prime Day.

And then everyone's at Twitch and like, shit, what do we do?

And Twitch has a user base that is so easily offended.

It's like anything Twitch does, any policy it creates, it's like, hey, we're increasing,

you know, the safety for women.

It's like, why?

Because women can't defend themselves.

It's like, dude, we're just trying to help, like we're not trying to offend anybody every

step of the way, but you could sort of do no right.

And so, so people were just like, dude, what are we going to do?

How are we going to promote this?

Like Amazon Prime, go buy shit stuff.

Like people are going to think we're just total sellouts.

Like this is not going to be cool.

So what do they do?

It's not going to be go over well.

So I don't know who the genius is in this company, but somebody was like, like, imagine

like a TV show where they're like, God, like everybody just think we're just a sellout.

Everything is just a sellout and you get cue the dream music, like sell out, sell out.

I got it.

Twitch sells out.

And they made it.

They like turned it on its head and they went self aware, you know, like, and it's always

sunny.

It's like the gang, you know, the gang goes to a Trump rally or whatever.

It's like the event was come watch how hard Twitch will sell out today.

And they basically leaned into it completely instead of trying to do it and then sort of

like set themselves up to catch a bunch of arrows from the users who were like, God, stop

trying to promote Prime Day.

This is annoying.

This is why it was, this is why I didn't want Amazon to buy Twitch.

Like I knew it was going to sell out to this corporation.

I call that the eight mile strategy.

Have you seen eight mile?

Yes.

Exactly.

Like this one, like the last scene M&M's like, yeah, I am white.

Yeah, I am poor.

Yeah.

This guy did have sex with my mom.

Yeah.

This all happened.

And then he makes it entertaining.

And then the other guys are like, well, fuck, I can't make fun of him about that.

Yeah.

I can't.

I can't mock that.

You just took it away from me.

You know what I mean?

I'm powerless here.

This is the eight mile strategy and I love it.

That's exactly what it is.

And so, yeah, they went full slim shady.

They basically, what they did was they created a QVC style set, right?

Like the cheesiest, salesiest set.

And then they invited the big streamers and it was like, they created this like this neon

80s logo that was like, Twitch sells out.

And then the people would jog on to the stage and be like, today I'm going to sell you this

shitty blender.

And they like, and people found it so entertaining and it was funny and it was self aware and

they, they just like, and it sold like crazy.

Like it was so successful.

And I don't know who this was.

It was somebody in like the creative marketing department.

I think I met them at one point, but I was like, Hey, you don't know this, but like,

that was the number one thing I respected, you know, that we did that of all the features

we shipped of all the projects we tried.

That was my favorite.

It was my number one.

I thought that was so well done.

Whoever came up with that, you had guts, your creativity and you like turned a disadvantage

into an advantage, which is like, for me, that's the highest form of respect.

When I see somebody who can take a disadvantage and flip it to an advantage, it's like, that's

you're my person.

You are, you are everything that's right about business in my book.

I love that.

I'm going to look that up.

I want to see, uh, I want to say, like, I want to see the content.

I bet it's hilarious.

It's good.

It was really well done.

We need to come up with a better way to end the show.

If we're going to come up with a way to start it, we have to come up with it.

Yeah.

Hey, you never talked about the basketball game.

Oh yeah.

You got to talk about that.

Do you want to talk about that?

Oh yeah.

Let's do it.

I got to be a little vague about it, but yeah, let's do it.

You guys saw.

So I sent you guys the guest list for this thing.

Um, I guess I should explain what it is.

So I went to a conference, I went to a conference and it was fun.

It was a lot of fun.

But I don't know about you, but I have this like feeling before I go to a conference,

which is like, there's like a 48 hour period before where I'm like, what are the reasons

I could not go to do this?

Yeah.

What are the reasons I could get out of this?

I don't know why that urge comes over me.

I think like just the idea in my head of what a conference entails is like this stuffy

ballroom, like awkward handshake conversations with people who like, you know, nobody knows

each other.

And it's just like, it's like just like the worst first day of college all over again

every day in my, you know, in my professional life now.

And so I was like, yeah, I just hate that feeling and I hate conferences, but like there

is some magic at conferences to happen.

So, you know, I do like meeting new people.

I do like learning new things.

Um, and I do like some of the like little side events that happen in a conference that

are like not the speaker on the stage and not the like networking mixer where I have

to like go barge in behind.

What are you guys talking about?

Oh, you guys know each other for 10 years?

Cool.

So, uh, I'm, uh, I'm Sean, I have a, you guys like podcast, you know, you don't recognize

me.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, I was just asking if you guys knew where the bathroom was.

I was just waiting this whole time to barge in and ask that.

I'm going to go now.

See you.

So by the way, the best, the best way to approach that I've learned is just saying, Hey, I don't

know anyone here.

Can I join your conversation?

I've noticed that to be the best.

The upfront method.

Um, yeah, exactly.

So I disliked conferences for that reason and I was like, all right.

Um, and, and at the same time, I'm like, dude, I missed doing some stuff that was really

fun that I just don't make a lot of time for nowadays.

I was like, I miss just playing basketball.

Just like, dude, I used to play three hours a day, just pick up was so fun.

That was like the best time just me and my friends and just playing it.

You know, we used to meet a bunch of cool people doing that.

