My First Million - #123 - The Big Business of Buying Amazon Routes, and a COVID-proof Franchise

Episode Date: October 28, 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. Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamPar) are back on the today without a guest. On today’s episode you’ll hear: How Card my Yard just might one of the best COVID-related franchises (2:10) Why Amazon logistics franchises and delivery routes are slowly becoming franchise powerhouses (5:20), Sam tells the story of his mother-in-law turned entrepreneur (11:45), Shaan and Sam talk about @visualizevalue and weigh the merits of being a solo-preneur vs. starting a world-changing technology (17:22) Shaan describes the “Zone of Genuis” and how to find it (30:30), the guys guess what their monthly burn should be to live the way they want (38:00), Shaan tells a story of how he accidentally convinced his wife to quit her consulting job to follow her passion (44:00), Sam talks about how to build an audience in-person (48:20), Sam pulls up his list of companies that he was looking to apply at 8 years ago (53:45), the two guys talk about the genius and wisdom of MMA fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov (59:00). Big thank you to Azoras for sponsoring this episode! Follow them on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/azoras. 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.

Uh-huh. 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. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. We live. Sean, what's that? We have absolutely zero topics on the document today.

So I am very curious what's going to happen. Oh, you have one? I have one. Okay. But I am confident. I think we will freestyle well. So we have this little Facebook group that I think, you shut up Sean where it asks or where like people of the podcast talk to one another and I have a

feeling there's a lot of just like spam in there but did you see I asked people what they hate and what they love did you read it I read a bunch of the comments what did you what did you take away from that guests are not as favored as I thought or as loved as I thought which sucks because that requires zero work from us no there's work you got to schedule the guests and think of what to say I find these to be less work than the than the guests and then other takeaway I think riffing. Everyone says we have good dynamic. I already knew that.

Anything else so? So here's one thing. And this happens anytime you ask your diehards, they're like, we just want more of you guys, the backstories and the real life stuff, which I don't think the casual listener, which the casual is always the masses,

right? I don't think the casual listener cares about us in that same way. They want like the ideas. They want the information in and out. And the people who are in this group who are like answer questions like that, they're more hardcore fans.

So there's always this danger of asking hardcore fans what they want because it'll take you into a more hardcore place. I have two little ideas that I could steal from our friend Chris that I think are worth talking about. So like I was saying, we didn't have too much written on our document today. But I think he surfaced two really interesting little stories about companies. So who did? This is Chris Backy. He was on the podcast, you know, maybe a month ago. Don't follow on Twitter.

So if you want to go follow somebody, Chris Jay Backy, A K-K-E. So he tweeted two things out there. I thought both were really interesting, back-to-back. So the first one is a side hustle that's booming during COVID called Card My Yard. And I remember this because my neighbor right in front of me just did this for their daughter's 16th birthday. And basically it's these little like signs you put in your lawn. Like each letter is like has a little, it's a letter like let's say S with two metal rods as you shove it into your grass and you're trying to spell like happy birthday Sam or like, you know, you did it.

you graduated and you like get these things so that it's like this little pop-up sign in your front front lawn. Card my yard. So great. Great name. Card my yard. Founder started in 2014, began franchising a couple years ago. They have 200 franchisees.

And so the franchisees, they make like a modest like one to $2,000 a month part-time doing this. And they said the first six months, he says the first six months of 2020, they did eight million in gross sales, which is kind of amazing. And they're a franchise model, which is awesome. I love this little like micro franchise, which. is great. So that was the first one.

Thoughts on that and I have another one. No, other than badass. Good job. That's fantastic. And I wonder what other like sort of little micro franchises you could do here.

The one that we had talked about way at the beginning of the podcast was the drone light shows one. I think that is still a amazing franchise if somebody could do it, which is basically drones instead of fireworks, drones can do some pretty dope stuff. And if you basically found

just local franchisees at all the different cities to service the like they'll be the go-to vendor for their provider. You basically give them a business in a box. You give them the drones and the software of how to operate it. Can you buy hologram equipment? Like for example, if I wanted Tupac to appear at your lawn? Yeah, or like at my party. Can I like, is that like a thing?

Can I buy a hologram machine? Can I rent one? Gram my lawn? Okay. Yeah. So it's like get Michael Jackson to perform at my party and I'll pay $1,000 to rent this machine for an hour. Is that a thing? Hologram machine rental.

I don't know. I hope what's a thing? Because like some of these rental businesses are crazy good. Like a carpet cleaner rental business is really good because carpet cleaners can last like 10,000 hours and you could charge like $50 an hour for it. Right. And I'm like, I'm like, man, is a is a is a cannot can we get that hologram game going or what? There's a bunch of of hologram things that are for like conferences it looks like like kind of like to make your booth really good.

I don't know if there's like kind of like for my birthday party. have Michael Jackson there, that would be pretty great. But I like that idea. But another one's carpet cleaner, by the way. Like a carpet cleaners sell for only $600, but they rent for like 50 bucks an hour and you get them from the grocery store. Right. And I'm sure they like kind of like what are they called bouncy houses or like, you know, moon houses, whatever, whatever you call them, I'm sure those operate on this like same model. So basically can you take some that's something that's a party trick or a birthday trick and can you make sort of the local franchise model for it? These signs are great because this is like dirt cheap to create.

But for the buyer, they're not going to want to make this on their own, right? So it's like way easier than the balancing house. It's viral. Like viral. And it's probably pretty durable. These letters can't. They don't probably take much wear and tear because they're just like in the lawn and then like out four days later. Okay.

So the other one that he talked about was Amazon, Amazon logistics. So he said Amazon has quietly created one of the most successful franchises of all time in two years. And he's talking about their Amazon logistics, their delivery fleets. So, you know, people becoming a prime delivery driver. And so it's a $10,000 startup cost. He said they have 1,300 franchisees now that do this. That employs 85,000 people. And a franchisee who's operating a 20 to 40 van fleet will be making, you know,

between a million and a half to $4.5 million in revenue depending on their market, which is kind of like amazing. And so, and you can sort of see how this would only grow. And so I think this is cool. I talked to somebody else who was talking about buying rights. He was like, I'm looking into buying FedEx routes. Who? What the hell is that?

Who said that? Some guy at Twitch and I was like, what do you mean? And had you ever heard of this? I had never heard of somebody buying a FedEx route. And he goes, well, what you do is there's certain like little areas of routes where you can buy to be the exclusive provider as long as you, you know, meet certain service requirements. And so you can become, you can buy a monopoly basically. You can say, I'll be the service provider here. I'll pay this amount.

and I'll operate this fleet here and you can make X dollars above which you paid just for the like you know the guarantee you're all your customers come from FedEx you just have to run the operations of driving the stuff around I've never heard of this that's fascinating okay so if you go to route consultant dot com you can see different routes that are for sale and there's a guy who built a course on it no I think he's just like literally you can find routes for sale you can find routes for sale you can sell your route. It's like a marketplace to sell FedEx routes. And so he's at basically FedEx and UPS don't have the ability to service all areas. So you set up as a service provider, you buy the trucks and the drivers and you buy the exclusive routes from them, which you can do, you know, in residential or you can do like warehouse to warehouse or whatever. Have you been to the country and seen like these disgusting minivans doing this? No. Like if you go like the country of Tennessee where I am, like you'll see like these like minivans with the hubcap missing and you're like, how on earth is like FedEx or letting this minivan on the road?

