My First Million: Why Everyone Is Wrong About the Metaverse, Gaingels, Companies that Don't Advertise, and More

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.

You see, all the best people are crazy.

You can't be not crazy and be the best when there's crazy people out there who want to

be the best.

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 less travel never looking back.

Yeah.

I'm going to actually start by asking you a question.

I was just talking to a Ben about this.

Would you send your kids to a school and let them get hit or like not hit, but like hits

not the right word, but like if you're acting like an asshole, they could grab you by the

collar and kind of push you against the wall.

Are you okay with that?

No.

You're not okay with that?

I'm not okay with that.

And it's not because I don't want my kid to get hit.

It's that I wouldn't trust the person who would be doing the hitting to know the right

way and the wrong way and the right where the line is because I just think about it this

way.

If you're the type of teacher who signs up for that, like if you're the type of teacher

who goes to this specialty discipline school, the specialty abuse school to teach, like

I just don't want that person to have a screw loose and I'm not there to see it.

So I would rather err on the side of no, you can't hit my kid or like rough them up in

any way unless I'm kind of like, I know this person, I trust this person, I'm there or

whatever.

For example, I think if it was a coach of some kind and the coach was really tough on

my kid, I don't know about hitting, but like, you know, kind of punking my kid, totally

cool with that as long as the coach is legit.

But I've seen a whole bunch of people and actually grown up now and look back at some

of the teachers and coaches I had who kind of did weird stuff.

And now that I'm an adult, I'm like, oh, this was just a totally flawed person at the time.

I really like, I thought they were the authority.

I thought that they must know things that we don't know.

And then now I see them on Facebook and they're posting like crazy anti-vax stuff and they're

like, you know, like preppers and stuff like that.

I'm like, oh, you know, you kind of always just had a screw loose.

And at the time I thought I was, I was in the wrong for not, not, you know, not playing

by your rules or whatever.

I went, I went to all boys high school and I was, you know, I was a jerk at the time

and there was times where like the guy, the disciplinarian, like you're supposed to have

your shirt tucked in and I would, if I didn't have it untucked and I got yelled at a bunch

of times, he would come up and like give you like a horrible wedgie.

Like they would grab you by the underwear and lift you up and like, what have I told you

son about this?

And, or like if I like, you know, I was disrespectful a couple of times and they just would grab

me by the shirt and push me against the lager and they're like, if I hear from this again,

you're over.

You know what I mean?

And I loved it.

Was it a military school?

It was just a boys school.

No.

It was just an all boys Catholic college prep school in St. Louis, where I'm from.

That was your high school?

Yeah.

You went to all boys high school.

What about like before that?

I went to in St. Louis.

The way it works is most people in my area go to private school and like, so I went to

a Catholic K to eight and then eight to 12 all boys college prep Catholic school at the

time.

It was like $900 a year, uh, St. Ambrose, my grade school.

So it's like, that's just what everyone did.

Right.

Uh, so I'm assuming by you asking that question, you would want this?

It's not just be okay with it, but you would want this to be the case for your kids?

It depends.

If my children are like me and they're like mischievous, yeah, I think, I think that fear

is a good way to, uh, raise someone.

Yeah.

If they're, um, like my wife, then no, I wouldn't want that.

Right.

All right.

What do we, uh, what do you want to talk about today?

Can we talk about, uh, your tweet that went viral?

That was pretty cool.

Your boys done it again.

Another hit.

How many, how many people did it reach?

Uh, five million something.

Like that.

Wow.

So what you wrote, there wasn't even that interesting.

So I think it was pretty cool.

I would say it was pretty cool.

I think the reason I only thought it was pretty cool was like, cause I already know you and

I know how you think the cooler, there was two cool parts about it.

The, the, the, the, the one it was okay.

It was good.

It was like a 8.5 out of 10 insight.

Number two, the thing that's a 10 out of 10 was the fact that you just thought of it

like that, that you just, it was a pretty original thought.

I think.

And, uh, like you broke it down.

That was a 10 out of 10.

And one of the other thing that was a 10 out of 10 was that you reached amazing people.

So Bill Ackman, Bill Ackman, if you don't know five or $10 billion person, uh, kind

of a little bit like a God in the hedge fund world.

He actually retweeted it and he said, incredible, incredibly interesting insight or something

like that.

Yes.

I thought that was amazing.

I thought that was so cool.

And I think that for the listener, the takeaway here is like, I know you and you're kind of

a big deal now, but like three years ago, you weren't the big deal.

And now you're basically like one, you're, like, if you DM'd Bill Ackman or loads of

other people or you call their email, you have access to them.

And that's pretty amazing about the internet.

It's true.

It is amazing how these things, I'll tell you some cool things that happened.

Um, I don't know why I want to tell you this, but like, I guess I would never really say,

if, if I would just think of this like a podcast, I would never say this on the podcast because

it sounds like why are you bragging?

But like, if I just think about this, like I'm just talking to Sam, I'd be like, dude,

you won't believe what happened.

And so I tweet this thing out it, um, and I guess for people who don't know what it

is, I guess I tweeted a thing that was like, um, the, uh, it was about the metaverse, which

is like the dorkiest term, you know, ever.

So you know, already I feel lame even talking about my, it's lame to talk about a tweet.

It's lame to talk about the metaverse.

I'm multiplying two lambs together.

Um, but basically what happened is, uh, Facebook rebranded or renamed the company to meta.

And so it was kind of top of mind for a lot of people.

And I've been hearing a bunch of people talk about the metaverse kind of in the investor

circle.

Like I remember when we had, um, who was it that we had on here, Mike Maples, I think

it was.

And he was like, he was talking about big trends that he had kind of bet on in the past.

And we said, what trends are you betting on now?

And he said, like, you know, the shift to remote work, this other thing.

And then he goes, and the metaverse.

And like, we didn't even really talk about it on the episode, but I remember stashing

that away as like, huh, this pretty legit guy said he's betting on the metaverse and

like, I, I don't even, I don't know what a metaverse company is.

And so I just kind of stashed away as like, something I should probably go lick into at

some point.

And, um, so I basically wrote a thread that was like, Hey, I think the way that people

think about this is, uh, is wrong.

So I thought about it originally, I thought about it the way I think most people do, which

is the metaverse is a place.

If you've ever read or watched the movie ready player one, it's kind of like, oh, there's

a virtual world like second life or like, you know, whatever, this is virtual world.

We're all going to go live in, hang out, it's like a video game life, basically.

And that's what people, I think with the headset, yeah, like you're plugged in.

It's some, some version of the matrix already player one or people have these different

mental models from like books or movies that they've seen.

And I said, I don't, I actually, I don't think it's a place.

I don't think that the metaverse is just like one giant Minecraft world that we're all

going to go live in and hang out in and play in and work in and all that stuff.

I don't think it's like one company creates this, this game and we all go live in it.

Um, I said, instead, I said, what if it's not a plot, what if we're wrong about that?

What if it's not a place?

What if it's a time?

And I was like, what does that mean?

Well, a time.

I basically described this like parallel.

So in the AI world, um, for artificial intelligence, there's this idea of the singularity.

And it's this moment where like kind of like technological progress just sort of escapes

us.

It just, it's, uh, it starts accelerating faster than, you know, uh, we can imagine.

And in rough speaking terms, this is where the doomsday people think, you know, it's

after this that basically the robots, you know, the artificial intelligence takes over

and humans are done.

And then other people think it's utopia where artificial intelligence can just invent things.

It can create cures for cancer and whatever else.

And humans will be saved.

And like we all have to just, we all just will have hobbies.

We don't have to work because AI just takes care of everything.

But there's this idea of the singularity and it's this moment in time where AI basically

surpasses this threshold.

So I was basically arguing whether my, my, my idea was, I think the metaverse is actually

a time.

It's a moment in time where we care more about the things in our digital life than in our

physical life.

And care more doesn't mean like, oh, I don't care if my body gets hurt or dies, right?

That's not really what I meant.

But like if you spend all your time working online and then you communicate with people

who are also online and you don't even really know them in real life, you're not talking

to your neighbor, you're talking to this person on Twitter or this person in a Discord, this

person on Reddit.

And then you're watching all of your entertainment is streamed to you online.

And all of your assets are digital assets like cryptocurrencies and things like that.

So you know, your money is digital.

