My First Million - #104 - Why You Should Be Studying MLMs

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) host the pod today without a guest. In today’s episode you’ll hear: Shaan and Sam recap their previous episode with Tai Lopez and reflect on some of the feedback received from the listeners (1:08), Sam asks Shaan what he knows about trade associations (12:05), Shaan finds new ways to add value with trade associations for groups that traditionally don’t have them (18:35), both guys explore boring household products that could be made cool, like the Nest thermostat (24:40), Shaan walks through his renewed interest in licensing brands (31:05), Shaan and Sam explore brands that have the surprise effect and the genius of that mechanism (38:45), Shaan shares one of his secret tricks in mimicking MLMs (45:18), Sam talks through his next travel designation (48:05), Shaan’s fitness trainer is a force for optimism in his personal life (51:18). This episode is presented by Tempo! Check them out at tempo.fit and use code "TempoHustle" for $100 off. Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We're back. It's my first million. I'm Sean and I'm joined by Sam. On this episode, we talk about a bunch of different topics. We debrief our Tai Lopez experience. We have a bunch of ideas around trade associations, licensing popular brands and using them in funky ways. Sam got a speeding ticket and has an idea around police radar detectors. And then we just have a couple of stories and frameworks around coming up with new ideas, such as the little trick I use with MLMs. So it's a good episode, me and Sam, and hope you guys enjoy. I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like no days off We're live We are live Before we get ideas We got a recap, right? Yeah, I think we should debrief So on We recorded it on Thursday

It went live on Friday I got a ton of messages We had Ty Lopez on So listen to that last episode What did you think, Sean? I think I actually felt like my my my outlook was similar to i think how most most people messaged me afterwards or at least it felt that way uh which was i thought it was a semi interesting i thought it was an interesting

episode i thought it got interesting later i thought the beginning he was kind of monologuing and doing his thing he wasn't really saying new stuff necessarily but i thought it got interesting i think he's a total character and i'm fascinated by him like i sent you this tweet he put out yesterday which is like he took a selfie in the mirror and he's like he looks like the you know He looks like someone from the Incredibles. He's like super, super jacked, which I couldn't tell when we were doing our recording. I didn't get that feeling at all. I did a little bit.

You could see. He looked fit. Yeah, he looked fit, but like, dude, this picture looks crazy. But it was just added to the like, just how hilarious of a character he is and how over, like, over the top, larger than life in many ways. So anyways, I thought it was interesting. I thought he, you know, was pretty open. I thought, yeah, he does this thing where he kind of like, really. directs conversations towards what he wants, which is fair.

Like most kind of successful persuasive people I've seen have this talent. He uses that talent a lot. But I thought he was fairly open. I thought he was down to answer any questions. He didn't, we've had people come on and like, I can't talk about that. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. He didn't have any of that in his in his talk. And then the other thing was the people who hated him before still hated him,

people who loved him before still loved him. And then the people on the fence, I think, leaned towards, he's a smart dude. He's interesting. I like him. I like him more now than I did before. That's how I read it. I think that you in particular, I told you this when I was texting you, you did a really good job of pressing him. I didn't really press him so hard. I think that someone once wrote this review on the podcast that we congratulate ourselves a lot. So I'm always trying to be aware when I do it. But I would say you did a very good job of pressing him. I think that I would have, we probably both would have been even better if it were in person.

It was a little bit hard to interrupt him when he was speaking with, because there was a few times where we both wanted to say stuff and we accidentally had mute on or something like that. And so I wish we could have done it in person, but it was cool. I got dozens and dozens and dozens of messages from people who are, I was shocked for listeners. And I thought, I was like, oh, wow, this is cool. This was good.

Did you get a lot of messages? I did. Yeah, I got text messages that were like, oh, my God, my bullshit. radar is going is beeping on like crazy uh for you know for little things like he wouldn't share his age and it's like it's one thing to not share certain numbers but like when you don't share your age it like just reinforces this belief that way are you kind of shady which i just found funny i don't even understand why he didn't it wasn't sharing it but whatever and then other people were like like some people did these really insightful recaps where they were like they wrote

blog posts or they tweeted i retweeted a few of them but one thing that that was cool was people were very like reflective of okay i felt this way about it like you know where do I stand? And what does this mean about me? And like what parts can I give him credit for? What parts do I feel, you know, he was kind of overhyping? And I just thought people had like an introspective. Some people had like a very introspective response to it, which I thought was kind of, I don't know, interest.

It's not what I expected. We never really had that. I never felt that with any other episode. I felt pride because I think that like in the world that we live in right now with the election coming up and everything, we live in a very polarizing environment. And I'm really proud of. of the audience and the brand that we're building and the community and the listeners and ourselves because we are all pretty reasonable about listening to different perspectives and

different ideas and not being too harsh and understanding that there's two sides to every story and i felt really proud about that where there were some people who i'm really good friends with like andrew was like yeah i'm still i he our friend andrew was very vocal where he was like yeah uh i disagree with you guys entirely that's cool wonderful uh it's okay to have friends that disagree. But in general, even people who disagree were like, I disagree. I understand their opinion, though. And I think that made me very prideful.

I felt wonderful. Yeah, I felt good about that. And the other thing, I actually don't think we did a great job pressing them. The reason why is I didn't do a ton of research. Like a lot of people who really don't like this guy, it's because they've looked into a whole bunch of things. They've read all the Reddit forums. They've watched the YouTube teardowns. And like they know more info.

That's not, I really wasn't interested in tearing. the guy down or like doing investigative journalism that really wasn't what was interesting to me. I sort of just assumed going in, these guys are pretty talented marketer. He took advantage early on the YouTube platform and he did what a lot of people do. He sold, you know, kind of a dream and he probably, you know, his content was probably good, not completely original, but who cares? He curated good content, gave it to people. If you actually applied that in your life, it would have helped you.

If you didn't, it wouldn't have helped you. Probably was kind of aggressive on certain pricing tactics or like, you know, certain things. may have crossed the line on certain areas. I don't really know. I don't personally, that was less interesting to me. Just like during the convoy, I was like, you know, people get all up in arms. Did you rent the Lambo? Did you lease the Lambo?

Yeah, that was bullshit. Who cares? I personally just don't care about that. And so I think some people who cared about that felt like, dude, you let them off the hook. You guys didn't look into enough. But it's like, I didn't care about that. That's not what was interesting to me. I would have somebody on here who's a total internet scammer,

or somebody who's a hacker, somebody who hacked a Bitcoin exchange. That doesn't mean I think they did a good thing, but I'd be fascinated to talk to that person and understand, who are you? Why do you do this? What's cool about this? Are there two sides to this story? What's your point of view? You know, like, I'm just more of an interested person and less, I'm not trying to be the cops.