Well, it's just like it's that must be what it is. It's like it's a franchisee or like you'll see like a old like beat up car and you're like what the heck. How is that a government car? Right. And that's what it is. So here's the number that he was walking me through. He goes, so he's like here's a link to a guy who's selling a company with five routes

that he has exclusive. He goes, he's selling it for $1.9 million. You get paid on a per package delivered basis. So basically he's selling the business for $2 million. the business makes $2.5 million in revenue with operating income of about $550,000 a year, right? So he's saying if you bought it for 20% down, got an SBA loan for the rest, you're cash positive about $250,000 a year, including your loan payback. So like you could basically buy this business, be profitable in the first year.

Sorry, you're basically, you're making money on top of the meeting or loan requirements each year and you pay back your entire down payment within two years. And that's if you did 20% down. Dude, that just seems like so much work. I don't want to do it. Yeah, you don't want to do it. But there's a lot of people out there who would want to be making, you know, half a million a quarter million dollars to half a million dollars a year. I hear that. But I feel like, if you're the type of person though who can afford that, then you may be who have other options. But by the way, actually, I was thinking about this. I was like, man, if I sell my company, what would I do? And you know what I would 100% would do Uber Eats for a little while.

Just for a little while. I love driving. I just, I love driving. I love seeing all types of stuff. I think like these, there's these guys in New York and they all have these electric bikes

and they're just riding around. And it's hard work. I mean, it's not like they're having fun, but like just to kill time. That would be a fun way just to see the city and have like a mission. I would totally do that.

I would 100% be one of those electric bicycle messengers for like a few months. Right. Easy. I would not. The thing I would do before that would be, you know, what would you call the little like chariot thing where you bike and there's like two people in a wagon

on a date behind you? I'd rather do that. Dude, doing that, I never felt more fun and more alive than when I had a hot dog stand. These are just lies you're telling. No, I mean. You never felt more alive, really? I felt great.

I was because like there's a little bit of an, there's not really much of an adrenaline rush with the internet, but I felt, I don't know. felt special, but I think I also think that everything in the past always seems nostalgic. Yeah. I was, what's the thing I was thinking about with the nostalgia stuff? Oh, I was telling you about the trading card thing that I was looking at. As I talked to a bunch of people in this space, it's crazy to me how much of this is just

driven by people who used to collect cards, baseball cards when they were a kid. And now they're just like, you know, some rich investment banker or like hedge fund guy. And it's like, okay, I have like all this money and I like, oh, baseball cards are worth something now. they're like a collectible now. I remember how fun this was. And there's like this nostalgia that's driving this insane industry. Same thing with Pokemon cards.

Like it's a franchise that's really relevant to kids. But adults who have money still remember how it felt when they were a kid. And they're like 30 years old now. It's happening with cars from the 1989 era to like the early 2000s. Like people are like like people with money now from cars. Like for example, there are new Bronx. there's a new Bronco. There's a new wagoneer.

Yeah, the new Bronco, that's a big deal. Yeah, there's a new wagoneer. There's a new Hummer. Just like, it always is that. Right, there's an electric Hummer that's out now. Which, by the way, looks freaking awesome. I saw it because LeBron was posting about it because LeBron, when he was, I think, 15 or 16,

famously showed up to high school one day with a Hummer. And everyone was like, oh, okay, like, you know, LeBron comes from, like, he's like dirt poor. Like his single mom, no, like, electricity. in the house type of thing. It's like, where did you get this $70,000 Hummer from? It's like, oh, LeBron's not going to college. He has no amateur status anymore.

He's definitely taking money because he's going to go pro. And so it's funny that now he's like some old man of the NBA. And he's like excited about the electric hummer. It looks bad ass. It goes zero to 60 in three seconds, which is if you're not a car enthusiast, that's like crazy fast. Do you want to hear, let me tell you a personal story. And people said they wanted to hear the story in the podcast.

And I don't know if we should have her on, but can I tell you a story? real quick. Yeah, please. So last year, my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law is, she was a Haitian immigrant. She came from Haiti at like 17 or 18, didn't speak English. She's pretty badass.

Her and her husband, my father-in-law, started a business, great moving company, yada, yada, yada. Last year, she started listening to the podcasts, and she was like, I want to create an online store. And I was like, all right, I don't think you're going to do any of this, but I'll spend, I'll spend time talking with you.

And so she wanted to drive me to the airport because it would be a two-hour driver of the airport. She goes, let me drive me to the airport and you tell me how to do it. And I told her how to do it. And I go, so there's a thing called the CPM. And that's like where you do advertising and then you have a click-through rate and you want your click-through rate to be this. And then that's how you get people to your website. And then you want to sell them something. And you want to sell them by doing this, this and this.

And it's called a sales funnel. And that's how you got to think about this. So you got to think of a product that you could sell that costs a certain amount of money so you can make a profit. and you can sell to a certain amount of people, whatever. And I explained to her this whole thing. And I was like, all right, good luck, thinking that she wasn't going to do shit with it. Right.

She has a store now that's doing like 15 grand, 20 grand a month. Nice. And revenue. And I'm pretty proud of her because I'm so used to people like, I'm not even going to waste my time talking to you. I know you're not going to do any of this. But so this woman, her name's Smithy. She's my mother-in-law. I love her to death.

She started a pillow, like a throw pillow business. which neither you and I probably care about, but it's like fancy $80 throw pillows, which are decoration. The stuff we have to take off the thing we want to sit on and put on the floor for some reason. So we've had a bunch of podcast success stories of people listening to us. We've had a few people reach out to us and say,

hey, I've done this, this and this, thanks for some inspiration or an idea. I have to say, this is my most proud. One, because she doesn't fit, she's not like a 21-year-old broke. You know, she's, and anyway, pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's amazing. And so is it profitable or is it like, you know? Well, yeah, there's, she started with it with, I think, $5,000. Right.

So, yeah, it's profitable. It's called, how do you spell it? So she only started it with an Etsy store at first. So if you look up, wait, Smith, it's called Smithy Cotor. How do you spell Cotor though? C-O-U-T-R-E, I think. C-O-U-T. All right, I found it.

So her store is, is, if you just do a smithy. She smells her name, S-M-I-T-H-Y, Smithy S. Right. Her name is Smithy Sotor is the name of the business

and you could see like her pillows on there. And then she just now has a new website. I think it's called like smithy-coteur.com. Smithy Homecoteur.com. Yeah, that's it. I see it. I see her Instagram.

Yeah, this looks great. It's crazy. It's crazy. She's doing a good job. She did all of it. She did all of it. She rented an office for like $500 a month

bought a camera and bought lighting. She flew to North Carolina to like look at samples. I think she started. What a boss? Yeah, she started with 10 grand to do this. And I think she's probably make, I think her first year, maybe quarter of a million in sales. Like in December, when we were coming home from wherever we were coming,

like, you know, I traveled there for December. And she was like, let me, or was it December? It was some holiday, maybe Thanksgiving, I forget. But in the two-hour drive, I just explained. or how to do this. Well, what's funny is the stuff you were describing, like a CPM sounds totally unrelated to this pillow store. But nonetheless, I think this is amazing.

And my point was, I was like, here's how you have to grow. You have to, like, get eyeballs. Right. And then you want to convert, like, 2% of them. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the ways that you get eyeballs is through advertising, which means that your CPM is going to be this number and your click through rate is going to be this number,

which means your cost to, there's this thing called the CAQ, which is cost to acquire a customer. that needs to be below the profit you make per pillow. Right. And that's like how I explained it to her. And so now she's advertising and that's how she got her sales. Oh, that's great. I love it. Anyway, I can, let me lead you to this next one.