Like once everything goes digital, more and more things go digital.

At some point there's a tipping point where you basically your identity, your assets,

your social life, it's all online.

And I said that to me is the metaverse and it won't be one company.

You'll be a combination of companies that are all doing that.

And I kind of gave some examples like, you know, a filter in Instagram is basically like

a better superior replacement to cosmetic, you know, getting plastic surgery or wearing

heavy makeup, right?

Like the digital filter matters more is cheaper, more accessible to more people because ultimately

you care how you're seen online almost more than you care how you're seen in person, right?

Like I know plenty of people that would never, they would never post a photo of them with

their hair messy and their sweats and their oversized t-shirt.

They would never post that on Instagram, but they'll go to the grocery store like that

because who cares?

I don't care what these people think, but I really care what those people think.

So what I was describing was that this is already happening.

There's this long running shift that's happening where you're caring more about your digital

reputation, your digital identity, your digital assets than your real world stuff.

And I said, so some people this is going to be like sound like the worst thing ever.

Some people are going to think this is the best thing ever.

And my argument is it's not even, it's neither the best nor the worst, it's just the way

that things are going and you'll make of it whatever you choose.

So anyways, that's what we're going to do.

And you tweeted this, you tweeted this on like Friday or Thursday and what happened?

At first nothing really happened.

It kind of did how I thought it would do initially.

So initially I was like, oh, it's kind of an interesting idea, but pretty like nerdy

and in the weeds and I don't think anyone's going to care.

And it kind of didn't do much at the beginning.

And then something happened and it just started picking up steam.

Like it's, it's getting more, like yesterday I had even more mentions because this, you

know, Fred Wilson is the VC, yeah, the VC from Union Square Ventures.

He's had this blog that like for a long time, I think it's like Fred or something like that.

He's been blogging for like 15 years.

I've read his ideas for so long and he made a post in his post today was the metaverse.

He goes, I read this really insightful thing and he just embedded my tweet.

He's like, it made me think blah, blah, blah.

And so then again, it's a new spike of people or whatever.

And so yeah, I didn't expect it to be 1000 likes.

So okay.

So the first thing is after people followed you because of it, let's see.

I started at 178, 178,000 followers and I now have a hundred and ninety three and a half

thousand.

So 193.5.

We don't do public math, but we can add this up 15,000 new followers.

The post itself has about 20,000 plus likes, but I'll tell you what was that's, that's,

that's okay.

That's the cool part.

That's numbers.

But here's what was fun.

I get a call from, we'll have to bleep this out, but I get a call right after I post it

about 15 minutes later.

I get a call from and, you know, basically I'll bleep that out.

But basically a famous person who has stuff on Netflix and they go, dude, I'm tripping

out over here.

I go, I go, what?

And they've never called me before.

So it's not like we're friends.

He had after.

So I did that clubhouse thread a while back and this person at DM me saying, Hey, that's

like, that's so on point, blah, blah, blah.

And they said, Hey, if I ever come to San Francisco, you know, for, for, you know, you know, some,

some of my, my, my Hollywood work, then, then I'd love to, you know, hang out or something.

And I was like, yeah, right.

And but I gave him my number.

And so I get a phone call from the person and then they say, dude, I'm tripping out

over here.

And you know, like, he made me a little bit anxious, like, this is like, what's going

to happen?

Like, I think you're right, but I don't know what it means if you're right.

So anyways, we have this like little conversation.

So that was kind of fun.

And then it starts going into a bunch of NFL players started following and I'm like, why

would they care?

And so a bunch of pro athletes followed.

And and so then I'm, you know, sliding into their DMs or they're sliding into my DMs.

I'm just basically, it's like clear the calendar all day.

I'm just going to be answering direct messages.

Really?

So I don't know who's in here, but I know a lot of values in here.

So professional athletes.

Yeah.

A bunch of people from the tech industry, which you would expect.

And then I'm intriguing from the tech world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think for I mean, Fred Wilson, I felt pretty good about like a bunch of the Andreson guys

who had blocked me from the clubhouse thread, some of their partners or the people who blocked

me probably didn't didn't didn't reply still they didn't unblock me for this.

But some of the other partners messaged and said, Hey, this is, you know, this is great.

And I said, okay, I'm glad I'm not just permanently banned from, from, from your officers.

That's awesome.

I think that's great.

So this is cool stuff happens.

And then, you know, the other thing is that a bunch of people and I realized this later,

which is I thought kind of like, you know, even if you have one of these Twitter threads

that goes viral, who cares?

Like ultimately, what does it lead to?

It's fun.

But you know, who gives a shit?

But I've seen now months later, there was a lot of people who are like, like, let's

say I want to go invest in a company.

They're like, dude, I remember that thread that was epic.

And they're just like, you're cool.

Right.

And you just get the stamp because in a world where it's so noisy, there's so many people,

if you do one memorable thing that people respect and like, it's like, that's the shortcut

in their brain that says, okay, I like this person.

Yeah, I trust this person.

Yeah, they're cool.

And it's like, just from that, that's not like, I wouldn't have ever predicted that.

So anyways, I call these like my little serendipity engines.

It's like, I put it out there in the world and I could never predict what's going to

happen.

But then all these like kind of second and third order consequences end up happening

where you end up meeting somebody, going to dinner, doing a deal.

Like it's just all this weird stuff that you can't predict.

So fun day when this happens, but also such a weird thing, dude.

Like I couldn't imagine, even if you told me five years ago, 10 years ago, like this

would be a thing in my life that I would care about.

I'd be like, what are you talking about?

Why would I care about that?

Yeah.

I think it is pretty unique.

And I think that I met this guy named Blake.

I don't know what his name is.

Blake B. But I went to Oklahoma City when I was driving through and I had like a MFM

meetup or like a Sampar meetup.

I don't know what it was.

And I hosted like 20 people for breakfast and this guy came and they're like, what would

you tell us if you, if we want to, I forget what the even question was and I go, man,

get on Twitter.

It's where it's happening.

And he's on it now.

And he signed up whenever I did this thing a year ago.

Now he's got like 50, 80,000 followers, 50, 70.

I forget.

What's his name?

Blake Burge.

You probably see him in like the little circle jerk.

Yeah.

And he was at the meetup.

He didn't even have Twitter.

I go, dude, sign up right now and start posting this shit.

You can meet people.

It's pretty amazing.

You know what's crazy also?

Somebody, I'm pretty sure somebody sent it to Zuck because somebody who's very close

to him, like respect, like, like, was like, yeah, this is awesome.

And so I'm pretty sure that person was going to share it with, with him, which is kind of

crazy, right?

And really, I watched the keynote of him talking, you know, he gave a basically a 30 minute

presentation.

I actually want to talk about this.

So he gave a 30 minute presentation saying we re-branded to Metta.

Here's why.

Here's what it's going to be like.

Not just like, here's not just like here's new products we're going to build, but here's

what the world is going to look like.

Here's what life is going to look like.

He gave this cool presentation.

I don't know.

Did you see this presentation?

A little bit.

It bored the fuck out of me.

Oh, really?

I thought it was amazing.

You got bored from that?

A little bit.

It's literally like somebody opened the door and is like, Hey, you want to see what life

is going to look like in 20 years?

Yeah.

I just find it to be incredibly unlikable.

Well, yeah, he's kind of robotic, but like, I still think hard to watch.

I definitely, yeah, there's definitely some cringe factor for sure.

But, but the funny thing is I saw that and I was supposed to have this call with Ben

and Ben's like, Oh, I got to like, you know, I got to take care of the baby real quick.

Like just, you know, I'll be online in like 25 minutes.

And I was like, okay, cool.

I was like, all right, I got 25 minutes to kill and I just watched this thing and I just

tweeted it out.

And like, to me, it was like a throwaway thing.

It wasn't like a planned, drafted, edited thing.

And so anyway, it's crazy how that works.

But I want to talk about this, this meta thing.

So not even what, what he predicted or what kind of suck laid out, but what do you think

about Facebook changing the name of the company in general and like, I have kind of a theory

on why, but, but I'd love to hear what you think.

I think that if I was Facebook and I wanted to recruit the best people on earth, I would

do like what I've learned running a business.

And this is something that every business says is they say, like an entrepreneur of

a 20 person company, you even tweeted it about Ben Levy.

Um, like I just call Ben like blank, but what should I call him?