And I think some people wanted us to be the, you know, the cops and sort of waterbordom. And that's just, I wouldn't have done that to anybody. It's not really what I'm interested in. Yeah, I didn't really care about the whole leasing the cars thing. that didn't matter to me. I will say, though, one thing that's fun about that, so whenever I hear of someone interesting, I always type in their name into Google,

followed by the word house. One way that you can figure out if someone's legit is by their real estate holdings, and if they're a big deal, typically their home purchases come up on Google, which is fun. And you know that Grant Carondi? What's his name?

Grant Cardone. I don't know how I feel about him, but he has this private jet, and I noticed that the seats have his name embroidered into the, seats and I'm like oh shit that's like a legit I'm like holy moly that whatever he's doing some he's got some cash somehow so I that's like a funny topic that we can get grant on here I he he used to use our product a ton so I've been around I've talked to him a bunch of times let's do it I would like

I think I either have his number I definitely have his email so I think we can get him on my friend or Rameet Sethi who we also have to get on he was like dude he his name is embroidered on his seats he's like that's a legit and I thought that was funny and then last thing was Ty kept saying Silicon Valley. Huge pet peeve, but that's okay. Whatever, that's not important. But something he kept doing and our friends from Silicon Valley kept doing this where they were like, as Thai would say, Silicon Valley sucks for this reason.

And then our Silicon Valley friends were like, you internet marketers suck for this reason. And I'm like, you guys are all like kind of the same. We're all this. I mean, it's like the same shit. It's like, Thai definitely was quirky, like a little Asperger-y. A lot of our friends are kind of Asperger. like they all like say the same like their strategy is the same thing to charge a lot of money for quality products and to hold companies forever and do this and it's all the same they're all the same

they all agree a lot of the same stuff yeah i don't think i don't think they're exactly the same but i think they have similar than they think uh the second thing is they're both hypocritical about each other right so like for example uh when reddit got started the founders said you know we went on we created 30 different accounts and we would be commenting on all the different posts to make it look like there was activity, right? That was their fake until they make it strategy. Airbnb sort of famously got exposed for early on. They would scrape Craigslist, pull the listings automatically without the permission of the homeowner, posted on Airbnb as an Airbnb listing, and then email under a fake name, Jenny to different people being like, hey, I would love to rent your place, but do you guys use Airbnb?

Like, I prefer Airbnb. It's much safer over there. And that's how they grew awareness. sort of a black hat technique. There was no Jenny. They did this without permission. And like, these are like some of the, AirBB is one of the best brands in Silicon Valley is like kind of an awesome company that people look up to and like, you know, it's admirable. And maybe Ty Lopez, you know, maybe he has his own versions of either fake and it until he makes it or, you know, charging in some kind of like, you know, duplicitous way or whatever. I don't know. I have tons of examples on both sides where both sides have a ton of dirty laundry internet marketers do and so to Silicon Valley companies. So I think it's sort of hypocritical to be like really virtuous,

which I think was his point was like there's a lot of virtue signaling in good old Silicon Valley. But yeah, whatever. I don't know. Enough about Ty Lopez. I feel like you know, you're going to feel about it. I feel like we did a decent job of it. I was interested in it. And I don't hate the guy or think he's like, you know, the worst thing ever invented. like some people. I would totally hang out with him. I would absolutely hang out with him. Did he text you by the way? He asked me for your number. Yeah. I was like, that's kind of cool. You're text and tie. He's like some guy that like he said seven out of 10 young men in America knew who he was. And I bet I believe that. Yeah. You know, I think he's a character. What's what was what was there to

hate about this guy? But if you hate him, whatever. You have your reasons to hate him. If you love him, you have your reasons to love one. I don't really care either way on that. My personal opinion is I think he's talented. I think he's a character and I think he's an over the top character and I find that fascinating. I think he has some tells where he overhypes and he quotes Buffett and he quotes he's as a quote machine to kind of give himself credibility. Like I'm doing this thing. Well, here's a quote from Socrates that tells you why I'm doing this thing. And like there's a talent in that, but it also reveals a little bit of like, well, can your actions and can your logic just stand for itself. You know, there's, that's, that's usually a masking technique that people use to do that.

But like, whatever. I don't know. I'm cool with him. I think he's an interesting dude. Well, we, we've milked it for all it's worth, so it's good on us. You want to talk about ideas? Yeah, let's do it. I'll bring one up first. Okay, so Ryan Beagleman, our mutual friend, tells me about this all the time, and I have been interested in it a little bit. What do you know about trade associations? Anything? Just that they exist and that they, they, they sort of have this like very beautiful business model or they're charging everybody for kind of like pretty simple amount of value. Yeah, it's like good straightforward value. And I didn't know too much about them, but they're kind of interesting.

Trade associations are kind of a business where it's like everyone knows what they are or as heard of one. But you don't actually think about how they like came to be. And nor do you think about like creating a new one. But I think you can. And the reason I'm thinking of one in particular is it's called the Society for Human Resource Management. And I discovered it because the CEO is like friends with Trump or something. So somehow this came up like on the news that the CEO of the society is with Trump for this. And I just Googled it.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So it has 350,000 members of this human resource management company. And it makes $150 million a year in subscription revenue. And it's beautiful. Another one is there's ones for all types of different engineers. So like, I don't know. know the type of engineers could there be like bridge building or whatever the mechanical civil yeah yeah like all you know whatever it is there's a bunch like that there are so many trade associations

and i actually there's this one trade there's one email list that i used to use to post my job in when i needed an office management uh manager it was called the org org have you heard of the org org or this is for office managers right yeah this young woman started it i think she was like really young and it was just like an email list. That's all it was, but it was like super effective. And it when I, when you hear the org, I'm like, oh, this is like some silly email list. It's not that big of a deal. And then I see this business, uh, the society for human research management. I'm like, oh my God, this thing could actually probably be huge if you, so anyway, kind of a cool business model. What do you think? You said the word beautiful earlier. So I call these beautiful businesses. A beautiful business when I

say it means it's just so elegantly designed to just be a cash cow. And, and, you know, A beautiful business is one like this where the product is incredibly simple. The lock-in is huge because you're going to join the big trade association. You're not going to join some small up-and-comer. So it has this amazing defensibility just in the network effect. They charge annual recurring subscriptions and people are going to keep their fees. They're going to stay a member of the association on the average. And it's like zero work, zero innovation, zero everything.

And I just think it's like beautiful business in this sort of the effort and difficult to reward ratio is beautiful. So I think you said it absolutely right. Yeah. And for anyone interested in this business model, maybe we'll do a deep dive later on. But trends, we did one on like peer groups. And those are not beautiful.