This one's a little bit more related to what we typically talk about. Have you heard of visualize value? I have heard of this. This is what's the name, Jack Butcher. Yeah. So I went to Jack's house this week. Me and my wife, Sarah. I met Jack on Twitter.

I went to his house on, like, Tuesday, and we got along so well that I went back to his house on Friday, and we hung out all day. And so I have to tell you this guy's story, and then I want to ask you your opinion of which lifestyle you'd rather have. So the way that his life has worked out was he's 32. His wife is my age about 30, and he's a British immigrant.

Came here at 21 and worked a bunch of agency jobs, and wasn't poor by any means, but it was just like a normal, just kind of scrape him. by ad agency type of guy. And then 18 months ago, he started a Twitter handle called Visualize Value, where he would create one, it's almost like an infographic, where he would explain different things with one infographic.

And that got quite popular to the point of in 18 months, he got 100,000 followers on Twitter. Then he created a course that teaches people how to make these things. And in his 18th month, or in the trailing 12 months, 18 months into his journey, they'll do close to a million dollars a year or close to a million dollars this year in advert or in uh revenue from yeah pretty amazing and i went to his house and he like we were we we had family time where we like just talked about you know podcasts and life and dogs and whatever but inevitably we did talk a little bit a little business and he like showed me his setup and how he was doing it what a fascinating lifestyle this guy built it's crazy cool and so what i want to know is what do you think of that and also would you

rather have that lifestyle where you have like a very steady not passive but 25 to 30 hour work week which I have no idea actually how much he works but it could be low or would you rather have like a different lifestyle where you work harder and swing for the fences so I think about this a lot and I don't view I don't view the distinction about that number of hours worked right so I don't have too much of an opinion on that I've found that when I work 20 hours on my job I just start to work 20 hours on my side hustle, right? Like, you know, I just, I just fill in hours with other stuff that I want to do, which tends to be business projects or projects of some kind. So I don't think that's the distinction, but I love the model of, I know this one thing really well. I can become a sort

of authority in that niche. Because I'm an authority, I can get followers. And because I have followers, 2% of them are going to want to be me and learn my shit. And I can charge those, you know, that 2% of my 100,000, which is 2,000 people, I can charge them, you know, $500 for this course, and I can make a million dollars a year off of my audience. I'm not spending to advertise. And that's money, that's almost pure profit that I can, you know, live on and I can be a solopreneur. And so I am very into this solopreneurship path to the point where right now, you know, I've been thinking about, okay, what, you know, what do I want to do for the next 10 years of my life. And I got offered like some pretty sick jobs, but I'm like, I can't imagine working

at a big company like that as like, you know, the path for me going forward. What type of jobs like at Fortune 500 companies? At like a startup that's going to like IPO next year in a space that I really care about at like a C level role. So it's like exactly what I would have wanted. What would the pay be? So I asked him because I was like, hey, look, I need to, I know you know, usually you take some steps before you get to this, like kind of job offer part, but just frankly where I'm at, I'm making a lot of money. And this may make no sense. And I don't want to waste either of our time if it's just financially. It's just not in the ballpark. So give me a sense. And they were like, well, the salary part can't match where you're at. But like, you know,

if the salaries, let's call it between $250,000 and $350,000 a year. And then the stock options would be worth, let's call it $2 million. But we're growing and if we IPO where we think we're going to IPO, that could be $10 million bucks if you, you know, over the next two or three years. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And so it's like financially it's great. Prestige is great because it's a company a whole bunch of people I've heard of and

think it's cool and stuff like that, right? So I thought about it. I said, okay, that's one path you could take a career. Another path is the traditional startup path we hear about a lot. Well, let's dumb that down. I don't think a lot of people can have that path, but I do think a lot of people can make very cushy six-figure. That's the top of the mountain of the corporate track, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like as far or higher, you can't really go higher than that. And the corporate track, maybe, you know, there's some crazy exceptions. But like that, to me, already sounds like an exception. So it's like, well, but if the top of the mountain is not that appealing, it's like, well, that's just not the mountain for me. The top of the mountain for me is something else. So that's kind of the question you have to ask yourself.

So one path is, you know, the corporate track. The other track is, like, I'm going to start my own company, you know, what you're doing with the hustle, right? Traditional media is messed up for a reason, A, B, and C. I'm a startup. I can flip it on its head and I can come in and, you know, be disruptive. And if I do it right, I can make a big prize, I can get a big prize, you know, which ranges from, you know, let's say in the success case, you most likely will fail. But if you succeed, you might walk away with 50 million, 100 million bucks for your company or up to 50 billion if you build the next Slack or next Airbnb or whatever it is, right? but it's going to be long, hard, super intense.

And, you know, it's a lottery type of, type of game. Most people will never, ever have that type of success. Would you raise funding? That's, in that path, yes, I would raise funding, right? So then there's, okay, so that's another option. Then the third one is bootstrapped kind of indie maker, which I actually don't consider what he's doing out of that. Like, that would be like literally, we're going to build a maybe a SaaS app that's

going to be profitable and we can, we can grow it, you know, based off our profits and it'll be a small team. And then you have the Jack Butcher visualized value path, which a bunch of other people are doing, right? So like, that guy Tiaga Forte is doing this. He's got a course. And then there's, you know, Ben Thompson. My best friend Neville, Madora. Neville's been doing this for years now, right? Fifteen years. Fifteen years. Exactly. Where you become a niche authority, you blog about it, you get free followers, and you get some paid followers, right? That's a model. And I think that that path is really appealing now, more appealing than it used to be.

Like, when Neville first started, I would bet that the, like, the success case, the top of the mountain there was not as big as these other paths. But now, I think that the way that the tools work and how big this market is getting on the internet and for paid education and stuff like that, I think these guys can clear somewhere between, you know, half a million bucks to four million dollars a year, just being themselves, just like talking about the thing they're into that they're known for and then sharing their wisdom with the world. And they don't have to deal with employees. They don't have to deal with investors. They can work 10 hours a week. They can work 100 hours a week. It's kind of up to

them. They are a little bit of a dancing monkey on the stage, right, because you are the product in many ways. But I think that path is pretty dope. What do you, what do you think? So that was a long way of answering your question of saying, I think it's definitely awesome, obviously. But I actually think that we need to break it down a little bit differently, which is regardless if you raise funding or not, so like there's this mentality of I want to grow two or three times a year. I'm willing to work a shit ton, which all parties actually of all these examples definitely could do.

If you want to have outsized success, you're going to end up working pretty hard. But like I'm going to hire employees. So like, so like I don't actually think that it's fair. I don't like doing this like VC, not VC thing. I would say like, are you going to hide, are you going to have a fair bit of head count? Right.

Are you going to not optimize at first for a profit and you're going to try and 50% to 200% grow every single year? Versus are you going to just coast a little bit and just make potentially a substantial amount of money? But you're going to operate like a small business that doesn't exactly want to grow revenue significantly. and you're not going to optimize for that. I don't know. Are those the two categories? Yeah. If you just think about like,

there's a bunch of different ways to break down the business side. Let's just break it down from a lifestyle perspective, right? So it's like, do you want to be managing a bunch of people or not? Do you want to be like going for the absolute grand slam? Do you want to be being profitable and trying to make payroll every month because you didn't raise money because you bootstrapped it?