So this is something that everyone says is true, but it's not.

Which is that titles, titles matter.

People will be like, Oh, titles don't matter.

Just call yourself anything.

No, they're actually really important and they matter a ton.

Even if you're a 10 person company, if I was Zuck and I wanted to create a company where

people wanted to work, which I think they're struggling to right now, I would change the

name of the company and I would have a CEO of Facebook.

I would have a CEO of this, a CEO of that, which means there's like a VP, there's like

a president and that's, and then I would give all these people their own kingdoms and that's

how I would continue to grow.

So that's what I would do is I would, if that's exactly what Facebook did or Google, so there's

a CEO of Google, there's a CEO of YouTube, a CEO of this, of that, of that, of that,

and then which each CEO, there's like a hierarchy for people to climb and you got to give these

people these ladders.

That's why I think it's a great idea.

That's that's on point.

So basically I've heard, I will call it maybe three or four different theories.

So one theory is what you call this up.

Is this real?

So that's what I nail it in kind of nerd circles.

You know, I've just heard a couple of people talk about this and I was kind of like, here's

what I think it is, but let's start with the layout, the theory.

So three one is it's a recruiting.

Why would you do this?

Right?

They said it's a recruiting thing.

And it's basically a mix of what you said, which is when you create a parent company,

now you have like more, you created basically another level at the exact level you created.

It's like your neck was compressed and now it's stretched out and it's like, ah, you just

created this breathing room.

So that person who's otherwise VP can now become CEO and it's like, that might be the

difference between them.

Like, I know, for example, the person who, who, you know, was head of or VP of, I don't

look at the CEO, then look up a Fiji Fiji sumo's title.

So she was, she was in charge of big blue, which is the Facebook app.

And and then, and there was Chris Cox before her and they, and they ran kind of like multiple

products, they were kind of like in charge of like the suite of products, but their titles

weren't CEO.

It was something else.

And she left and now she's the CEO of Instacart.

So she like left the big chip, you know, the trillion dollar company to go be the CEO of

a maybe 10 or 20 billion dollar company.

I don't know what Instacart's valued at, but something like that.

And and so now you lose that key talent.

And maybe it's because she looked up and said, this guy's never going to leave.

This guy was super young.

He loves this shit.

You know, where, where do I go?

How do I go up?

I can't go up anymore.

And even the stock price.

We're already at a trillion dollars.

What am I betting on?

We go to 10 trillion.

Like I need some upside and I need some some resume growth here.

So that's one theory.

I like that theory.

I think that's true, but I wouldn't say it's the number one reason.

Okay.

So let's go to the other theories.

Then there's the skeptical theory, which is dude, Facebook's brand is trash.

It's the Philip Morris of, you know, Facebook equals cigarettes and they're just trying to

run away from all the bad news and all the bad branding.

And so they're going to change the theory.

So a lot of people think that and there's a, there's a, there's a subset on that, which

is if, if Mark hires a CEO of Facebook, the app, then the person who get called into Senate

is that person to go sit in front of Senate and talk all the stuff and they can get sort

of like hammered out there.

But Zuck as, you know, chairman or whatever of, of meta, it's like, you know, when the

Google guys did this date, Sundar now or whatever has to go, um, go in front of Congress and

Larry Page can just go and, and he's, you know, could be CEO of Alphabet and not have

to worry about that stuff.

So did you know that?

Did you know that one of the Google founders?

I don't know.

I don't, I think it's Larry.

You know, he can't speak.

He's got like a voice problem.

Sir, sir gay.

He's got a voice.

Larry.

It is Larry.

Yeah.

I think it's Larry.

If you go and go to his name, type in like his name on YouTube and you'll see a video

of him 10 years ago and you could hear it progressing.

And then like a maybe five years ago, you're like, Oh, this is really bad.

I'm pretty sure at this point he can't talk at all.

But if you go, this is so interesting, Google his name and watch a video of him.

And you, any video that's online, it's probably recent enough that you could start hearing

his voice.

You know, I'm not making fun of him, but he sounds like Kermit the frog.

Like it's a really weird voice for how he looks.

It's definitely been that way for a few years.

I think he can still speak, but it's basically it's his vocal cords are like partially paralyzed

if I remember correctly.

Yeah.

It's crazy, man.

So if I was him, I wouldn't want to go speak either.

I mean, it seems really embarrassing.

I mean, he shouldn't be embarrassed, but I understand, you know, so by the way, I'm just

reading it right now.

It says 14 years ago he had a cold and then he got like a horse, a horse voice from the

cold and he just never recovered.

He went to a doctor and they said his left vocal cord was paralyzed and it's a nerve problem

that's causing your left vocal cord not to move properly anymore.

Yeah.

Like when I first heard him talk, I was like, is the video broken?

Right.

Because he's super soft spoken, right?

So you're like, wow, it sounds like he's speaking.

It sounds like the video is in slow motion or something.

It was really, you know, it's sad.

It sucks.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

And so I think it has happened on his right vocal cord to now Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

That's wild.

Yeah.

It's it's shit.

Anyway, but yeah.

So if I was him, I wouldn't want to speak in front of the Senate either.

And Ben looked it up.

Fiji's title was head of the Facebook app.

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So so that's that's one theory, which is it's such bad news as a rebrand.

And I think one of the cigarette companies rebranded to like Altria or Altia or something

like that.

So it's like it's a reminiscent of that.

So okay.

So that's like another theory.

And then there's the third theory, which is actually the theory that I subscribe to,

which is this is actually just a mission shift.

And so I remember when I worked at Twitch, and this is the second year is right before

I left.

So I was kind of like, you know, basically I was on paternity leave.

I wasn't even really working at Twitch at that time I was on paternity leave and I was

thinking, okay, I think it's time for my next thing.

But I got a phone call from Emmett, who's the CEO.

And Emmett's great.

And you know, I got a ton of respect for him and he basically said, hey, I want to, he

messaged me something and said, like, hey, do you have time to talk today?

Like, I want to bounce something off you.

And he called me and he basically said, you know, this funny thing has happened, which

is that, like, I think eight to 10 years ago, very early days of Twitch, we had, we set

out like this big North Star mission, which was a million creators getting paid to create

on the platform.

And so it was like one million, he's like, and at that time we might have had like, you

know, we were in the thousands or tens of thousands and like that, like a million just

seemed a million people getting paid, like earning money doing this, it just seemed like

wild.

And so he's like, you know, so, so the million was like super far away.

He's like, and then, you know, last year, like we hit the million and he's like, it's

just really weird feeling like you, you hit this 10 year goal and there's like this amazing

part of it, which is holy shit, we did it.

And then there's this numb part of it, which is like, wait, it's like, now what, what do

you do when you hit the thing that you thought was like, you know, it's like when Elon takes

a man to Mars.

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Okay.

What's the, what's the next step?

Right.

It's like, if you get to the moon, you got to start thinking, what do I do now?

And so he said, you know, one of the most dangerous, he told me on the phone, he goes,

one of the most dangerous things for a company is achieving your mission because you have

to reinvent your mission.

You have to reinvent yourself and think bigger.

He's like, and so he was like, I want to brainstorm with you some ideas on what that

could be.

What's your mission for the company next 10 years?

And so we had a good, good brainstorm or whatever.

And, and so I think that's what this is.

I think Facebook is now used by like everybody with a cell phone, you know, Facebook or one

of the Facebook apps.

They, they, the mission was connect, you know, like connect the world or whatever.

They literally did it.

They connected the world.

Everybody is using like not only one, but multiple of their products.

So many people use Facebook that when Sarah worked there, I think they were sending satellites

to India because they just literally needed more people on the web in order to get more

people.

They ran out of, ran out of people with, with internet.

And so it's like, dude, you know, it's that moment where your, your TAM, your total addressable

market becomes your actual market share.

It's insane.

And so to the point where I remember once we were having lunch with Alex, the founder

of calm, and he just started cracking up and I was like, what?

He goes, I just realized he's like, dude, think about how many Facebook accounts shut

down.

They churn just due to death.

He's like, every day there's probably like a million people who just die and stop using

the service.

And he was just like, Kackler, he's like, that's insane to me.

He's like, that if you're at that scale, that's how many people literally just die and stop

using our service.

That's like more people than ever have used our product will die today on Facebook.