Those are a lot harder than they look. But if they work, they're beautiful. But a lot of trade groups are nonprofits. So you can research any type of trade group. And if you Google like for like the name of the trade, Association then revenue or name of the trade association and then what's the nonprofit filing number uh like 513c yeah if like if you google that word that phrase or if you google the trade association filed by annual report they all reveal all their revenue expenses so you can be like oh wow so this group charges

300 000 people a thousand dollars a year and they charge the company it's like it like gives you the total playbook on how to do it so pretty cool uh so i saw this and i thought that was interesting what else could this work for? And frankly, you could probably work for the same thing. You could probably just do another HR one. All right, today's episode is brought to you by Tempo. Tempo.com.com.com. Fit is the website. I actually use this. I've used this for a few months now. And it's this machine that has a touchscreen and this 3D sensor. And what it does is, they give you weights, like 115 pounds in weights. And it's for strength training. So what it is is it measures your body. And it sees how much weight you're lifting. It sees how many reps,

you're doing and how much effort you're putting in, what your heart rate is. It's pretty amazing. And then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift, how many to lift, what workout to do, whether you want to do a 20 minute, 10 minute, 50 minute workout. It's pretty amazing. But the best part is the leaderboard. The other stuff, all the features that they have, that's cool. But I'm obsessed with the leaderboard because it measures how many reps you're doing and how much volume you're doing. And you can compete with other people who have taken the same class. So it's made me want to work harder, lift more weight or have more endurance. It's just pretty freaking fun. And the whole point of working hard is to have money so you can spend it on stuff that

will make you live longer. And this product, tempo, it checks that box for me. So, there are a sponsor today. If you use the code tempo hustle, you'll get $100 off. So tempo. Tempo.fit is the URL. And tempo hustle, one word, you'll get $100 off. So check it out. I use it. If you look at me up on Twitter, you'll see, I'm always filming videos where I'm talking to that company, say I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard because I actually love this thing. And I use it all the time. So check it out. Yeah. Or you could do this.

Remember that sort of two by two matrix I talked about where it's like old problem, new problem, old solution, new solution. So what I would do here is let's say this is a beautiful old solution. There's an existing solution that's proven that works. I would just look for basically a new problem. Basically, what's a new market? What's a new industry or trade that didn't exist, you know, five, seven years ago? Maybe it's Uber drivers.

Maybe it's Airbnb hosts. Oh, that's a great idea. Maybe it's crypto miners. Maybe it's, I don't know, like whatever. Those wouldn't be the best fits. But Instacart workers, just the gig economy in general, right? Like maybe it's the gig economy trade association. And, okay, cool.

There's hundreds of thousands of people. I'm going to apply this old business model that's beautiful to this new market segment where nobody has taken the poll position as the trade industry, the trade association leader in that group. That's a great idea. How many Uber drivers do you think they are? I have no idea. over a million i think i've yeah there's a lot there's i think there's over a million i pray you try to

find that for us but uh yeah i think there's over a million wow yeah that's a cool idea the gig working thing is uh yeah that's neat it's cool um historically like aARP is like one of the greatest trade organ it's not a trade organ but like membership groups of all time and then uh uh it's pretty cool i guess it's kind of like a union and that's pretty interesting and you know you can also do this with other groups that like, let's say traditionally don't have this. So I would try to find what are the common characteristics of this? Is it you need to have like, let's say, a million plus people in the profession, right?

Maybe that's the commonality. Maybe it's that they all are looking for certain resources. I don't actually know what value these guys have. Do you know, like, what's the, if I joined the society for human resource management or whatever, I know with AARP, there's like discounts. But for the HR one, what is the core benefit I get? Yeah, I looked it up. Let me give you like the, um, their, their, what they say is education, certification, networking, as well as lobbying Congress on issues regarding labor management.

Um, that's what they say. Now, they also, really, where they make a lot of money is conferences. So a lot of like trade show. So like, I mean, it makes sense. If, if I would totally send our HR person to this. like, hey, there's like this thing. It's four grand. It's a two-day event. You want to go and learn best practices on how to like what's like for right now. I'd be like, hey, like, remote works a thing. How do you like fire people remotely and get your equipment back? Like maybe that's just like a,

maybe that's just like a conference topic. I'm like, yeah, sure. It sounds good. If this, if our HR person wanted to go, I would say, yeah, no problem. And so, uh, it's mostly education. And they monetize that education with, uh, conferences. Right. I think this, I think it's a good to do for us to go say, go figure out, okay, what is the core, is there a common core benefit that the trade association provide? Maybe it's education. Certification I know is one, like personal trainers have to do this, where they have to keep their certifications up to date. And it's this giant, like, essentially a scam where you have to, you just have to keep paying $120 a year or whatever just to keep your certification, like, valid. And your certification, nobody cares

if you have that certification, if you're, if you're their trainer anyways, they, you know, take one look at your body and then they work with you. And like, that's it. And so there's, there's certain things that I think are providing less value than others. But like, again, if you can find some new niche like Instagram influencers or like whatever, online creators, Twitch creators, whatever, right? Like, why is there not an association? If you could find one core benefit, I actually think, okay, so here's a riff off this that I'm going to sound kind of stupid because I don't really know much about this, but I know enough to know that it's interesting. Let's take a, let's take a profession like vlogger or streamer, right? So there are, you know, every given

month, there's millions of video game streamers, millions of YouTube creators that are creating. Now, obviously, they're not all successful. They're not all full time. They're not all making money. There's like a power law, right? Where the top X make it. I think, for example, on Shopify, there's, I think, 100,000 sellers that do over a million dollars a year. There's sort of a similar ratio when it comes to streamers or vloggers on YouTube. And they don't have health insurance, for example. And what happens is most of them don't care about it. They don't use it. They're so they, you know, till 25, 26 or whatever, they're covered on their parents' thing. Or they just like, whatever, risk it.

This wing it, right? And so there's these things that churches do called healthcare co-ops. Have you ever heard about this? Go on. Yeah. Healthcare share programs, I believe. And it's basically a, you can get health care, not through a traditional health care provider, but you can create a co-op within your community, within your church, where you basically

pool money and insure each other. You insure the other members of the church. This has become quite popular. I started looking into this market because I think it's one of those like secretly really big markets. A huge number of people now are participating in these healthcare share programs that are done by the church. And churches have this loophole where I think you otherwise need to have insurance,

but this qualify, you can do it through the church and you don't have to do it through traditional providers. And so they sort of get this work around. So I wonder, this is like crazy idea. wonder, can somebody find a problem like that for online creators, right? Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, whatever, and solve one of their core needs, such as healthcare. And can you, can you solve it in one of these, like, ways? Like, could you, you know, create a, because you take an existing church and expand the model to where it works for them? Or could you create a new type of

insurance carrier that will, that will live OTT on top of existing providers, but focus on this, this customer segment specifically. I think anywhere there's a new job, I just want to apply old services to new professions because they're usually pretty immature. What I'd be curious about is how do, like, nomadic remote workers, what do they do for health insurance? And that's one of these new things.