Or do you want to be like in the, what Jack's doing where it's like you have very low burn and you may have a low profits. You may have low revenue at first, but it's very, very profitable because you have no head count and you have no fixed costs and you have no, you have no cost of goods sold because you're selling a digital product. Do you know how actually, and this is going to sound super disrespectful, but I don't, that's not my intention because I actually tend to side with the side I'm going to disrespect. But I would actually kind of say that it's almost like, do you want to be significant or not? Do you want to be? Because in order to be significant, you have to build something very large. like I'm talking significant on a grand level.

Like either it's business that impacts millions or hundreds of thousands of customers or that makes you so wealthy that you can donate money to a hospital or something like that. Well, it's like significant in what way? For example, I have friends of way bigger successes, way bigger successes than me. But because of this Rinky Dink podcast, I have a large audience of people who think I'm, you know, cool. And I'm able to influence them. and they know my name and they don't know his name, right? Yes, but they can use a much bigger company, right?

But they can use their money to do things that someone who doesn't have money can't. They can do a significant. But here's the other argument, right? I was talking to my manager at Twitch one time. And I had always thought like, you know, big company, my mental model was big company, you're a cog in the machine, small company, startup, you're like kind of the key player that, you know, putting the team on your back, putting the company on your back and you're making shit happen. And he had the exact opposite point of view.

He was like, well, I thought about this, you know, 15 years ago when I was deciding which path I wanted to go down. And I wanted to optimize where I can make the biggest impact. So I thought that meant startups. And what he meant was, look, this is a company that, you know, the company I'm working at that time was Google. He's like, if I just make this one product work, it's going to affect hundreds of millions of people.

And so that's the highest impact thing for me to do. And I was, I had always thought about it the other way. I thought high impact was you're in a small company, therefore you're, you're, fingerprints are all over the whole thing compared to Google where you're just trying to get your pinky to touch the machine and then you know that that's the level of impact you can have. I and I actually agree with that

which is and I just I still want to blunt this because I don't mean this in a form of disrespect because I don't think it's important to be significant but I really do think that like if you have a chip on your shoulder like I was listening to this guy Chimath whatever his last name is Chama you know billionaire VC guy

he was like yeah he's like my goal is to be one of the 150 people who control the world. And I'm going to do it by getting incredibly wealthy and controlling the capital and deciding how I want to allocate the capital. And when you hear him describe that, you're like, well, that's definitely more significant than like making $800,000 a year in revenue and living a very happy life. That doesn't mean that Chamatsway is that will actually make him happy because I bet he's incredibly unhappy. But that interview you're listening to by the way, I think is from a few years ago. And since then, his whole like investment company blew up all his partners left he had a midlife crisis left his

wife like you know like i don't think he was happy going on that that road uh at that time yes he's openly admitted it in that interview he did he goes i'm not really happy i'm very lonely so i'm not saying that that's the way to live but i am saying that that generally is the two sides of it which is you're going to be um uh kind of unhappy maybe unhealthy and you're going to optimize for cultural significance through allocating massive amounts of capital or creating something that's world famous or impacts a lot of people or you're potentially going to be much smaller, maybe work less, make a fantastic living and not be as significant. And which one appeals to you? The one that appeals to me is the second one. It's about like I want the quality of my life

to be high, right? Like that quality of my life and my family's life to be high. And the quality of my life is going to be affected by do we have to like, you know, do we have to slum it or do we have have, you know, the means to do what we want, to live the way we want. But also, I'm going to be spending half my day working. I'd rather be working on something that I'm doing for fun, not because I have to do it in order to, you know, achieve some status or make some amount of money, right? Like, I want to, I want to find that zone of genius, right? The thing I like to do feels like play to me. People want it. And, you know, I'm good at it. And if I can find the zone of genius, like, that's what, that's what works for me, whether that's in a big company, a small company,

or as a blogger or a podcaster, it doesn't matter. matter, right? Like, that's my, that's my personal focus is find my zone of genius and then just operate from there, because that's where I have the highest quality of life. Not, I'm not worried about societal impact in that way. I think that's a byproduct of, if you live your best life, you're going to end up influencing and helping a whole bunch of other people. That's just like a law of nature to me. My personal flaw is that I am easily influenced by others and like, I'll hang out with, you hear some shit. Yeah. Yeah, like I'll hang out with you or our best friend Ramon who doesn't fit into either one of those categories.

Well, he fits in the go hard category. But I'll hang out with Jack Butcher and I'm like, or whatever, Neville. And I'm like, man, it would be a little bit easier to just be a little easier. And then I'll go and read the Steve Jobs biography or I'll go and read about Chimath or go and read about someone who's like pretty significant. And I'm like, they fucking got after it. That is so cool. They like they risked it all.

and there's something fascinating about that, which is they just bent the world to their will. And I find that to be incredibly intoxicating and neat. And so I don't, I personally don't know where I fall, but I respect both. That's for sure. Yeah, I'm, I agree with you.

I respect both. I've been through that cycle where I like, I can't figure out what the fuck I admire. One day I admire one thing, and then I start to follow that path. And then all of a sudden, I start to admire this other thing because it's the opposite. And I,

and now I've gotten to a point where I'm like, Look, there's multiple ways to win. Here's what I know. I know what I don't want, right? So the thing I am absolutely sure I don't want to do is trade time for money, right? So any sort of consulting, any sort of coaching, I know that that's a trap and I'm never going to go down that path. So even if there's people who are happy down that path, I know I personally am not happy down that path. Okay, cool.

That's one, right? I want assets, assets that accrue in value over time. I think what I admire right now, and I used to believe. that the Elon Musk path is like, you know, the gold standard. And now I sort of look at that as something that's a lot more fun to watch than to do. I don't think those guys are happy. I don't think they live a life that I would be happy living and where you're, you know, extreme amount of stress, extreme amount of busyness, not able to detach, not able to be learning, not able to be with your family as much, right? Like it's always, you know, it's, it's a high frequency where

those same people have, you know, multiple marriages, they have, you know, health issues, they have other stuff because of the lifestyle they live. They live what I call an Olympic lifestyle. It's like, I think Michael Phelps is dope. When I heard what Michael Phelps's life was like while he was training to be Michael Phelps, I was like, that's a trap. That's miserable. I would never want to do that. Like, you can give me all the gold medals. I don't want that. The thing that a lot of people don't do, and someone, a mentor of mine, taught me how to do this at age 20, and he goes, you need to write down everything you want to earn this year. and then you also need to write down everything

you're going to give up this year to get that. Like what cost are you going to pay? Right, the tradeoffs. And I think that's what a lot of people have to do. You're like, I want this. Like I want to win a gold medal. Therefore, I'm willing to be lonely. Right.

Have you ever done it? Did you ever do that exercise? Yeah, I do it all the time. I was like, I mean. So what's an example of yours right now? What you want and what you gave up? Or what you're willing to give up? Well, like I don't have, I don't,

see friends. Like on school nights, I don't I call it, we call it school nights. Me and Sarah, it's like, no, it's a school night. We don't go out on school nights. Right. So like that, do you do that? It's like Monday through Friday, like I don't see anyone. I only see people Saturday and Sunday. It's a school night. So that's funny. Like that's something we do, which is like you work. I have an example for you with yours, right? You wanted more freedom. You gave up control as CEO of your company. Yeah, for sure. You brought in a president and a CEO. whatever it is, right? And so I think that was like a, that was a give and a get that you, that you agreed to that I think most people would not, but you consciously chose to do that.