So anyways, I think that this is a mission shift.

Basically, I think they achieved the mission one.

And it's like, what's the point of the company now?

Is it just to make money?

And, and I think a lot of people think Zuckerberg's pretty evil.

I actually don't think he's evil.

I do think he likes power as evidenced by like, you go read those early like text messages

that got leaked of him talking to his buddy at college and he's like, dude, he's like,

you know, these dumb fucks are just giving me all their information or whatever.

Like, it sounds really evil, but I think he just liked being kind of like the puppet

master a little bit.

But fundamentally, I don't think he's money hungry.

I don't think he's driven by money.

And early on, I remember when Facebook IPO'd, he put something in their perspective that

I really liked and I think other people kind of rolled their eyes if you just hate everything

Facebook does.

But I thought it was pretty cool.

He goes, we don't build great services to make money.

We make money to build great services.

And he's like, there's a big important, there's an important difference between the two.

Yes, we care about money, but we care about money so that we have the profits to invest

in building great services to hire the best people who can build the greatest services

and the greatest products in the world.

And I think that's what they're doing now.

He said they're investing $10 billion this year in their virtual reality augmented reality

stuff for, for like, you know, kind of the metaverse, which is an absurd amount of money

to be investing into this.

You know, that's like, that's what some people think, like, you know, the stuff is going

to be worth someday.

If you, if you started a company in VR, you'd be hoping it'd be worth $10 billion someday.

He's investing that as one year's R&D, which is insane.

I want to talk to you about a bunch of different things, but, but I want, and I want to ask

you about your real estate guy, your real estate buddy, but someone said they like when

we rambled about normal stuff.

And I want to get, we can make this really quick, but did you watch UFC on Saturday?

I did.

Oh, no, I watched part of it.

Yeah.

I watched Hamza.

Okay.

So I want, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if you're into UFC or not.

I want you all to do this.

So a few weeks ago, a few months ago, we talked about this woman named Rose Namigunis, Namigunis.

Her name is Thug Rose.

She's this little white-haired lady with like a shaved head, really cool.

And she was muttering to herself, like, I'm the best, I'm the best before the, before

the fight.

And it was inspirational.

It was, and then she knocked out this woman and it was like inspirational because she's

very endearing.

She's very cute.

Like there's everything to like about this woman.

There's this guy who's kind of the same thing, but the opposite.

So there's this guy that is about to be the best, but he's not the best first, not the

best yet.

His name is Kamza, okay?

And he's this, there's, for some reason, there's a huge Chechian group of UFC fighters.

Chechnya, if you don't know, I don't want to sound like a fool.

I'm not incredibly well researched.

It's like a subsidiary of Russia.

It's a region of Russia.

They're mostly, I think, so they're white and they look white, but they're devout Muslims

and they're Russian.

I don't know how, like, if they consider them Russia or not, but we Americans would say,

oh, you're just a Russian Muslim.

That's what they look like.

They're known to wrestle.

A lot of them are from this area called Dagestan, where if you imagine in your head what Afghanistan

looks like, that's kind of what this area looks like and it's in Russia.

And they basically have gone through just a ton of war lately in the last like 20 years,

30 years.

So there's this guy named Kamza and he had a cleft lip or something like that.

So his lip is all crooked and he is so scary looking and he comes in and he knows how to

speak English now.

But his attitude and what he says, he says the same thing.

Who do you want to fight next?

And he goes, oh, brother, I'll smash everyone.

I'm going to kill everyone.

I'm going to take their soul.

And he's been saying that this whole time and he's been in four fights in the UFC and

he's been punched in the face one time.

This weekend is absurd, which is absurd, which is absurd.

This weekend he fought the best Chinese guy.

I forget his last name was Lee.

He's just he's a little bit older, but he's considered the best out of China and he picked

them up and he walked over to the side of the cage where Dana was and he yells to Dana,

get off your phone, watch this.

And he gets on top of the guy and chokes him unconscious.

And so the interview afterwards in the ring and outside the ring, he goes, brother, I'm

just here to smash everyone and kill people.

Who do you want to fight next?

Everyone brother.

I kill everyone.

I'm here to kill everyone, brother.

I love this.

I'll kill everyone.

That's all he was saying.

And they go, what are you going to?

Are you going to fight the number one person?

He goes, well, they're going to have to give me the number one person because I'm going

to kill everyone.

No one will be alive.

And then he even said something.

He goes, he goes, they go, you know, where did you get this mentality or something?

He goes, I'm crazy, man.

He goes, I just, he goes, you don't, all the best people are crazy.

You can't be not crazy and be the best when there's crazy people out there who want to

be the best.

And I just thought that's so true.

It's absolutely true.

He goes, I'm a gangster.

He goes, I'm a gangster.

I'm crazy.

And I think there's two, there's a few things to learn here.

The first is, I think a lot of that is born.

I think a lot of that is just an act that you've turned on because in his case, I imagine

he's seen a lot of tragedy and like fucking war and he like created this tough guy persona

in order to just survive.

You know, he, the second thing is, I think you could tell yourself that consistently

and you kind of can become it.

And the third thing is this, these guys, these Zagastani guys, and also the, for some reason

this weekend, all Russians won Peter, Jan one, he's Russian, all these Russians, they're

crushing it.

They've got something in them.

I don't know what this Russian attitude is that I've noticed them out these guys, but

it's this, it's this very quiet, although comes out, even though he talks a lot of shit,

he's still really quiet.

It's this quiet, subtle confidence and I love it.

If I watch them, their videos over and over again, Fedor had it.

They've got this quiet confidence and I'm in love with that.

I'm in love with it.

Yeah.

They have a tenacity.

That's pretty crazy.

And I was watching, I was going through, I was just browsing on Tik Tok and this clip

came up related that like in the NBA, most of the NBA is not like that.

Like there's not many Russians in the NBA, but be kind of silly, UFC is one of the only

sports where people go and say, I want to kill everybody in any other sport.

They don't really say that on, in the press conference, right?

They might say it trash talk on the field when there's no microphone to pick it up.

But in the UFC, they just literally say it to the reporter, the reporter writes it down

and publishes the post or whatever.

And it's one of the only sports.

It's one of the only sports you can't play.

Right.

Yeah.

You can't like play it.

You know, it's like if it's like something, something bad is going to happen.

Two cool little nuggets here.

So early on, the founding story of the UFC is pretty, pretty wild, but it was started

by somebody else and then Dana White, who's currently the president of the UFC, pretty

famous guy.

He's like a part of the show, basically.

He goes to every single event.

He sits cage side.

He's, he's every like, and they do like an event in a different place every weekend.

So this guy's, he's now a billionaire and he said, and he's a, he's a very outspoken

guy.

Like, imagine the commissioner of your favorite sport, you know, they're usually a pretty

buttoned up guy, usually ex lawyer.

You know, they, they just say, you know, we as the NFL are committed to upholding integrity

and blah, blah, blah.

And Dana White will post like, oh, this fight's going to be awesome.

And some, somebody in an Instagram comment will be like, this fight sucks or that's too

expensive for the pay per view.

And then he was my fucking clown.

Yeah, he'll literally be like, you fucking clown, like shut up, you fucking clown.

And then that's like, he says that it's like, what, what CEO of what company is able to

just say that to their potential customers?

It's insane.

It's the whole sports savage.

But he said something early on because the bet that he made, the investment that they

made, they bought the UFC for about $2 million.

And it wasn't his money.

He convinced his two kind of childhood friends, the fortitas who own casinos.

That's their background.

That's how they made their wealth, convinced them, let's buy the UFC.

And then they ended up pouring in like 50 or $60 million at a loss to keep it alive to

promote the thing.

And he kept believing, kept believing, kept believing.

They kept pouring millions and millions of dollars in and it looked like it was not going

to work.

And then it has now since turned around as a public company and it's, you know, it's

all working now.

They sold it for, for, you know, over $4 billion.

So I think it, and I was, and I was looking at it, it's a great company.

It makes like three or 400 million a year in profit.

And they asked them, Dana, what gave you the faith that this business would work when

all the evidence just said the guy who, the guy who did this before me failed.

Nobody else has done this in America.

And, and you guys are bleeding like 40, 50, 60 million dollars.

Why did you continue?

He goes, because I get people and he goes, I understand humans.

He goes, let's say we're out on a playground and there's a football game going on over

there.