Does every company have this? Or for in October, I don't know if it's just us or if it's every company, but we're doing, we have enrollment for health care soon. And now that I'm out of state, I don't know. I got to figure out what to do. And so this is a problem I'm facing. And I'm curious as to how people who live in Bali, like a woman who works at our company used to do or how people who travel all the time.

I mean, I don't know what they do for healthcare. I'm very curious about that. Yeah. I don't know either. Again, like I said at the beginning, I'm going to look like an idiot because I don't know enough about it. But I know enough to know this is an interesting problem area to go look at. Anytime lifestyles change, work patterns change, new jobs emerge, opportunity has simultaneously emerged.

And so I think all these are sort of really, really interesting ones to look at. I've also seen a bunch of things fail in this space. Like I had a friend who was trying to provide the back office for Uber drivers. He's like, hey, they need to pay taxes and they need health insurance and they need these things. And, you know, company failed. And he was like, yeah, it was just really hard to convince Uber drivers that they needed this.

Like, I know they need it. They didn't know they needed it. I don't know if that was just his excuse or if that was like legit the actual core fault of the of the problem because fundamentally I believe in that idea. And so I reached out to find out why it failed and that's what he told me. All right. I'll give you one more quick hitter. Okay. So you know how, so this guy named Tony, you know who Tony Fidel is?

Yeah, the critter. Is that how you say his name? Yeah. Yeah. So what this guy did was he helped Steve Jobs build the iPhone and or maybe the iPod, I forget. and or both and he looked at I guess what they did was they looked at kind of like things that we kind of used on a regular basis that many people had and had bad user experience and they made it sexy and cool and he did that with the thermostat that is something that most every single

american maybe every American has and they actually are a little wonky or they're not actually neat and he like created this thing and it's like oh well that's a no brain or a huge market and so oftentimes I think of products that are like that and I think I found one it's not actually a big enough market, but it might be. And here's what it is. Um, radar detectors for cars. I am traveling now. I'm driving all over the place and I got a speeding ticket and I was pissed off because I was going 70 or I was going to below the limit and I just crossed. I was at midnight in the middle of Kansas and I just crossed the thing where it said construction zone and the speed limit reduced and the guy just got me. And I was so pissed off. I was like, dude, first of all, it's midnight. And like,

no one's around except for cows. Second of all, I was going with 68 and a 70, and you just, like, that's kind of a bullshit. So I was out of defiance, I went and got a radar detector. They are so hard to use and set up. And I started doing research. And some of these companies, the top one is called Unidon. It's publicly traded. It does like $200 million in sales, selling this radar detector for $500. And I had to watch a 30-minute video on YouTube on how to set this up. It was so challenging. And I still don't exactly know what it all means. But do you know roughly how many of these are sold or like do you do you know roughly what the what the market size is for this? Yeah. So the the some of the bigger guys are Unidin and I think it's pronounced Escort. Escore owns a couple brands and a exec at GM was formerly the CEO. It does like two or three hundred million in sales. Unidin is a Japanese company. It's a uni like university and then Den, D-E-N. Unidon does like a.

$150 million in sales, quite profitable. So it's not like huge, huge, but hundreds of millions in revenue, probably globally billions in revenue. And I'm shocked at how horrible of a product this is for the $500 that I bought it. Yeah, that seems awful. And I love this. I love this niche, right? Because who the fuck thinks about this on a daily basis? But clearly, you know, this is a product that's been around for decades and serves a very clear pain point. And I could totally see how these would be outdated. I'll give you an example of another one that's like this. Pools. So I have a swimming pool now in my new place. And you know, you always, the guy comes every week and like changes the like chemical balance or whatever to make sure the chlorine's good. And he has to measure it using

this thing. So some guy, some founder who listens to the podcast had reached out to, I don't know, be in my mastermind or something like that. And I saw what his product. was and it was a... I know who. That's my friend. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's like this floating pool chemical detector, right? Um, it basically, it's a little, little buoy that floats around in your pool and will constantly just make sure that your pool's in balance. And you can look on your app and you can see, you know, whether it's good or bad and your, if your pool's in a good state or not. It's like, take this kind of old problem and it's not even like rocket ship, you know, type of technology that you got to build to make a better solution, right? Nest is not that amazing. It's like,

Well designed for sure, but it's not a thermostat. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. And, you know, it's got a screen and that's the core innovation. You can control it from your phone. Great. There's how many other sort of household products could use a little modern touch-ups?

Yeah. And I think about that all the time because I thought the nest thing, I'm like, oh, my God. That's one of those things where you're like, well, yeah, it seems obvious now. Right. And ERO did this with routers, right? So they modernized the router and, you know, had a decently, had a decent exit. I don't know how well it went for them.

They raised a lot of money. But they got adoption. And that's another example of one of these. Yeah, routers are up there. I just, I like thinking about that. Like, what are household products that we all use and we have forgotten about? And I grew up with the radar detector. We would always drive to Florida for 20 hours and we would have one.

And I thought it was funny. I'm like, that's kind of funny to like build a, company just to detect just to help you kind of break the law, which I think is awesome. But man, I'm using this freaking radar detector. I'm like, oh, well, there's, and there's actually like a cult following. Like, there's a lot of people like me who are gadget nerds and who are obsessed over this. And it's a pretty cool thing. There's another company that's similar to this that is far more famous. Do you know weather tech? No. Have you heard of weather tech? No. You've never heard of weather tech. Okay. It's like,

they've almost, I would say they have done it. They've built like, you know how Yeti made cooler sexy? You're going to flip a little, little. You know what they made sexy? What? Floor mats for a car. Okay. Floor mats for a car.

Looking them up. So weather tech, they bought Super Bowl ads. In the South, they're popular because it's like. Is it the design or is it just that it's like super high quality or why do people love these? I think it's both. It's incredibly high quality. it's very expensive. So it's like I bought them for my car.

I paid $600. And for some reason, that made me like it. But it is high quality. And it's like, they branded it like an outdoorsman thing. $400 million in sales, $100 million a year in profit.

And how old is this company? Is this like a 20 year old company? Yes. Okay. Yeah, this is cool. Okay. I like it. This is so like outside of my hobbies,

my likes, my business knowledge, I'm like, I would be the, the worst person to ever start a weather tech type company maybe but you have a nice car don't you do you care about having a clean car i mean that's like kind of all it is no you've never been in my car my car looks like shit all the time i buy i buy a nice car and then my car looks like a closet it's just awful uh all right here's another really half baked idea i've been thinking a lot about licensing

brands my friend zavier why since ty lopez no not ty lopez uh my friend zavier uh my friend zavier uh got me thinking about this. So he was buying a company, and I'm going to have him on because he's, he's really great. And he's, I'm an investor in that fund. Yeah, exactly. Our, our good buddy Siava and Xavier worked together on this. And one of the businesses that they're buying or, you know, taking a stake in has a licensing component to it. I don't know how much I can talk about it, but it's basically they are, there's, maybe I can explain it. I don't know. Okay, I'll explain it. And then if he tells me, we can't talk about it. We'll cut it out. So there's a company that has that sells caricatures.