Yeah. And I actually do it. Right now, I'm trying to weigh a certain weight because I got a little chubby when I got sick. And so it's like, okay, I want to look good naked and weigh this weight. Therefore, I'm going to be hungry throughout the day. I like, and I will literally write that down. It's like, am I willing to be hungry? But, God, what was I going to bring up to you? Oh, I do think that there is a, and I hate saying this because it's such a pussy thing to say, but there is a middle ground with this in that, like, I do think that there are people who are immensely successful that actually do work pretty calm. So I don't know this guy well, but Tim Chen is the founder of NerdWalt. He's one of my investors, and I've hung out with him a bit. And it was hard at first

when he started the company. But once it got going, if you pick the right business model, you can grow and be huge and be influential and impactful and also not kill yourself once the ball gets rolling. That is possible. And I bet you the Twitch guys had that happen with them. Yeah, I think like, for example, from what I can see right now, I think, you know, they live a pretty healthy, balanced life. They have the time that they would want to do what they would want. But I know that there was a number of years where that was not the case, right? And so I think Paul, Graham had this thing he said once, which is like, startups is basically a trade you make where you say, I'm going to compress a 40-year career into the next four. So I'm willing to work insanely hard

and, you know, do my absolute best for the next four years to try to get the value of a 40-year-full career during that time. And I think that was a good way of putting it. Let me tell you this other thing that I saw that you were just talking about money for a second ago. So there's a sub-ret that I like, and I don't like telling people I read it because it's quite embarrassing, but it's called Fat Fire. Do you know what Fat Fire is? Yeah, we've talked about it a couple of times, but go ahead. Explain it for people who don't know.

There's a leaned fire, which is you try to cut your expenses as low as you possibly can, and then you try to earn. And Fire stands for financially independent, retire early, I think. Yes. So it's like if you could save up $100,000, you can effectively live off of $7,000 a year in interest or like in some type of investments. And so it's like, all right, let's see how high I can get that

while seeing how low. So it's like, all right, I'm only spending two grand a month right now. And expenses, therefore, I only need $24,000 or about a quarter of a million in savings, and I'm fired. That's what they call it. And then there's fat fire, which is people who want to do that, but they want to do it where they are rich. And so they want like 10 or 20 million.

And so, but it's a really cool subreddit where everyone discussed different ideas. And there's this one subreddit that said, dear everyone who has fat fired for a rich family of four, how much do you spend a year or a month in expenses? And I was actually shocked by how low it was. And so there is people, there's like a guy who has $50 million. And he was like,

we spend around $400,000 in living expenses. And we live in a high cost of living city. And I was like, that's actually not that much. Right. How much is 400 divided by 12? 33,000 a month. Okay, so $33,000 a month in living expenses is kind of, It is a lot for sure.

But it's not like obscenely high if you are very wealthy. And I'm like, that's actually not that challenging. What do you think would be your monthly burn if you could live how you want? And yeah. Right. So I did this. So I basically said, and people have argued with me that this is not the right way to think about it, smart people. So maybe I have this like totally wrong.

But basically I said that I would need initially I wrote, I need eight. I need $8 million to work for me. You know, $8 million that is capital I have invested where my money is earning me money. And I said, okay, cool. If I had $8 million that was working for me and I was getting, you know, 5% a year of capital increase there, that's about a $400,000 a year, you know, net gain and asset value. And 400,000 is what I put as. So I think that guy said 400,000. I also had put down 400,000 as what I thought it would cost me to live every year,

which is basically like... Live lavishly. Live in the way that, like, whatever's lavish to me today. Now, maybe you escalate shit over time. You start buying tigers and shit for your house. But like, you know, without going crazy, it's basically like live in the type of house that I want, you know, travel as much as we kind of like to travel and not really think about, you know, buying stuff and whatnot on a day-to-day basis.

Like we're kind of heavy consumers. We're not like Marie Condo minimalist. Right. Don't consume anything. If you're spending $400,000 a year, though, you're definitely not in the middle. You're on the upper. Right now I spend half that. Right.

So right now I spend $200,000. That's my current life burn rate is I spend $200,000 a year. And so I basically factored in, okay, what if I spent double what I spent today? How much money would I need so that I could spend that amount and my total assets are going up, not down? Right. What's my, that's my sort of break even time? Why was that wrong?

Because they said, I imagine they said, okay, you're going to do that for a year. And then you're going to go and earn more income by working. So it was our mutual friend, actually, Narendra, who I think it was the first one that was like, that's not the right way to think about it. And he's got a lot more money and he's older than me. So I was like, okay, you know, I should take it. I should not totally blow this person off when they tell me that. But what he said, he said, he said two things as far as I could remember.

He said, your assumption of making 5% a year, like kind of like good luck with that. And I don't know why he said that. Like, that seems like a pretty conservative estimate to me that that it would, compound at 5% a year, but for whatever reason he said no, maybe he was factoring taxes or something, I don't know. And then the second thing was, he's like, you're, you're, when you, when you get rich like in this way, your expenses will inflate over time. And so like, you're not factoring in that your lifestyle will inflate faster than you think it will today. Which is interesting. So that was his argument. Because that guy, Narendra, he's one of my great

friends and I love him, he's a little hippie-dippy-dippy. Like, he's not materialistic. Money-focused. Yeah, he's not materialistic. and yet he's telling you that. Right. And maybe I misunderstood his argument. It was a quick DM. It wasn't something that we had like some long conversation about. But yeah, I've always had this number.

Initially it was $6 million and then I bumped it to $8 million. And because I was like, I had it $6 million at 7% a year and then I changed it to $8 million at 5% a year. But that's my like financial freedom number is the $8 million in the bank. That's the, not in the bank, but $8 million debt's put to work. And that's the financial freedom number. for me. That's interesting. Well, if you like this stuff, that subreddit's kind of cool. I do think that going on that stuff can be kind of toxic because you compare yourself to one another and it doesn't matter if you're on the low end or the high end. There's always someone better and always someone

worse. So I think it can suck to do that. But it is kind of cool to see unfiltered opinions and thoughts, which are incredibly hard to come by when it's about this topic. Yeah. Also just like a mini rant. I feel like people, it's so fucking in vogue to be the guy or girl who's like anti-money where it's like money, you know, like, oh, it's too focused on money. Money doesn't matter. You know, like these arguments where it's like, you know, you know, remember, money's the tool. And if you forget that, you're the tool. Like, you know, there's all these like sort of quotes and lifestyle things.

And it's like, dude, I've met a lot of people. who are like me. And it's like they want to be financially free. And they want to live a certain way. And they want to be financially free. And that's a valid goal. And there's so many people that like to shit on that goal that it's crazy to me. Like, okay, maybe there is this higher level of wisdom that they've achieved and that other people haven't achieved. But I don't think they're that wise because they're so fucking judgey. And if you were that judgy, you're not that wise as far as I'm concerned. And so yeah, that's my mini rant on like, look, it's okay to want to achieve financial freedom to think about what that means for you and then to work towards it. I think that's a totally fine thing to do. I agree. And I would say it's

the other way around as well, which is it's okay not to want that. Yes, exactly. And I agree with you. And I would also say, like I was talking to Jack, I was like, yeah, man, you could build this and then turn it into this. And you hire all these people. And then I was like, but wait a minute. But also, like if you don't want to be, if that won't make you happy, I would say don't do that because that sounds it sounds like you're pretty pumped and happy right now. So maybe just do what you're doing. I think it's like far too off to do people. Yeah, I agree with you where they like hate on someone because they're getting after it.