There's a soccer game over here.

There's a basketball court over there.

People shooting hoops.

And I said, oh my God, that Russian guy's fighting that Chinese guy.

And guess where everybody's attention goes?

He goes, everybody looks and then everybody runs over to watch the fight.

He goes, that's how humans are wired.

You can't help but turning and looking when a fight breaks out.

And that was the whole like thesis.

That was the underlying psychological nugget.

I loved that, you know, that, that, that is how simple he was thinking.

And he goes, he goes, and he goes, and by the way, this is a sport that transcends

every country.

Yeah.

Football is huge in America.

Go to the UK.

We have fighters who are like the pride of the UK.

It's a huge, we're huge in, in the UK.

We're huge in Australia.

We're huge in Africa.

We're huge in China.

Like this can get bigger than any one of those sports because we can tap into the global

population because fighting one person punching another is a universally known sport.

You don't need to even know the rules.

It's not like basketball or football or baseball.

Like it's like, if I try to watch cricket, I don't know what's going on.

I don't know the rules, but with two people are fighting, I understand the premise.

I get what's going on.

And it's like, you know, this historic barbaric thing.

So anyways, I love that business side of the UFC as well.

So if you're a UFC person that you know, I'm talking about, if you're not, that was pretty

cool.

And this weekend, there's a couple of things.

There's, I'll say it really quick, that the main thing is this guy, Kamara Usman, African

immigrant comes to America during college, kicks ass, the American dream.

He's fighting against a devout MAGA Trump supporter.

So that story is very fun.

The second fight is Rose Naomiunas, who I like.

She's fighting the best one from China.

She's they're both amazing.

And then the third one is like these both Midwestern hardworking guys who are just going to stand

there and bash you.

They're just like bangers.

They just stand there and bash each other's brains.

And so that's the cool fight this weekend.

All right.

What do you got?

Let's do something else.

Let's switch topics here.

You have a couple of things on here.

Let's do a quick idea, actually.

So, so Ben had this idea that I liked.

He goes, he goes, you know, my brother's a real estate agent and he goes real estate

agents are really competitive with each other, you know, in any given city, they're they're

fighting for kind of like the pie is this big, you know, it's either my client or yours.

There's not a whole lot of, you know, there's not a whole lot of ways for real estate agents

to collaborate with each other.

Some like to do deals together, like if I'm the buy side and you're the sell side, great,

we can, I'm confident we can get our clients to hammer out a deal.

But for the most part, it's a very kind of doggy dog world.

All agents are like the sports agents, whatever, but he goes with real estate agencies, like

there's something interesting that, that, you know, might be a niche little business.

And he goes, and so I called it real estate buddy, which is basically when you're, let's

say you're a real estate agent in Florida or right now, California, your real estate

agent in California and a bunch of people move into Texas.

That agent in California is not going to help you find the home in Texas, but maybe I helped

you buy your, your California home and you don't know any agents in Texas.

So what if I had basically a buddy in every state that if my client is moving there, I

can pass you to them and, and basically I get a share of the commission and they get

a free referral, free trusted client basically that somebody else has put the time and energy

into build up trust.

And so you could create this network of leads basically and, and partnerships across borders

where there actually is a big incentive to collaborate because otherwise both sides benefit

from this, whereas normally it's extremely competitive world.

So I thought that's a little interesting of a niche business, maybe something like that

exists.

I'm not super deep in that world.

I thought it was cool.

Have you ever used bigger pockets?

Like to learn, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you know what bigger pockets that is?

It's like a real estate kind of like media company and it's a forum plus podcast.

Yeah.

Bigger pockets buying real estate.

I think that could be potentially a huge business.

I don't think it is huge, but I bet it could be.

So if you look at the reason I see them all the time is when we look at our podcast rankings,

we're like on a good week will be like 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 in the big business categories

on a bad week will be 40, 50.

And bigger pockets is like always number three.

And then they have another one that's like number six and they got another one that's

like number 11.

Like they're always in the top 10 most listened podcasts, bigger pockets has three or four

of them.

And then they got this forum that costs, well, it's free, but you could sign up and get extra

stuff.

I'm a $300 a year paying member.

And I think what these guys are doing is they're like built this business and media arm or

whatever.

And then they just use all of their cash flow to go and buy more real estate.

It's an amazing company.

I love bigger pockets.

I think if you want to build a community, this is the company and make money from it.

This style and you want to do it with a style where you get a lot of people.

These guys are one hundred.

This is the model.

This is the perfect model on how to do it.

Yeah.

This is a great point because bigger pockets has existed for a while and it's always been

important.

The main guy, I think Joshua, Josh Dorkin or something, his name, he sold it at some

point.

So I think it's, I don't know who owns it now.

Let me see if I can find out.

So basically he sold the thing, not for a ton, if I remember correctly, McCarthy.

Not a good thing to sell.

He sold it in PE.

And this is such a valuable property.

So it was just like a forum.

And I don't know the full story on why he could raise.

This is like Angelus.

He raised like a massive fund.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I think he had like a, there was some story like he had like a medical emergency

for his kid or something.

So he had to take time off and he ended up selling it.

I don't know how it all went down, but I think you could compete with this.

I think you could build a better, bigger pockets.

It would be hard.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I think that they would be extremely valuable.

And if you're going to, if you're going to build a community or a media company in any

niche, this is one that I would, I would bet on because, you know, if you're not going

to go for something new and sexy, like crypto or whatever, you know, this is where a lot

of money is to be made.

And there's always a new batch of people that want to learn about making money in real estate,

how to buy real estate.

So there's always a new group of people who are looking to like, you know, learn, connect,

blah, blah, blah.

And, and maybe bigger pockets is pretty like established with its crew.

But you know, who's number two, if I just said who's number two behind bigger pockets?

Certainly there is somebody, but I don't think it's as household of a name right now.

And I wonder if you can take some other angle and do it.

By the way, can you talk to me, let me, let me, let me tell you about something that

I, let me talk about something real quick, something that you've never, maybe you're

about to say what I'm going to say.

A house, something that's not a household name and is huge in our little world.

There's this group.

It's a guy or a group of guys called Gangels.

This is exactly what I was going to ask you about.

Okay.

I've got to tell you, I'm getting dinner with these guys tonight.

Okay.

So Gangels, like no offense Gangels.

I think you guys are wonderful.

I've met you.

And we are name at first.

So I guess it's not spelled this way.

I guess it just means gay angel.

Um, okay.

So it's this, I think it's one person who started it Lorenzo.

I think his name is, he's gay, I guess, based off of, uh, doing some research on him.

And I think he was a successful entrepreneur.

I'm meeting him tonight.

So I don't know his whole background, but he started this group called Gangels.

And I believe it was an email list of gay, give the headline first.

Why is this interesting?

And then didn't give the background.

Yeah, you're right.

So it's this group of people or it's this guy who's got this.

It's not a fun, but it's like an investment group.

And this year alone, the rumor is that they're going to invest around four to $500 million.

And previously they've invested collectively over the past few years, like $300 million.

So like next year, two years, their total investment is going to be like a billion dollars,

which is basically like a $3 billion fun kind of like that you invest.

If you have a $3 billion fun, I'd imagine you invest that over five years.

So like that's like the numbers we're talking here.

And basically the way it works, like a very large, this is startup investing.

So this is like a very large technology fund that I have never heard of.

And it seems like a niche fringe thing.

It's like, oh, that's cool.

Like an LGBTQ fund.

What do you have?

Like a $2 million fund and you're, you're investing in, you know, some, some cool companies.

It's like, no, how are they deploying?

How are they getting $400 million in a year to deploy?

And then how are they deploying this?

I don't think they get any money.

If you Google, it's spelled Gangels, like gain, like G-A-I-N.

And then JOLS, Gangels.

And if you look at their portfolio and if you just Google Gangels and click news, you'll

see all these tech crunch articles that it says, you know, and this company raises money

from a Driesen, this, this, this and Gangels, this, this, this and Gangels.

We'll say it for every article.

And if you go to their portfolio page, do you see their portfolio page?

Yeah, it's legit.

Yeah.

Dude, they're in everything.

They're in everything.

They're in everything.

And what they do is they find companies and they write a page about it and then they send

it out to an email list and people invest and they get a 20% carry in it.