And so I was talking to Ben and I was like, not producer, Ben, but business partner, Ben.

I was like, I was like, dude, what if, could we get like the magic of a conference to combine

with the magic of why just go and play playing pick up?

Like, is there a way to do this?

And he's like, yeah, I got an idea.

And so we came up with this idea, which was we have a friend who trains some of the biggest

like NBA stars and he's been training them for years and like, these are like, you know,

all-star, hall of fame, lever level players and, um, he's their personal trainer.

Like he'll go to their house and work with them every day in the summer and things like

that.

And, uh, we've become friendly with him, uh, because he's a, he's an entrepreneur and

we've, we got to know him that way and kind of helping each other out with our businesses.

And so we were like, yo, um, his name's Alex Basil.

We're like, Alex, you know, you train Kyrie Irving, you train Trey Young, you train Carmelo

Anthony, you train these guys like, dude, what if I just got a bunch of business dorks

together who all love basketball and like, would you just train us like you train them

like a fantasy camp?

Like, can we just pretend for a weekend?

Like we are, we're those guys and he's like, yeah, I'm just like, just pick a weekend as

long as I'm free.

Like we'll do it.

And I was like, okay.

And then I was like, once I had one side of it and I was like, all right, so let's,

what if we just got like 10, 12 people who were, you need your anchor though.

You need your whale.

And we needed our whale.

And I was like, how do I get people to come to this?

I was like, first of all, I don't even know who plays basketball.

Who doesn't.

I was like, who would I want to, who's like number one, a great hang number two loves

basketball and number three, like successful enough in business where if I go invite the

next person, the pull is that these other people are coming, right?

That's the key to any great event is these other people are going to be there.

The people are the event.

That way I don't have to be like great with the food and Bev and like the environment.

I have these logistics I'm not good at.

Like the people are the event as long as the people are there to work.

And so, um, I won't say who, but we landed one big whale, famous person X and then the

Domino's world famous, world famous mainstream families type of person.

Exactly.

So mainstream, famous type person.

And then I was like, okay, cool.

And I started to get a couple of friends in and I sent you the guest list because you're

coming.

Yeah.

And producer Ben is coming and or like I told you guys to come.

I don't know if you guys are not coming, but you should come.

It'll be fun.

When's the date?

Did you say the date?

It's next month or it's in 20 days.

So it's 20 days from now.

But you saw that guest list.

Dude, it's coming together.

There's some pretty awesome people going now.

And now it's way bigger than like 10 people.

Like we got 20 people and this is like, how many, how big do you want it to be?

Their dad owns this NBA team and this person, they just sold their company for all this

money.

And then this person, they're the CEO of this publicly traded company.

It's like, I didn't even know that guy likes to play, you know, like there's a whole bunch

of really interesting people.

I think this is going to be dope.

And I think this is a way better way.

I think this is a hack where I don't have to go attend conferences.

I get to host the party.

Dude, you should invite Lori, jet.com.

I should invite him.

Yeah, I haven't invited him yet.

That's a good one.

I don't know if he plays.

I mean, he owns a basketball team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's awesome.

I will invite him.

But yeah, what do you think about this?

This is awesome.

It's going to be the best.

I think it's going to be really fun.

I think you should invite even bigger, more famous people than just like internet dorks.

Like Mark would be cool or I don't know who else.

That's actually the hard part is to think about who to invite.

But yeah, it's going to be awesome.

I think it's going to be really fun.

I think it's a great idea.

I think making yourself the center of these types of things is bad ass.

It's a net win.

There's no downside.

Right.

Are you out of pocket?

Any money?

I don't know.

I haven't even thought about cost yet, but like, yeah, like it'll cost money to do this,

but it's not going to be super crazy.

And I think everyone would pitch in, everyone would pitch in just nobody's we're not trying

to make a profit off this thing.

We're just trying to like cover all the costs and do make it dope.

No, I think it's a great idea.

It would be the goal.

And it would be it's going to look sick on social, like it's work related.

Which let's let's tell daddy HubSpot to pay for it.

Hey, fellas, quick break between between games here.

Just want to quickly talk to you guys about your CRM needs.

They'll be into it.

I think they're trying to gather around.

I have a quick PowerPoint that I'd love to just run you through.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I think they would, but no, make them pay for it.

If we can record.

Yeah.

Oh, that's a good idea.

We only need to record one or two things.

We should record each day.

We could probably record two or three like things.

We can even have like two people on at a time.

So it's not like, dude, and we should get couches and have people playing in the background.

Yeah.

The game is just running in the background.

The audio sucks, it's just so much screaming from basketball.

The full send guys did a the full send guys.

They had a wedding.

I think it was like post Malone's manager or some, some like famously person was doing

a wedding and they set up a studio off to the side of the reception area and they're

in there recording a podcast for an hour and like Logan Paul popped in for like 10 minutes

and this other person popped in for like five minutes and it was really cool.

It was a great pod.

We should do something and they're like, all right, you guys want to go back like I think

desserts at our table and they went back, it was a really good idea.

If you explained it to me, I was like, oh, this isn't cool, but I saw them pull it off

and I was like, oh, this is actually really neat.

We should totally do that and ask HubSpot to front the bill.

All right, great.

All right, done.

Done.

All right.

Well, good idea.

That's the pod.

That was a good one.

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

for looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.