And they are trying to become big and they're killing themselves to do it. But they're like, yeah, but this is just what I want. So it's like, all right, sounds good. And then also like, for example, I used to do this with my wife. I was like, you need to quit your own job, quit your job, do this, this, this and this. And she was like, I like, I like, I like, I like, oh, well, okay, sounds good. Trump card. Right.

I enjoy this. She's like, I like, I like my job. I make a lot of money. I'm happy. I feel good. I go, you're right. Don't start a company. What the hell am I saying?

Don't do that. Sounds good. So I do think it goes both ways. I went to, I got invited back to my college to speak one time. And so I took my wife with me and we just made a trip out of it. So we go back, we fly there. The night before I'm like preparing my talk. And she's just like doing her own thing, whatever.

she's just like, eat, walking around, she's just exploring the campus. And, uh, and then I gave the talk and like, I don't know what the kids,

the students thought about it. Like, you know, they probably were like, oh, yeah, that was like, whatever,

like, whatever, figuring out what I'm going to do this weekend. Um, but my wife got like really into it. And so on the plane ride back, she quit her job. And like,

she had this consulting career and like, straight up quit, uh, on the flight, sent an email out and, uh, like, started her next life.

I was like, whoa, that was not what I was trying to do. And I was trying to tell the students, not you. You should tell people what your wife does is pretty fascinating. She draws animations for in-person events, right? Yeah, like it's called, yeah, it's called either sketch notes or graphic facilitation. Basically, she would get, she, this is what she used to do. She used to get paid to fly to some boardroom, you know, Yahoo's having that board meeting or Adobe was one of her big clients.

And basically, they're doing some kind of like executive meeting typically or like an off-site or a conference or something like that. And she would be there listening. And while they're talking about, okay, this year, here's our priorities. But what about this? And what about that? And like she's actually creating a visual, like an infographic. So she's drawing the words that they're saying, mental models, like little diagrams, basically on this huge like wall-sized whiteboard.

And so they, and by the time they're done with their conversation, they like look over and like it makes their whole like messy conversation look like this totally coherent plan. because she's filtering out all the bullshit and like connecting ideas together herself. Which is funny. That's exactly what the visualized value thing is. Right. And so she just does it live, I guess. That's kind of the core difference. She made a great living doing it.

Yeah, exactly. Now, it was a trading time for money thing, right? Like had to go fly a bunch of places all the time, which is not like super fun once you do it a lot. And then for a lot of people. But it's a good place to like start building a career. Then if she wanted to, she could have product, made it a product. Yeah, and that's the step she didn't take was like, kind of like either create a farm system of talent. Because she got recruited because she was just doodling in her notebook in business school.

And somebody was like, did you draw that? And she's like, oh, yeah, sorry, I just wasn't paying attention to the class. And they were like, no, no, no, like, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Like, if you drew that, I have a job for you. And she didn't even realize this is a career. Most people don't even realize this is a possible career. But she had this artistic talent that she was just like, oh, art doesn't make money. I'm not going to do art.

That's just a hobby, I guess. and then she realized, oh, I can pair business with art and I can do this thing that very few people can do because they can't draw. Okay, so next episode, I want to show you one more example, but next episode, what's come prepared, and we'll both tweet it out, we'll come prepared with one to three-person operations

that are doing awesome stuff, and we'll just rattle off who they are. Does that sound cool? Yeah, like a solopreneur-s slash duopreneur kind of success cases. Yeah, just like small teams, like your wife would count as one, like just small teams, that have internet or internet related things that are kind of crushing it.

And I'll tell you one more. So I met with this guy named Steve. I don't know Steve's that's name, but have you heard a nerd fitness, nerd fitness.com? No, but I like the name. It's been around forever. He's been around for a long time.

And Steve does coaching and creates programs and his whole, and also with a blog and his main audience are people like you, I guess me, but nerds who want to get fit who don't know too much about working out. And it's called nerd fitness. So he's like, we help people. Basically, his whole schick, he calls him nerds, but it's people who are just not well-versed with gym equipment

and don't want to go to the gym and squat because they think they're going to look silly. He teaches you how to squat. So when you go to the gym, you can look like you know what you're doing. Actually do it. And feel comfortable. And it's pretty cool. And I have no idea how big is business is.

I bet it makes three or four million bucks a year. But I went to his house yesterday. And I've loved meeting these types of people. It's been so fascinating to learn how different groups of people are building companies. And tell people how you're doing this because I think what you're doing is really smart and most people don't do this. So you decided to go on tour just for a lifestyle decision of like, I want to go live in different places. But you are actually meeting a bunch of cool people in every single city. And what is this?

Is this I tweet out when I go to a place where I put on Facebook like, hey, I'm in Detroit. Who's here? Something like that. Yeah. So I just tweet out like I'm currently staying in Kabul Heights. or Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. One time I accidentally tweeted out my address, and I got a cool, it was kind of cool.

I got mail, but I didn't, it could have been weird. Didn't want mail. But I, or I'll be like, hey, I'm going to be in Nashville from this date to this date, holler, you know, and I just will get DMs. And I, if I, if it's like a friend of a friend or someone in my circle, then I'll go and meet up with them. So I met up with this guy named Nick Gray, who had this business called Museum Hack. He is friends of friends with Neville.

And then Nick introduced me. me to Steve, the guy of nerd fitness. And then Jack Butcher tweeted at me. And that's how I've been meeting everyone. And so when I'm in Austin, I'm sure I'm going to be quite busy. And then I met like this guy named Sweaty startup. You know him? Yep.

He's in Athens, Georgia. So I'm going to go to Athens, Georgia, and I'll say hi to him. It's been awesome. Yeah, I think it's amazing what you're doing. And, you know, most people would try this, but like nobody's going to respond to the tweet. So there is this precursor you have to do. It's like, A, be an interesting person who does interesting things yourself because then people will want to meet with you. And the second is like build up an audience.

Like we did this. We built up an audience. We asked for nothing in return. We spent time every single week doing this for like a year now. And it's amazing the value that we've been able to. It's more valuable than I realized. And we're small still. If we were big, I can't even imagine how easy it is for people who are big to get shit done.

I think, well, first of all, let me say that I did this in 2014 after the first hustlecon, and I definitely had a, I had like 2,000 Facebook friends, a lot of them like startup-e, business-y-type folk. And I traveled on my motorcycle for eight weeks around the country, and I met up with a lot of people. So your audience doesn't need to be that big. But I will say, I think we're definitely not like a big podcast, but I think that we're like maybe top 50. Yeah, we're definitely top 100, maybe top 50 sometimes. Yeah, we're not small, but we're not like. Like there's famous people and then there's like nobody's and we're somewhere in between.

And I guess my-closer to the nobodies, but yeah. Yeah, exactly. But my point is like if it works even at when we're at this scale, like I can't even imagine how well it'll work as we get bigger. Like that's crazy how many advantages there are to just having a kind of an audience of people. So I really encourage people to do this. It's like, imagine if you're Joe Rogan and it's like, he's like, yeah, dude, my buddy had COVID in Nashville. And he's like, who's your buddy? He's like, well, like Sturchell Simpson, this famous singer.

Or he's like, yeah, my buddy wrote a book on that. Oh, you mean Malcolm Gladwell? Right. You're like, you like, yeah, you know, I met with this guy. He's got this car company. You like he like, and he's cool about it. That's what you call too famous, actually. You're too famous and then you're constantly trying to downplay other, you know,

the shit that's happening in your life as well as like you can't actually function anymore because people just keep mobbing you. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Like I, so I just don't, like, we're not famous at all, but I get a ton of messages. I just don't reply to any of them. Imagine if you're like Joe Roken and you say like, I have a cold today and then you'll get 3,000 messages saying,

have you tried Flonase? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? You know, my friend's the best doctor in the world. So I have this guy now who works with me and he's like my right hand man. And he gave him access to everything. I was like, here's my DMs. You can read all those if you want.