And they take also a fee of like eight or $10,000 per deal that they take out of that money.

And they use that as their like finder's fee so they could pay their lawyers and things

like that.

And that's the whole business model.

And they've got like this web of like five or six or seven people who will also send

the deals that Gangels gets access to, to their audience.

And those people who send it to their audience also get a stake in the, of the carry.

And that's, it's a very simple business model.

Are most of the investors gay or that's just the most of the people who started are gay?

What's the stick?

Can I do it if I'm not gay?

Yeah.

So here's the, yeah.

So here's the thing.

Why it's kind of crazy is it must have started like they like mostly invested into gay and

lesbian and transsexual or, uh, you know, whatever, uh, LGBT, uh, you know, whatever

the, the, um, sorry, I'm not me LB, L, I'm just struggling L, G, B, T, Q.

Yes.

Is that it?

That's the new intro music.

I think maybe you just stumbling over LGBTQ is, is perfect.

No, I'm just, whatever it, L, G, D, B, I just can't say it properly that.

So it started with that, that was their thing.

But then like they invested, like they've invested, yeah, they invested in Hone, which

is the company you and I invested for testosterone.

And that's like a pretty masculine male.

I guess you could say like, well, maybe if you're transitioning, you would want to take

testosterone, but, um, they invest in like Lyft.

So like, I don't know where, like how the, the LGD, whatever, I'm just like, just skip

it.

Well, LGBTQ thing lines up with the, with the whole, with like other, other companies,

but that was definitely their angle.

And it's not anymore, but it's a great angle because, you know, there's not a lot of gay

and lesbian investors and then they're like, Hey, look, that's our whole shtick.

Like let us in.

I understand.

It totally works.

Do you remember, uh, do you remember when you stopped using gay as a, uh, as a term for

like, uh, you know, just be meaning like whatever, like something is lame or something

is stupid.

Oh yeah.

In high school.

And do you remember what got you to stop when you realized like, oh wait, that's not

cool.

Just like when I had like gay friends, I was like, Oh, that's not very nice.

Is it?

And, uh, and then like, I talked to my nephews and they're like in the Sarah's in the Sarah's

nephews and they're like 14, 15 and 13.

And I was just curious and I was like, Hey, do you guys ever insult someone or does anyone

ever insult someone for being gay?

And they're like, what do you mean?

I'm like, you know, like, do you ever say like, yeah, like, you know, you say like,

Hey man, that's really gay.

You're gay.

And they go, but like, why is it bad to be gay?

And I was like, it's not, you just answered.

You just answered my question.

Thank you.

And they just, it just not part, you know what I mean?

When you're kids, when we were younger, that's, and it was crazy.

Yeah.

It's, I don't think young people like, and that's insult people for being gay.

I think it's pretty crazy.

Yeah.

I think that means like in 20 years, cause probably when I was 10, that's like what everybody

in my school, that's how, you know, that was like a common thing to say.

And so I think that means in 20 years, it went from just common and people did it without

even thinking to like, it would now be kind of disgusting.

It'd be, it's like, it's not even like a, it's not even an argument.

It's like, wait, why would we do that?

That's like, I wouldn't do that.

Dude, I referred to, you know, like, why would I, why would I try to use that as an

insult?

That doesn't make any sense.

I like, in my head, there's like the N word and then there's like the F word.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I wouldn't have, you know what I mean?

If I heard someone say that, I would be like, flabbergasted.

I'd be like, what?

Yeah.

It'd be like, when I was a kid, it was like the word, like, you know, if you said the

word, if it was like this, that was like the C word.

Now, like, I wouldn't say F, the F word.

You mean some British people, Australian people, they say it.

Yes.

But like, it's, yeah, it is kind of crazy how that, how it's changed.

I mean, obviously it's good.

But yeah, I remember as a kid, we used to talk about this all the time and then.

The person who first told me like, Hey, by the way, you know, that's not cool, right?

I was, uh, it was this guy who, who actually just, just, I think yesterday or two days

ago or something, the news came out that he's in gaze gay and he's engaged to, uh, to this

guy that he's been dating for 11 years.

So the actor Cal Penn, he, um, uh, when I was a kid, I was in a movie and he was my

older brother in the movie.

And so we like would hang out on the set all the time.

And I remember saying it when, whatever I was just calling, so I was trying to say something

was stupid or lame or whatever weird.

I don't know what I was trying to say.

This little kid was probably like in sixth grade or something.

And he was just like, um, he was the first person that I'd ever even brought my attention

to.

He goes, you know, that's not, uh, like you shouldn't say that when you just mean something's

like weird or not cool.

Uh, like you shouldn't say gay and you should say something else and he wasn't out that

time.

I don't know if he even knew at the time, but he brought that to my attention and I

felt so, I remember feeling so dumb cause I looked up to this guy, I thought he was

so cool and I was so nervous about it.

Yeah.

He was totally nice.

He kind of like, we're just hanging out.

Big brother to you.

Big brother to me who's just like, you know, like, by the way, like, you know, you shouldn't

do that.

Like think about it.

Oh, blah.

And I was like, oh, that makes total sense.

Like, I never even thought about this.

Like, and, and, and that time, and even in my, my world where I lived, Houston, Texas,

it's not like, even like I went back and it's not like I was the last one to know.

Nobody even really thought about it, but he was like in Hollywood and I think it was

like, you know, people on the West coast were, people on the coast tend to be like a little

more like kind of forward and liberal and progressive with that type of stuff.

So, um, so I remember hearing that and being like, oh man, I just made a fool of myself

and like, yeah, that's silly.

I don't know why I do that and I just stopped after that.

And so, you know, it came full circle yesterday, but anyways, we can do another, another topic.

What else you got?

All right.

Let's do one more.

Um, all right, I'm going to tell you about, um, actually, do you have one you want to

do?

You want me to go?

Let's do this one.

That's about, uh, companies.

So I had this idea.

I, I, I don't even know what it is, but I was reading that tech Tesla was doing something

called gigafest.

Do you know what gigafest is?

Yeah.

So basically, if I remember correctly, they, a lot of people like liberal media got angry

because they're like Tesla's throwing a festival during a pandemic, but basically they rented

out a town in Germany and they're doing like a conference or a festival.

And like what's happening at it?

Is it like drinking in music or is it like car technical stuff?

Do you know?

I have no idea.

So okay.

Honestly, it doesn't even matter what it was.

I just saw the name and I thought, Oh man, Tesla's doing another smart thing.

Like they basically took Oktoberfest and they just rebranded it for their thing.

And it's good.

I assumed it's going to be some combination of like fun as well as like, you know, between

music and food and drinks and all that, as well as like, you know, things that are relevant

to, you know, building cool cars and then recruiting talent and just building the brand

and having people have a great experience at the brand.

And I started thinking, why don't more companies do this?

And at first I thought, well, certainly they're not the only ones.

And I started thinking about other examples of this.

So there's like the Macy's Day Parade, which I don't even know like how that got invented.

I don't know.

I don't know the backstory.

But since I was a kid, I remember that there's always the Macy's Day Parade on TV.

And it's like, why did Macy's get in on that?

Or we've talked about Michelin star restaurants, right?

Michelin tires, you know, the tire company basically inventing a food restaurant ranking

system so that you would have a reason to go drive, you know, far outplaces to go try

these amazing restaurants.

They created demand for driving long distances through the Michelin star and they just got

their name and in all that.

And you know, there's the Forbes 30 under 30 list and then there's like in San Francisco

every year, if you live in San Francisco, you know, Dreamforce is this like full like

kind of shuts down half the city and there's sort of like a parade and there's like big

bands like you two come and perform, but it's like for the most boring thing, it's like

a sales CRM.

Dude, do you want to know why people, most people, more people don't do this?

Yeah, I think a lot of people actually try and it just doesn't work.

All right.

So the Fortune 500 Fortune 500 is that basically just means the top 500 companies in the world.

At this point, do you even think Fortune 500 means Fortune magazine?

No, right.

Sometimes it does over overtake the brand like Michelin Michelin star means more to

me than Michelin tires.

Do you, when you think, have you ever shopped at a Macy's?

Of course I've shopped at a Macy's before.

Have you been at a Macy's in 20 years?

Not 10.

Yeah.

10 years.

Probably cut off.

So there's one.

I think a lot of times people do this.