So like I can go and for your birthday, I can get a picture of you drawn and have it have it sent to you. And what they did was they licensed certain styles. And we're going to go try to get exclusive licenses across several very distinct visual styles. And the business does really great. And so that had been thinking about licensing. The very first episode of the podcast was with one of my best friends Sully. And what he did was his company, TinyCo. They made mobile games.

but they would license big brands. So they made the family guy game. They made the Harry Potter game. And it was a pretty, that was the differentiator. They were just like every other mobile gaming company. But licensing popular brands was their hack to get better distribution and buy-in from customers. And so I started to think, where should people be licensing popular brands that they are not

currently licensing them today? And so, I don't know, really wild idea, but here's sort of mixing two different worlds together and seeing if there's something in it. Enterprise Education. So corporate training and corporate education is like probably the most sort of boring and stiff. And it's like the worst content that gets paid for. And so, you know, that seems kind of weird to me. Like, why shouldn't this be better?

Companies are willing to pay for it. It could be, you know, it could be interesting, but the content chops behind it are awful. And so the idea here would be to license popular brands and use those characters and use those styles to, to do corporate educational corporate training, one of the two. So can you hone in on this a little bit further? So you would be the one licensing the, you would pay money for someone else's IP. Yes. Like let's just go through a hypothetical example, right?

Yeah. In the tech community, there's this cartoon that's really popular called Rick and Morty. And Rick and Morty is a great brand for the people who know it, but it's not such a big brand that it'd be impossible to strike a deal with them. And so I would go to the creators of Rick and Morty, the IP holders for Rick and Morty and I would say, hey, I'm going to do a whole safety training and, let's say, compliance training series for big companies, but I want to do it using Rick and Morty characters to explain the concepts.

And so I would, on one hand, I would say, I'll pay you X for, you know, the royalties or the licensing fee. And then I would take that. And then I would go to companies like, you know, the company I work at now or I'd go to Facebook or whoever. And I'd say, hey, you have this compliance training that you need all your leaders to go do. But it's so dry that they hate doing it.

they don't do it or they turn it on and they walk away from their computer while the video plays. And we make entertaining training videos using characters that everybody knows and loves. And that's why you should buy from us instead of buying from the guys you currently buy from. And that's how I would try to build this business. I would totally stand out from the existing, you know, corporate training and corporate education companies by doing that. That's interesting. And I actually learned, I didn't know anything about licensing.

And I, do you want to explain what Sully did with his company? Because you guys are the licensees or licensors. Yeah, we are, what would that be? I think we would be the licensees. I don't know. You are licensing. You are paying the money. You are not the recipient of the money.

No, no, no. Yeah. The IP holder, right? So in their case, they go to, they went to the owners of family guy. And they said, hey, family guy, huge brand. Love it. You guys crush it with TV. crush it with merch, you're not doing any mobile games. And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah,

you know, we've thought about it, you know, we think it could be great. And they're like, yeah, yeah, but you don't want to get into the business of building mobile games. You don't know anything about that. But hey, we look at this, let me open this door. Look, those 80 engineers, those guys know how to build mobile games. We've been doing it for five, seven years. We have some of the most popular mobile games. Here's what we'll do. If you license us, the brand for, uh, for a family guy, we will create a mobile game that uses family guy characters. And I'll pay you a three million dollars a year licensing fee for this plus, you know, an extra, you know, dollar for every $10 we make on the game. And, you know, that's a hypothetical deal structure. And so I, I just read about this,

which is why I like talking about this. There's a company called, I read about it through it on a substack email newsletter that I'm on. Have you heard of MGA? Of course you have, MGA entertainment? MGA, is that the guy who makes those dolls? Okay, you have heard of it. Okay, so. I love that guy. What's his name? That guy's a baller.

That guy's the building of the week. Isaac Larian, that's the founder's name. Yeah, Isaac Larian, I believe that's his name. So the world's largest privately owned toy company is MGA Entertainment, and Isaac Larian owns it, born to a Jewish family in Iran. He immigrated here. And so originally what they did was they became a, licensee for power rangers meaning right some guy another jewish uh or israeli america or this guy's not

israeli but he's another israeli american immigrant created power rangers this guy went to him and goes let me make toys with the power ranger let me make power ranger toys and i'll give you a large cut of the money and he did that for a long time and then he goes cool but i don't want to pay these guys the money anymore i want to be the the i p guy and so he invented Brats. Do you remember Brats? Yeah, Brats' dolls, for those who don't know, is like, Barbie, it's like ethnic Barbies. It was like black Barbies, cool Barbies, street Barbies, like, it was Barbies with like a little bit of an edge rather than the sort of clean cut image. Is that a good, is that a good description?

They're brats. Yeah. I guess. I mean, I don't know. We're not on their target demo. But, and now their new thing, apparently, which is quite popular, it's LOL surprise. Again, we're not going to be able to talk about this. I know. My nieces are obsessed with LOL dolls. Dude, LOL dolls, dude, LOL dolls are. are anybody with kids knows that you have to buy LOLL dolls. So this article that I was reading, if you have a daughter between the ages of 4 and 10,

you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, meet LOL surprise. And the company does $5 billion in sales. They're privately owned and it's growing like a weed. And it started as licensing Power Rangers and then they made their own thing. Pretty amazing. It is amazing. Even just the LOL dolls.

Like we could do a whole episode just on the fucking genius of these LOL dolls. It's like a little surprise what you get inside. Sort of like buying a deck of Pokemon, or a pack of Pokemon cards. And you don't know which characters you're going to get inside. And so you have the gotcha mechanics where you want to keep going back and buying another one. And this guy, Isaac Larian, is awesome. His story is great.

We should do a whole thing on that gotcha thing. Okay, so let's talk about the surprises. Have you ever heard of this thing? actually don't know what it's called. I bet you've heard it though and you'll be able to tell me. It's a candle and you burn the candle and at the bottom of the candle is a surprise and one out of a certain number of the candles have a diamond ring in there worth $100,000. No, I haven't heard this, but I love this idea. This is the type of idea that I, these are the, you know, I said weather tech would be like the opposite of the type of company I would start. The candle where one out

of every $100,000 has a diamond ring inside. That is the exact type of company I would start. is it called just there's a diamond candles.com that might be just what it's called but they like the the uh i think it's okay so there's a thousand dollar ring at the bottom of a handful of them who knows if they're even actually there's the willie walker golden ticket yeah and i just google it there's like tons of surprise there's like a jackpot jackpot candles and they do the same for bath bombs you know what a bath bomb is yep and i guess there's some type of it's so i i love that so i love that So there's that. What's another surprise one? Like a Willy Wonka company, like a Willy Wonka product. So mobile games use this a ton. That's where I have learned about Gotcha mechanics.