Like just just reply. I was like because there's a lot of shit I just don't reply to because we would find that he would mention something that's like blowing up. I'd be like, oh, I think I've talked to the founder. I've messaged him a while back. I don't know what happened. And then we'll go back. We'll find it.

And it's basically nine times out of ten, it's me saying, hey, this thing's dope. And they're like, wow, thanks. I didn't know, nobody knows about this yet. And I'm like, yeah, we'd love to talk. You know, we'd love to invest in this to talk to you about it. And they're like, cool, here's my email. Let's find a time. And then I never follow up.

And then I never reply. And then like, it's four years later. And I'm like, hey, congrats on that, you know, a hundred million dollar round you just raise like that's the next message that comes through what was that company by the way uh well like air table was one of them um but there's there's two there's two others and the same thing just happened and so which one i told him i was like you have free rain i was like there is a lot of value in it just like not being a total dipshit that i am and like actually just reply to these people and um and he's like dude we can just turbo charge your network so

easily if we do this. And so I encourage you to actually do this. This has been a kind of a game changer for me because I think you're probably like me. You might be a little bit better about it, but you're probably like me that there's a lot of value value on the table. No, like these guys just de-end me and they're like, we do 120 million revenue, 40 million in profit. Can we come on the podcast? And I was like, I think I said I was going to talk to you about it. But I would have forgotten about it. I had not just put it down. I'm always like, oh, sounds great. Yeah, that's the last, that's the last one for me. Yeah, I'll just say, I'll just say, badass and then I just like I got to go and answer an email. What was the two companies that you're

referring to? Can you say? I don't remember without my head, but I just know that this has happened three times to us in the last three weeks. And so he was like, dude, can I just reply to all these so that this doesn't happen again? Like that's three times we found this exact same thing. Let's do something about this. And I was like, yes, please, please do. I want to show you something really quick now that we're talking about this. Because last time we had a podcast called Jobs that we wish we could have or no uh jobs that we almost had but like got fired from or something like that or didn't get the didn't get the job so i went and so when i went and looked at my stuff um my notes from 2012 um so in 2012 what i did was i created a google form and i put a heading for company name company

URL job title job listing uh hiring manager and then i would email them and i would track the notes yeah yeah let me show you some of the ones that I found my thing. Oh, this is amazing. Okay, all right. Can I just read these off that I'm saying? All right, so Sam Parr prospects. Okay, so company name, Uber.

And this is 2012. Yeah, July 2012. So not totally small. Hiring manager, Ryan Graves, who's the CEO of Uber at the time? Or maybe he had moved to president. No, he wasn't. I don't think he was. So look, launcher, whatever, the community manager.

Launcher was like the city launcher thing. Sales manager. Sales Rockstar. So Zosie. I don't know what that is. Did that company make it? And then look at this one. Yeah, Airbnb.

Exactly. Airbnb 2012, this is so funny. I want to look at sales manager. Who these people are. Like, did they get like crazy rich now? They're all on sabbatical, dude.

That's right. They're all taking a, you know, a three year gap year where they're going to go read about mindfulness. Okay, but here's where it doesn't get good.

So Zosie. Is this around anymore? I've never heard of that company. So what do they do? Is it around? It's a watch company. Okay. Oh,

no, it's not around. Did not win. Okay, trip trotting. No. Did Triptrouting win? Dude, this is so funny. So your next one there is Zimride, which became Lyft.

You became Lyft. Is that crazy? Pre the name changed to Lyft. Okay, wow, that's good. Account manager. That's all it was, was account manager. No, no, university account manager, even better. God, I could have that.

Zero cater, I don't think they panned out exactly, but they had a good run. And then that's it. Oh, and then cater to me. A different catering company. Oh, there's more. EF tours that didn't pan out. Nixon, Red Bull, every other, that's every company ever that you do. I mean, that everyone applies at Red Bull.

So here's what's crazy. That's eight years ago. That's not like eight years is not that long. So like, you know, I remember the president back then. So, so, so projecting forward eight years. Imagine if, imagine what your life today is going to look like in comparison to eight years forward. How exciting is that? Because like back then, you would have been pumped to get this university account

manager job at Zimride. And it's like, dude, well, here's the shitty part is I would be pumped now if I got that back then. Like, I would have, I would have been,

I should have done that. What was I thinking? So did you not get any of these jobs? Or you got the Airbnb one. And then I interviewed at the other one. No, like, I don't think you understand how redneck I was.

Like, I was in Nashville. I didn't know what the word startup was, really. Like, I was like, I would call it like a startup company. Like, oh, you guys are like a cool startup company.

The dead giveaway. Yeah, like, they would say the Bay Area, and I was like, I don't know what the Bay Area is. Right. And they're like, they would talk about San Francisco, and I was like, yeah, like Silicon Valley, like, by L.A. Yeah, like, I didn't know anything. I was just, I was just a redneck. I was, I was country. I didn't, I just didn't know anything.

Yeah, I did a lot of cringe stuff. I looked up the email that I had sent to, to Michael Birch, who was running the idea lab at the time, Monkey Adferno. and there's some stuff in there that I'm like, this is so fucking cringy. But it's actually good to read because now when I look back, now when people message me, I'm like, dude, I was 10 times worse at this than you are. So I should not judge anybody

because I was awful at this. Not too long ago. That's like seven, eight years ago. And even if it is cringe, you could still tell like earnestness and you could still tell if someone is hardworking and like if they're go-getter. So like, yeah, like I used to make fun of my friend Tam.

Do you remember Tam fam? Yes. This guy, Tamper was an intern at my company at like 19. And I would kind of bully him around because he kind of, I would treat him like a little brother because I was only 23. He was 19. And I would treat him like a little brother. I'm like, shut up, Tam.

Like, you nerd. Like I would tease him. But looking back, I'm like, that guy, he is like, he was like the most like eager, dorky guy ever. Yeah. He was a go getter. Yeah. He was just like butters on South Park.

And he was a great dude. dude, but I would just like bully him. But now, I see him on Facebook when he's like, he was like learning pole dancing or something in his house. He's always doing stuff. And he would like, he like proposed to like some prom to a girl by like dancing and showing up at the side.

And I would just like tease them. But looking back, and even then I knew it, I'm like, yeah, but dude, Tam, you're like a badass. Like you're going to, you want him around. Yeah, like you're going to be really special. Like all these weird quirks that you have,

you're going to get teased now because you're barely out of high school. But trust me, like you're going to kick ass. Trust me. Like, keep it going. Right. I'm going to keep making fun of you, but you keep doing what you're doing. Right. And when I make fun of you, I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to like conclude you and part of the joke, but you're, uh, you're going to be badass. And I think people can tell that, right? Really easily. Yeah. That's, uh, that's, that's really funny. Can we do two minutes on Kabeeb for the like 1% of the audience that cared about Kabeep? Fucking awesome. So awesome. Where did you, where'd you watch it? Just at home? Just at home. So the background for anyone.

listening Khabib, his name's Khabib, Nirmaga made up, what is it? So I learned it. So it's actually Habib, not Kib. I know. Even though Zakeh. And then it's, you know, Nurmaga met off is like the way we say it,

but there's actually like three silent letters in there that you're not supposed to say. I don't know which ones. He's like a stoic MMA guy. He's very Muslim. So he's like, always says like, you know, al Shalom or some type of praise B to whoever.