I always work with like creative people and maybe I'm just sometimes a pessimist around

this stuff.

A lot of times they give me these ideas and I'm like, this is just fucking stupid and

I don't think this is going to increase sales.

I'm just trying to survive at the moment and it doesn't work a lot of times.

I agree.

It's not for when you're in survival mode, which is where I spent most of my career in

startups is like, you're not in survival mode or you're in survival mode.

If you don't turn, if you don't make this work, it's going to just die so you don't

have time to plan a parade with a music festival and like all the stuff that wouldn't make

any sense.

And here's the other reason why this isn't a good idea though.

This isn't a good idea.

A lot of times because most companies, they're just fucking lame.

Like imagine like, I'm trying to think like just like this window blind company, Hunter

Douglas, like they're going to have like what a blind fest.

Like I don't know.

I mean, I get, I think there's some cool shit like, you know, Blendtec, the Blender.

Have you heard of Blendtec?

The Blender and they had Will It Blend?

That was awesome.

I loved Will It Blend.

Do you remember that YouTube channel?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

I love Will It Blend, but a lot of stuff is just lame and I don't want to celebrate it.

Now a few boring things that I think could work is what's that vacuum company?

Everyone loves Dyson.

Dyson?

Yeah.

Dude, I'm about to, I'm like been staying up at night, wondering if I'm going to buy

one of these $700 vacuums.

Have you ever used one of them?

The handheld one?

Yeah.

It's like a cordless, amazing one.

Yeah.

I have that one.

It's amazing.

It feels so satisfying.

Dude, I feel like I get 700 bucks of value every time I use it.

So like, Dyson has like, is like boring and I dig, I would do that.

I can't, I'll have to think of like, what else is like boring and awesome?

But dude, any company could do this.

All you have to do is attach your boring name to awesomeness and it does work, it does

work to an extent.

Now it's not going to turn a bad company into a good company, but it does take a boring

company and make them slightly less boring, it makes them more relevant.

But in general, I just feel like those same dollars just go further.

So like I see so many dumb billboards or just like useless events or useless like ads, you

know, on the all over the internet.

And I just sort of think, man, you know, for like $200,000, you can throw like a whole

music festival, you can do like some amazing things with $200,000 and that's what they'll

spend.

Yeah.

But I don't want to go to like, Floorock or Clorox Bleach and Imagine Dragons.

Like I just don't give a shit.

You might.

You might.

Did you want to go to a tire restaurants reviewed, a tire, a tire company's restaurant

review reviews?

No, you didn't.

Maybe.

But like when I think of like, like Clorox and like the killers, like I don't think

like I'm going to buy more bleach.

Dude, Mr. Brightside, although maybe, maybe that's a good point.

Walk right into that one.

I don't know.

I'm not sure if it could work.

Maybe.

But I think, and I also think a lot of those things, I don't think they're as successful

often.

Like whenever I was thinking of like Fortune 500 or Michelin, I'm like, I don't fucking

that don't associate that with the magazine.

The magazine's still going to go bankrupt anytime.

So anyway.

I don't know.

Like I think the Victoria Secret Fashion Show is a good example also of like going overboard

on these kind of events and like just put your, you're not directly trying to sell your

thing.

You're creating a spectacle.

You're attracting the type of people you want.

But for example, we have an ad budget for this podcast where they're like, dude, HubSpot

is great.

They're generous.

They're like, you guys are in our HubSpot podcast network.

We want to help you grow.

So they gave us a little bit, a little bit of cash.

A lot of money.

And I can't think of a thing to do with it.

Exactly.

Because and what's the plan right now?

The plan is to go spend a shit ton of it on Spotify ads, right?

And that might work and other podcasts and other podcast platforms and that might work.

I don't know.

We'll see.

It might work very poorly.

So I'm saying with that same amount of money, can I say how much money or no?

Hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter.

So hundreds of thousands of dollars maybe maybe we could say like in the range of a million

dollars a year.

Right.

So I don't know.

Like let's take our audience.

Our audience is kind of this hustler type mindset.

Our audience is this person who likes to, they like investing.

They like building shit.

They want to make money.

They like hearing about billion dollars companies and billionaires and things like that.

Like what could we do that would just get?

I don't know.

Like if we got 50,000 people to pay attention to something, I think that would be a huge

win.

Right.

So what would be a either an event or a stunt or something that's of service to people

the equivalent of what Red Bull did, right?

Like Red Bull was like, dude, we're an energy drink.

We're all about sort of like, you know, this is kind of badass lifestyle.

All right.

We're going to put a guy in a wingsuit.

We're going to take a guy like what?

What can we do though?

I've lost thinking about this.

I don't know.

Like I just feel like there's, um, okay, let me think of one.

I think that we could do, um, what do people who are startups, what do people who are into

building businesses?

What are they?

What are they super into that?

That's I've gone through this mental exercise and I'm, it's okay.

I have, I have a dumb for me.

I have a dumb, simple one.

I remember these people set up a, um, a headshots, uh, by the way, your computer screens

like covering your face or something.

Oh, there you go.

Um, I remember this, uh, uh, like a fitness company did this, they, they parked their

van outside of the, uh, Salesforce tower and everybody who's coming in, they're like,

do you want to get your body scanned real quick or do like this BMI test to do this

test?

I'll tell you.

I loved it.

They just hired, hired two people to stand outside the fucking like tower and they just

got a bunch of people in and they like, while they were there, they got, what is this all

about?

Who's doing this?

Why do I get this free thing?

And, uh, they got to learn about their, learn about their body while then being so upsold

into like signing up for these scans and personal training and a gym membership after that.

And I saw somebody else do this with headshots.

They're like, you know what, like your picture online just like looks like shit.

Sean, but what do we get on to do?

What's that?

So what do you want to do for us?

Yeah.

So I'm saying we could come up with something where let's say we had, I don't know if you

ever seen those like three 360 degree cameras.

Uh, you can rent these things for like a thousand dollars.

We could have a pop up in a city in, in, in New York and all you got to do is if you show

that you're subscribed to the pod, you can get a free epic headshot done for you and

we just pop them up, you know, near downtown or a bunch of people live and that thing would

cost us, you know, I don't know, three grand total for the day, but might have like a thousand

people have like a unique experience or 2000 people have a unique experience.

Or maybe we can have like a blimp going over, you know, going over Miami and the blimp is

going to, you know, airdrop, you know, some like cash or the blimp is going to display

some QR code or something like that.

And there's a giveaway inside.

I don't know.

Like some kind of million dollar bills.

Yeah.

Some kind of stunt or whatever.

Like let's say something that's like, I hear you, I'm on board.

I've just been going through this and I'm like, what is worth pulling off?

Like these are bad ideas.

I got to admit the ideas I had just now are bad ideas, but I feel like if I brainstorm

for an hour, which I'm going to do, I feel like we can come up with a great idea and

it's a better use.

I'll do the same than the ads.

I'll do the same.

I think it requires both, to be honest, and I'll do the same.

I think, and this is like a good example of whenever I talk to people and they're like,

well, I'll start this company once I get funding.

I'm like, if you had the money, you wouldn't even know what to do.

Trust me, the money's not the issue, right?

And that's how I feel right now.

I'm like, the marketing budget is not the issue.

Yeah.

I'm like, we got the money.

We got the people.

I just don't know.

So I had this, which is kind of fucked up.

Ramit, Ramit talks to people about this all the time.

He's like, once you're rich, what are you going to do?

And people actually struggle with this all the time.

Right.

I struggle with it.

I had this phrase, I used to say at our startup, which is you can always run out of money,

but you can never declare creative bankruptcy.

And that was, that was always my rule was like, I cannot have a conversation with somebody

who says, I can't think of an idea.

I don't know what else we could do.

It's like, you've declared creative bankruptcy and like now you must go out that door and

never return again.

And that was just my rule.

So even if I don't declare bankruptcy, those guys at outside magazine asked us if we wanted

to do the adventure.

I don't think you replied yet.

By the way, not yet.

I sent you.

You see it?

Okay.

And they're like, well, what else do you want to do?

And I'm like, oh, I have no idea.

I feel like such a punk.

I can't think when like, they're like, well, we can go anywhere as long as you're there

and back in three days.

I can't think of a thing.

It's fucked up.

Like, I don't know.

Okay.

Who does our audience look up to?