It's like if you want to go look this up, look up Gotcha, it's G-A-C-H-A, I think is how you spell it. It's like the sort of the game mechanics in a lot of the Chinese games. And so I think it's literally started, I think, with, I'm going to sound kind of dumb. I don't think I know this exactly. But I believe it was these like actual sort of like candy, machines that you would put a quarter in and you would turn it and then you would get something and it gets you hooked to the sort of variable random rewards where you're constantly hunting and searching. It's like in games they do this with loot boxes. They create these digital boxes. You buy, you know, you play the game, you earn coins, you use the coins to buy the loot box, inside the loot box, you've got the new thing or you didn't get it. And then you want to open up

more loot boxes and it's just fun to open them up. And so these are so addictive that some countries outlaw games that use these mechanics. I don't know where it was. I think it was in China or India. Somewhere they banned games that were using loot boxes because it was it's so addictive. It's so effective. And so people brought this into shopping. And there's yeah, for shopping, there's a bunch of other ones. And a lot of them are scams. This business attracts a lot of scammers. Logan Paul or one of the Paul brothers like had a link to one of them. This company would sponsor all the YouTubers and it was called mystery box and you purchase it and maybe you get, I don't know, whatever kids like Supreme Clothing or something.

And I think they got big, but they're definitely full of shit. Yeah, but I like this idea of the sort of the dream, right? Like I buy lottery tickets because I think it's fun to play the lottery. I love scratchoffs. I think scratchoffs are amazing. They're just like pure entertainment for me. And I think that there's other spaces. where you could potentially apply these mechanics that's non-traditional.

The candle is a beautiful example of that. So that's a, so we've discovered two different frameworks, which is like household items that are boring and forgotten. And you can just make up just a little better. And just ugly. And just ugly. Like,

and that you could like maybe like like. So three mechanics. We did trade associations for new, new trades. Yeah. We did the household items, the everyday gadgets that are, ugly and hard to set up and hard to use and don't connect to your iPhone. That's like a kind of a

core mechanic. And this one is the gotcha mechanics or licensing. Either one could work here. Yeah. Oh, we did talk about licensing, but the gotcha thing is interesting. I like candles. Another one that's not the same, but it does involve candles. Have you heard of a hometown candles or something like that? Yeah, that's that's a funny one. Do you know the guy who is So for those of you who don't know, this guy, his name was Ricky Van Nene, I think. His wife is, do you remember what's the white girl from Get Out? I don't know. Yeah, you know what I've seen in the movie, but I don't know who.

I was looking at the black guy, not the white girl. I don't know who she was. Allison Williams. Allison Williams. You know Allison Williams? She's like in a bunch of sitcoms. Her dad is Brian Williams. Ricky Van, I think his name's

Veen or Neen. He works at Facebook now. Okay. He started... Okay, so I'm telling this backstory because it's interesting. It's like everyone's connected. I mean, first of all, he was like a dork who started college humor and he started Vimeo. And he married this Allison Williams

woman, so badass and cool. Then he got a job at Facebook. Where he works at Facebook as some executive, but as a side project, he started this thing called like home state candles. where they make candles that smell like your home state. So Washington is probably at pine trees.

California is probably ocean, Florida, who knows. So he knew this was going to go viral because he was a content guy. And he knew that state-themed things sell best. And so he created candles that smell like your home state. And probably, I bet you that's a really big business, to be honest. Yeah, my friend John started something called birth date candles. So he's the creator of Gravity Blanket. He's the creator of the moon pod.

And then his third kind of like invention that kind of worked is birth date candle. So like Sam, which is your birthday? June 15th. So there's a candle for June 15th. It says June 15th birthday can't birth date candle and it has a specific smell and aura and story around June 15th. And so you would buy this for somebody else. You'd buy a candle essentially that's like their specific birth date candle. And he started

And he started gravity blankets too Yeah I mean that's like one of the biggest things ever Like one of the most virally that's like One of those viral things yeah Yeah that's like like the The blanket where you wear in the front What's that called?

Snuggie I mean Yeah it's definitely like a notable Notable product it did super well on Kickstarter or whatever He came on the podcast There's a whole interview with him And on that he talks about the birth date candle As like one of his things And it does really well

Candles in general are huge, huge business. Like, I looked at this business because one of my kind of secret tricks in business is to try to go find what MLM sell and then sell them without the MLM. So there's huge MLMs around candles because people love to buy candles and they buy them recurringly because literally the product like burns to the ground. And so you need to keep replenishing it. And so there's there's huge candles at MLMs, but then there's also a huge non-MLM candle companies. There's one that looks great. I think it's called Vlipso or something like that. Vlipsa, I don't know.

We have a bunch of in our house. And it's just like a candle that comes in like this amazing looking, you know, packaging that is essentially like art around the house. And yeah, so I think these are, I think candles in general are good. And then if you match popular product with, let's say, popular tribe, like home state, I think that's a really interesting way to think about little niche products. Dude, that is a great idea. I love all these frameworks and ways to get ideas looking at what are the most popular MLMs.

Yeah. That is a great idea. And also all MLMs have to publish their annual reports because of the law because they, you know, they're basically recruiting sellers. And so they have to tell sellers how much they sell, how much each seller tier sells, all that stuff. So you can go learn a ton. I've looked at probably 30 MLMs, you know, annual reports in the last year. because of this. What's the most interesting one?

And why are they all in Utah? They're all in Utah because it's sort of like Silicon Valley where the talent pool of people who know how to build these is all there. But yeah, there's a whole bunch of interesting ones. And they've ranged from like kind of legit to like pretty fucking scammy. And you know, there's like keto product ones. There's candles, there's skincare. You know, like health and wellness is the biggest one, the absolute biggest one.

I'm not sure why I think there's sort of a you can't prove the you can't prove that the thing works or doesn't work when it comes to those things when like kind of like hippie-dippy wellness products and that's also what an MLM mom seller tends to like I guess but there's interesting ones there's like a wine club that's an MLM there's Lulu Roe or whatever that's a clothing one there's shit ton of MLMs do they're they're crazy well that's a good framework I I like that. And I want to give a shout out. Apparently, Sean told me that the founder of only fans is a listener. It listens to every episode. So what's up to that guy? Owner. Owner.

Owner of it. I don't even know his name. Owner is different than the founder. Yeah. Founder, owner, whatever it is. The man in charge. So what's up to him? If he ever wants to come on, tell him to come on.