And he doesn't bring his wife or his kids around. He doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't cuss. He's very calm, very stobic. But he'll say very, in a Russian accent, he goes, I'm going to bring you on the ground and mall you. Right.

That's what he says. Yeah, I'm going to smash this guy. I'm going to smash this guy. I'm going to give him good smash. So he's from Dagestan, which is a place I literally never heard of until I heard of Kabib. And then- It's like Afghanistan and Russia. If you ever look at photos. It looks like it kind of looks like the Middle East, but it's technically Russia.

And it's all Muslim. So the thing that's interesting, so it's not about, oh, what happened in the match, right? There's like an interesting match. But this guy is just like a remarkable character that I think you could like pull a lot from. This is a character to hear about. So guy from Dagestan, which is a mountain town in Russia that's like not like the Russian people don't like the Augustani. So they're like this like outcast group of people.

This is like a hard, hard group of people that live there. Like they live a hard life. Like and this isn't like kind of sending. It's the truth. If you Google his town and his house, like a stone home with not much electricity. And so his. Dad is one of the, was one of the greatest, like, martial arts coaches ever, basically, turns out.

But at the time, like, Khabib was a little kid, and there's these videos on YouTube of him wrestling a bear. A baby bear. A baby bear. So he's a kid. He's probably like, I don't know, six or seven or something like that, eight maybe. And he's literally, his dad has him actually wrestling against a baby bear as like either for fun or training.

Yeah. They're like the same size. It's insane. And so, they're like, they're like the same size. It's insane. this guy from a young age trained wrestling in this, like in the mountains of Dagestan. So he, he joins the UFC. He ends up now, so he retired after this match that just happened over the weekend.

So he's completely undefeated, or as he says, undisputed, undefeated UFC lightweight champion, greatest of all time. And 29 and 0, never really lost a round. They gave one round to Connor McGregor. But like, pretty, he dominated pretty much every minute he was in the, in the UFC. he dominated his opponent and he fought everybody. And so that was kind of crazy. So he, and then like Sam said,

he's kind of a devout Muslim guy. What's interesting is he got super popular. So he has 23 million followers on Instagram. He has more followers than Floyd Mayweather. He has made, his dad estimated that he made about $100 million total because there's a billion Muslim people out there and he became the most famous Muslim athlete since Muhammad Ali.

And so he developed this huge following, even though he's a very kind of, modest guy. You know, he was not like Connor McGregor or Floyd May whether he's really flamboyant. He wasn't like that. And he got famous because after the Connor McGregor fight, he's an asshole, Kabib had a flip. He flipped out because Connor made fun of his religion a little bit and was disrespectful

to his family. After the fight, he beat Connor McGregor up, jumped the stands and went and beat up Connor McGregor's team. And that's why he got so many followers. Yeah, that's one of the reasons. I think he's just in general, like idolized by, a whole bunch of like Muslim people. He's the most famous Muslim athlete.

And, you know, there's just a lot of people in that population. So he's like super famous across Russia, the Middle East, everywhere else. And so he retires undefeated, dominates this guy again, you know, as he always does. And his dad passed away, I think due to COVID this year. So his dad, who trained him, passed away a few months ago. So this was his first fight without his dad. And he surprised everybody he retires. At first he breaks down in tears because this first, you know, first fight posed his dad.

And he knew, I think he knew what was about to happen. He knew it was over, right? So he basically says, I promised my mom, I wouldn't do this anymore. And he gives this like post-fight speech where he's like, look, spend time with your parents. I only have one now. And if you have parents, spend time with them. And he said, I'm going to spend some time with my mom. Yeah, he goes, he goes, mother asked me not to fight without father.

Right. I said this last. I said this, I'll do it. That's how he said it. He goes, I promised her this will be my last one. I'm done. I gave her my word, so now I must do it. And a lot of people in fighting retire, but they do not stick to their word because they retire as like a stunt to drive more interest in their next their comeback fight.

So there's guys who have retired like five times. Like Mike Tyson's coming back again to fight this year. And so like that's a tactic, but this guy doesn't play around. This guy is like he's like the definition of man of your word. I have no idea if it's true. But when I look at him and his crew, I'm like, you guys have killed people before for sure. Or you happily would. Yeah, they're just like they lived a heart of life and they're real gangsters.

And there's this hilarious video. Have you seen the video of them playing basketball? Yes. They're playing what they call Dagestani basketball, which is basketball played like football. So you don't have to dribble. You just run around with the ball and there's 20 guys on the court and everyone's tackling each other to get the ball. And then like, you know, if you score, if you shoot the ball and you make it, like great,

you get like a touchdown. And that's Dagestanian basketball. It's the best. I, uh, it's made me, like, I bet a lot of people are like us where they're like, I just want to see what Dagestan's about. And I want to learn how to wrestle and do all that stuff. Right. It was pretty cool. I think people make fun of the UFC because I say it's kind of like redneck or barbaric.

And it definitely is barbaric, but it's, it's so cool to be introduced to new cultures and, and, you know, fucking Dagestan. Who would have, we were talking about it. Yeah, exactly. And I think, uh, there's a lot. I admire about, uh, the culture. It's very stoic, very, um, family, very mostly respectful. Like they asked him, they said you retired and like you, you were 29 and 0. You could have got to 30 and no, which would have been the greatest record in MMA history.

And because of this fight, you had the best, you had the biggest sort of like fights ahead of you. You could have fought Connor McGregor and you could have made another $10 to $20 million off that fight. You could have fought Floyd Mayweather. He wants to fight you because you're a big star. You could have fought George St. Pierre, this old, you know, former great star who could, who wanted to come back and fight you. and that would have, you know, cemented your legacy. And he goes, I heard this interview and he just goes, what am I going to do with money? He goes, even like billionaire only eat bread one time a day, one bread a day.

I was like, come me, I love you. That's hilarious. And I think, you know, there's something that is kind of amazing about this guy who lived his life in this way and got famous and got successful on his terms. There's so many people that are just copying the playbook. It's like, oh, okay, Connor McGregor got famous this way and got rich this way. So now you have all these wannabes who like try to wear his suit and try to talk trash and try to like be a fashion icon and like, you know, say brash things. And could be the exact opposite and got just as famous and almost just as rich.

And way more light. And respect. Universe respected. Yeah. So I thought that's kind of a great example or a great lesson to pool. I thought it was special, you know. And I think that a lot of very few people in America will know who he is. but he's, I bet you he's a top 20 most famous athlete in the world due to him being number one amongst the Muslims.

Right. And the fight this Saturday was in Abi Dhabi. Is that he say Abu Dhabi? Yeah. Abu Dhabi. And they said that they treat him like the king. So like he has a full entourage. They showed him coming from the hotel to the arena, which is a literal two minute walk.

And there's a police escort driving like 40 feet. He's just a badass, man. He's just a badass. And then like Putin called him right after like he's just royalty and I think that's badass. Yeah, he's insane. So to all the UFC fans, hopefully you like this to the non-USVs fan, UFC fans, Kabib. How do you spell it? K-H-A-B-I-B.

That's right. Look him up. He's famous for saying like that's incredible. I'll smash this guy. That's like how he talks. All right. I'm going to go smash my workout now. I'll see you later.

All right, bye. See it.