Warren Buffett, like he auctions off his like lunch thing every year for like a hundred

grand or whatever.

It's like, dude, some.

There's no way it's only a hundred grand.

I think it is.

It might even be less.

But like, I know, like Andrew Wilkinson did his.

I think it was like, it was like, I don't know, two grand or something to get lunch

with him.

You know how many people would want to do that?

Like we could just host these.

We could get people to like come and be able to hang out, have a have a lunch with Chamath

or something like that.

We could do a giveaway.

That is we spend the money here, but then we dangle that in front of people in order

to get them interested and excited about what we're doing.

Now those are kind of disconnected to what we're doing.

But I refuse to declare creative bankruptcy is my answer.

We just got to think about it because this it's been bothering me as well, where I'm

like, what, what should we do because if you're listening to this, imagine this.

We have hundreds of thousands of dollars of budget and we would we want a whole bunch

more people to subscribe to the podcast and just get down with the mission, like realize

that there's a cool podcast out there that they might like the reason you like it.

There's a whole bunch of other people that would like it for that same exact reason.

They just don't listen to it yet.

They never heard it.

They don't know that they should try it.

And so how would you turn hundreds of thousands of dollars into hundreds of thousands of

subscribers is the question.

And so, you know, if you have ideas, obviously my ideas kind of suck.

Sam's refusing to have an idea right now.

So we need we need ideas.

Ben, what do you think we should do?

Like the teacher calls on you in the worst possible moment.

No, this is because I was actually talking about this this morning with Darren and Jonathan.

But it's hard, right?

Well, so here's one idea that we had was we had this Tik Tok go viral, but it did well

on Tik Tok.

Do you see that?

Sean?

What was it?

It was a Rob Deirde thing.

What's his name?

Jacob, like texted me on Saturday night and he was like, hey, I made this and posted on

Tik Tok got like 100,000 views.

Yeah, which is like good.

So what we were saying is, what if we just put up $10 or $20,000 and just said, hey,

we're going to put out the video files from my first million.

Anyone can access the raw video files.

And if you want to make content for us, great.

And at the end of the month, we'll give $10 or $20,000 to whoever gets the most views

on Tik Tok or Instagram reels.

Like a 99 designs contest, that's not a bad idea.

That's actually a really good idea, 20 grand to in order to be submitted to the contest,

you have to, you have to post it on Twitter or Instagram.

And that's a great idea, actually.

So a consistent 20 grand a month contest for the best clip.

Yeah.

You can produce it.

You can just put it out there because you have a big audience, but like whatever.

Yeah.

Do whatever you want.

That's actually brilliant.

Right?

I think that's the greatest idea yet.

Right?

Right, Sean?

He almost went greatest idea ever.

He threw yet in there just to save himself.

I was so close.

Yeah, let's just do that.

All right.

I'm going to publicly brainstorm the ideas on Twitter.

That's how, that's how we're going to do this.

I'm going to add that one to it though.

I'm going to create a thread.

I'm going to add these ideas to it and then I'm just going to continue until we have a

winning idea.

It's just, it's a rolling $20,000 and every single month, one person gets $20,000 and

the criteria is the people who are posting the best, most interesting, most viewed MFM

video content.

My other idea is, I guess I'm just into contests, but it's like, hey, if you want to join this

contest, show up to downtown, preferably somewhere we're not a lot of people are from.

So like St. Louis, Cleveland, Austin, whatever, and Austin, Austin's a bad idea.

But okay, we're going to give you a category.

So it might be food.

It might be exercise and fitness, but you have 24 hours and whoever can make the most

money wins this contest and we'll give you an extra $20,000.

So essentially an entrepreneurship contest.

I got a better idea.

Fuck your idea.

Here's a better idea.

All right.

Here's a great idea.

Okay.

So Sam, how much does it cost to sponsor like an open bar at a bar, like set up a bar, actually

let's say, let's do this.

We pick 10 cities around the country and we say, hey, in these 10 cities, if you're one

of us, there is a place where you can go and you can hang out with other people who are

like that, like, like us at the ball, like, you know, like you have heard, you can say,

hey, we're going to do a lot of drink for three grand.

Yeah, exactly.

We're going to put up $1,500 and we're going to do this in 10 cities and we're going to

do this every Friday for the next, you know, let's call it three months or whatever.

It's like, you know, the winter, the winter fest and we say, great, we're going to do

that.

So we're going to do that 12 times.

It's 180 grand, but basically you've created a, and all you have to do to get to redeem

your free drink, to redeem a drink as you just got to show your subscriber, the pod

show bartender.

Boom, you get it.

We just call the, we get, we have cool bars or like whatever's like your favorite bar

in Austin, your favorite bar in New York, your favorite bar in San Francisco, whatever.

And we just make that our little watering hole and people who are into our shit can

go and hang out there.

And it's not that it's like the biggest mass idea, but the spark that would come from

a bunch of people, a bunch of our fans getting to know each other, hanging out, having drinks,

bringing their friends.

I think a lot of good would come of that.

A lot of good will would come.

I don't think that's bad.

That's not that expensive.

I think that's worth doing.

I would say that the video bounty is to me the most interesting.

I think that's like wildly interesting.

Yeah.

Bars, that's not bad.

Yeah.

I've done that for years and years on all types of stuff.

It worked really well for product time.

It worked well for us.

Yeah.

It works.

What have you done in that?

Well, like for the hustle, we've done meetups forever.

And then when I started my roommate business, we had meetups every single week for like

two years.

And so it was basically anyone who's ever looking for a roommate, you come that day

and we'll have a party with like 150 people who are also looking for housing.

And in order to come, you got to download our app.

Another one that does this by the way, it's like, it's like physically hard.

I remember being like, I was like exhausted all the time.

Yeah, for sure.

I remember this agency reached out and they had emailed us before being like, hey, we're

a creative ad agency.

It's like, yeah, into the into the trash pile.

Like, I don't I don't know you.

I don't.

This is just some outbound sales and whatever.

I don't care.

And one reached out and they go, they, they sent they sent a package with invites like

they sent us like a physical mail to our office.

It was a bunch of flyers inside cheap flyers, you know, just flyers, whatever they said,

but these are these are ticket entries.

This gets you entry to this party tonight as well as a free drink.

We rented out butter this bar in San Francisco that's like pretty famous.

And and they go, we're having a meme battle tonight.

It's like a rap battle, but for memes and we're like, what?

And basically they got like they and then they would email the office manager and they

say, hey, did you get our package?

We sent over a bunch of invites.

Make sure that people know that's for you guys.

You guys can come and get, you know, free drink and it's great, you know, send five

or six people to have a great time and happy hour today.

And so they all did was email and a flyer.

They sent that.

And then I went there and it was basically like they had rented out the bar.

It was a Tuesday night.

So like the bar was like, yeah, sure.

It's all yours.

Go ahead.

And they basically had a projector on the screen and they had a guy dressed up as a cat

and a person dressed up as a dog.

And and they would go, it was the battle was it was a five round battle and basically one

would show a funny video clip like a tiktok length thing and then the other person would

show it and then the crowd had that's awesome little handles where they could vote for the

dog or the cat.

Like who's was who's was funnier and it would go five rounds and then the winner would win

at the end.

And that was it.

It's just silly.

And then the whole stick was the guy would come on at the end and he'd be like, hey, by

the way, that one, the third one that was actually a viral video we made.

We're Rubber Republic.

We make amazing viral videos, eight out of 10 videos.

We do get over a million views.

Like we're good at this shit.

We've done it for these companies.

Enjoy yourselves tonight.

And if any of you guys ever want to have a video go viral, come find me or the guy dressed

up as the cat.

And I was like, and we worked with them.

We did a video with them.

It got over a million views.

And it was the one where you talk about drawing dicks all over a Bebo.

Yeah, exactly.

So they made that video for us.

And so we and so they were so good.

And I was like, oh, this little sales funnel they did was actually genius because one client

to them is worth tens of thousands of dollars.

So, you know, renting out this bar and inviting people from these 20 companies and just hoping

one of them ends up with you as a client is a great way to go.

All right, well, let's do it.

Ben, let's let's could we please make one of them happen?

All right, let's roll.

Yeah, you tell me money bags, but yeah, they will work on you're fired.

Yeah, down.

Let's do it.

All right, that's yeah.

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 less travel

never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.