All right. Sounds good. Cool. All right, Sam. Where are you headed to next? Where's the next travel destination for you? either DC, because I want to be there for the election, I think it'd be fun, or Asheville, North Carolina.

Which one, where should I go? I don't know. I think Asheville is going to be more interesting. I think so. I'm just a little nervous that it's too lonely, like too small. Right. You should go to Durham. I went to college there.

It's a very interesting place. Is it great? Yeah, it's kind of great. I think you'll really like that town. They totally, like, invested in it. And there's all kinds of cool stuff. Like there's two universities, right? So there's Duke.

That's in Durham. There's University of North Carolina. That's not far away in Chapel Hill. And then there's what they call Research Triangle Park, which anytime there's like these hubs. So that's a hub for biotech companies. Anytime there's these hubs, the town gets built out with restaurants and cool shit everywhere because there's a bunch of like well-paid people. But also it just has like its own little vibe.

It's his own little mini Silicon Valley or Hollywood. But it's like for researchers. biotech and so there's just like a different different vibe just like Utah we'll have it for MLMs. All right. I'm going to Durham then. Cool. Also, I was just curious, how's the like we're now in month six of this quarantine. Are you going crazy or what? What's happening? Yeah, a little bit. I feel horrible. Do you? I would say I feel horrible. I feel pretty good, but I tend to feel good in general. I'm not really easy. I don't know. I've definitely impacted like emotionally and mentally. I am like

you got any good quarantine stories? I feel like I'm in fighter flight mode and when I what I've noticed is like I've said this before but a lot of people who live in a lot of people who are in elite cities or be like oh the South is all rednecks and it's like in reality all cities are the same all suburbs are the same and all countries the same and so when I'm in like rural California and I'd and people are in the gas station not wearing masks, I find myself in fighter flight mode, and I've definitely gotten into yelling matches with these people, and it's stupid because it's not going to solve anything.

Like, no one's, I'm not going to change my opinion, and they're not going to change their opinion. But I have found myself in fighter flight mode and, like, getting into, getting into it with people who aren't wearing masks into gas stations. That's pretty funny. I mean, you said all countries are the same.

That can't be right, right? Like, have you been in India? It's like way different. No, not countries like, USA and in India, like rural areas. I see. Okay. Like rural, northern rural California is rarely similar as rural Burr, rural Alabama.

Like, it's not like a north or south thing. It's like a rural suburb city thing. And so what are you doing to keep yourself from going crazy? Exercising is the only thing that I can do. I mean, I don't have a home anymore. I'm just traveling. I guess that. that's all I'm doing.

What are you doing? I mean, I feel like I just work and exercise. I don't do anything else. Yeah, I pretty much do those two things and play with my daughter and try to help take care of her. But I got this trainer who is my personal trainer for fitness. He comes to the house every day and we work out in the backyard. It's awesome. But he's also like kind of like a mindset coach and life coach.

And so he's great because he, I usually in relationship. I'm the one who kind of is bringing different mindset things, positivity, different frameworks, different lenses to kind of see life through. That's what I usually bring to all my relationships. And he does that to me. He's like even higher level of understanding and drinks more of that Kool-Aid than I do. And so he's given me these little, these little tactics, these little things that help. So I'll give you an example.

He was telling me the story yesterday. He goes, he goes, yeah, I went to the, he's like, he's like, I, normally I wake up great, feeling great, but I woke up feeling super anxious today. I was like, oh shit, why? Why? What happened? And he goes, he goes, you know, I knew I had to drive over here. And he's like, I actually have had an expired license for two years. And so he was like, I'm always anxious that I'm going to get pulled over. And he's like, the only thing that makes me more anxious about that is having to go to the DMV. Like, fuck, the DMV is like the worst, right? Everyone kind of universally agrees the DMV is the worst. And so he's like, so I just avoided it. And so he's like, so I woke up

today I recognize that I'm feeling anxious about it. And he's like, I got a playbook for anxiety, right? Like, okay, feeling anxious, therefore I do X, Y, Z. And he's like, I don't have to like, I don't get lost in the feeling. Like, I have a recipe for every feeling. And so he was like, all right, so I'm going to address this head on and I'm going to turn my anxiety into joy. Okay, how do I do that? And so he's telling me the story.

He's like, I went to the DMV. He's like, before, he's like, on my way there, he's like, I was like, am I the only one who feels this way about the DMV? So he goes to Yelp and he saw that the DMV locally had like a 2.3 star review or whatever, right? like, you know, DMVs hated by most. And so he, he sets in his mind, he goes, okay, it's rated 2.3 stars. I'm going to give it. I'm going to have a five-star experience here. He goes, okay, how do I have a five-star experience?

He goes, I'm going to be a five-star customer at the DMV. He's like, I'm going to go in. I'm going to be laughing. I'm going to be smiling. I'm going to be flirting with the staff there. And he's like, I'm going to find the most hospitable person here, right? Five-star comes from hospitality. I'm going to find hospitality at the DMV.

He's like, he goes like, I win it. in. He's like, I started talking and met this lady Wendy at the front. And she's this, you know, she's this big black lady who has, I could tell she was ready to have a good time. And he's like, I started flirting with her a little bit. So I started talking to her. And she was like, you know what, like come this way real quick. And she kind of shuffled him to the front of the line. He goes through. He doesn't, he, you know, he has an expired license. They're laughing at him for having a two years, you know, expired license. And he was telling him how anxious he was about coming to the DMV. And they're like, look, no problem. He didn't even have to take his

test, they just give them a new license, like, you normally have to set an appointment, but like, here, sign this sheet, boom, you're done. Get out of here. And he walked out and he was like, holy shit. He's like, if I can make the DMV a five-star experience for me, then like, you know, whatever. Not what can rock me if I can own the DMV like this? And so he told me this little story.

And, you know, the thing I took from it was like, I have all these things that I let, um, piss me off or make me mad throughout the day. like I'm normally very good, but then I'll dip on these like stressful situations or like a, like a task that I think is going to be a pain in the ass. That's actually what gets me the most. It's not usually stress. It's usually like tasks that are pain in the ass. And he took the most pain in the ass task going to the DMV and he turned it into a story and he turned it into a good time. And so that became my challenge. That's this little mini game I'm playing in my head that nobody knows I'm playing, which is I'm looking out for these pain in the ass burden type of moments and I'm

to try to DMV it like he did. So that's something that's been keeping me entertained lately. That is a great, that's a great story. Thank you. I loved it. When he told me that story, I was like, this is a great fucking story. I'm just hearing it in my backyard alone. I got to tell people about this. And so I didn't know how I was going to tell people, but it turns out it came out on the podcast. That is a great one. And to wrap this up, you have a trainer who you see every day? Four days a week. Yeah. Who? Wait, what is that? Should I get that? That sounds amazing. What does this costs. He's amazing. Yeah, he's great. In fact, it costs, he's like a, kind of like an alien. Like most trainers are like most kind of people who are paid by the hour. They're very time conscious,

right? Like they show up on time and then they, you know, hour on the dot, they leave because they got to get their next client and they're like zipping from place to place. And, you know, they're very time conscious. And that always doesn't work for me because you know, you hate this about me. I'm late often, right? And, um, and he's the exact opposite. He is like not worried about time. ever. And I ask him about this. I'm like, dude, you were hanging out like an hour after the workout. We're just chatting. We're just, we're just shooting the shit about stuff. He'll be asking me about business, whatever. And I'm like, don't you feel like you've never, you never seem like you're in a hurry. And he goes, he's like, I, he's like, I pride myself on being a hacker of time. I said, what do you mean? He goes, he goes, everybody is so stressed all the time. And the reason one of the roots of most people stress is they feel like they don't have enough time. Like when they feel like they didn't get enough done in a day, that just means they didn't feel like they had enough time to get stuff done. Or if they're stressed about their relationship and they're stressed about having kids, it's like because they feel like they're running out of time and their biological clock is ticking or whatever, right? People have this like a lot of stress is based in time.

It goes, I felt that way in my life and I decided to change that. So now I focus on timing. Anytime I find myself worried about time, I think to myself the opposite. What is this great? What is the great timing in my life right now? what if I just felt like it was perfect timing going for me. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, so like for example, you know, whenever I'm in a situation like, you know,

you asked me to drive out here to your house to train you. Most people don't do that. Most people come to my gym. But instead of worrying about how much time that was going to take, I thought about, hmm, how is this perfect timing for me? He's like, and then I drove into your neighborhood. He goes, I love this neighborhood. I decided I'm going to live in this neighborhood.

Like I fell in love with this neighborhood when I came here. That's how timing works for me. I met you. Normally, I would have never worked with you because you were trying to get me to come to your house. But I thought, maybe there's some timing that brought this guy into my life. What is he going to teach me? What's he going to show me that I wouldn't otherwise have had? What is this great opportunity? And so he's really focused on, let's say, timing. And so he's like this personal trainer who also has like all these life philosophies. And he just operates with such good energy and such a good vibe that like by the end of the hour or hour and a half that I work with him, like I'm buzzing. Dude, it's like this is, it's like a drug.

It's like being around him as like a drug because he's always in such a great, great state of mind. Well, I, I want to do this. Can I give you one more example or are we too far over? Yeah. Okay, so here's an example of how he changed my life. It's a metaphor that I'm using it out all the time. So I don't know about you, but like no matter how successful I get, whenever I start a new project, I get stressed again. And I get stressed ultimately because I'm afraid it's going to fail, right?

Like if I knew it was going to succeed, I wouldn't be fucking stressed. I'd be, I'd just be excited. Oh, great, I'm going to win. I already know I have the winning lottery ticket. But the reality is like with any new project, I'm trying to get more ambitious. And then that brings in the possibility of failure. And what he taught me was he's when we were talking about fitness, it was sort of the same thing. I've many, many times tried to get fit and struggled with either the diet or working

out consistently or whatever. And he's like, you know, what gets you off track, blah, blah, blah. And what we found was it was the same root cause. It's the same fear of failure. What if I can't stick to the program? What if the diet's too hard to maintain? And then I'll find evidence of that as I go, right?

When it gets really hard, I'll be like, fuck, it's happening again. I'm, you know, I might fail. I might fall off track. And so he was like, look, not only are we going to get the results you want, not only are we going to win, but we're going to get there with enjoyment. We're not going to stress about it. And so he's like, I was like, all right, well, how do you do that? He's like, let's say today you're out of four in your fitness level.

He's like, and you could be at a four in anything in your life, personal finances, whatever. So let's say you're at a four in fitness and you want to get to your 10, right? Let's get real clear about the 10. Cool. Here's what your 10 is. And I described it in detail. And he made me awkwardly describe how I want my body to be and my life to be as a 10. He's like, all right, that's a 10.

You're out of four now. He goes, we're not just going to do what most people do. Most people, when they're out of four, they think about the 10 they want. And then they just feel shitty that they're not at the 10. And they try to use that as fuel as motivation of like, fuck, I hate where I'm at. I want to get to where I want to be. And they just, they just continue hating the four and wishing they had the 10. He goes, that's cool.

You might get there, but you'll feel shitty the whole time. And that's not a win. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to love the 4. Okay, you're out of 4 right now. Fantastic. And all we're going to focus on is not the 10. We're going to focus on a 5.

Five comes next. And we're going to get really excited every time we sense that we're going from 4 to 5. And sure, five is still not nowhere near what our 10's going to be. But we're going to really get excited about every time we see. that signs of that five coming. And so he just kind of broke it down into much smaller chunks. And the last thing he said was, what if I told you again that the 10 was inevitable?

You were absolutely going to get there. He's like, imagine you go outside your house and there's a corner store. And at that corner store is, you know, the ice cream you want, right? He goes, you know, when you're walking to your corner store, you're not worried, am I going to get there? You don't fear failure. You know you're going to get there. You also know you're not there yet, right?

So you know you're far away today. but you're cool with that. No problem. You know you need to do some work to get there. You need to walk to get to the corner store. No problem. I don't mind doing the work because you're absolutely certain that you're going to get to the corner store. There's no doubt in your mind that you're going to fail and fail to walk there. He goes, that's how we're going to think about success for our body. It's just this corner store that we're inevitably going to get to. We just got to take a bunch of steps and we're going to go step by step all the way there. But there's no fear of failure because it is, it is as we are as certain that we're going to get to our destination as we're certain that we could just get to that corner store. And we're not going to feel bad that we're far away right now like duh we just left our house of course we still got a way to go um but we're going to enjoy the walk there and that metaphor i don't know why but that just clicked for me um and i just got really really fucking certain that it's going to happen and now i'm enjoying the process on the way there so i don't know that maybe it was too long of a spiel maybe we should edit this out but you that has changed my life i'll well well i think that this trainer is your soulmate You guys are like, you guys are like the same person, I think.

Yeah, I think you got to marry that your trainer. You know, actually when I saw him and I was like, wait, you used to train my wife and he's a good looking dude. And I was like, and he's real smooth too. So I was like, oh, this, if I knew that you are who you are, I would have never let my wife trade with you, dude. Like you're Mr. Steelier girl. And I was like, but now my wife should be worried that I'm just going to fall in love with you because we are the same brain. What's the price per session? I think he charges me

$85 bucks a session or something like that. $85, $90 a session? What's that? I think I need to get a trainer. Yeah, you should work out with this guy, but you've got to be back in kind of the area. Well, this is a good episode. Appreciate everyone listening.

Leave a review. We read all of them. And maybe we'll be back next week with some more trainer stories from Sean Perry. All right, see you.