My First Million - 5 Big Ideas for a Business with Greg Isenberg

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) sit down with entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg), to talk about big ideas for a new business and much more. ----- Links: * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. * Will Smith slap: https://youtu.be/z4t1CC7-UFE ----- Show Notes: (02:30) - Reaction to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock (15:10) - Business Idea #1 (25:50) - Business Idea #2 (27:50) - Business Idea #3 (33:20) - Business Idea #4 (37:20) - Business Idea #5 ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick. I don't want to get rich slow. It's actually colder here than the Arctic Circle. Why do you live there? Well, I mostly live in Miami, IRS, if you're listening to this. But I'm sometimes in a mountain town in the middle of nowhere.

Sam, I saw you posted today. that you've got about 20 acres in Texas, but I'm staring out at 95 acres of Arctic winter, winterland right now. Is that cool or no? I mean, I love it out here. I'm from here. So for me, it's slow living. It's nice.

Yeah, I love it. Is that why you look like a pilot right now in the cockpit or what's going on here? I mean Sahel makes Salh Blue my co-host on the Where It Happens pod We do it together And he always makes fun of this But I'm a gamer

So I'm not afraid I'm not afraid to admit it Be who you are man Be who you are Greg So you're here Because I don't even know why

You were talking We weren't even I don't even know what we were saying We were talking about the Will Smith thing You had some hot takes Sam had some hot takes how can we start with anything else but the bitch slap of the century

Will Smith bitch slaps Chris Rock for making fun of his wife I think we have a different opinion on each one of these things Sam give me your first where were you when it happened how did you hear about it

what was your first take? I was laying in bed and I hear Sarah goes oh my gosh you've got to come down and watch this this is crazy and I saw it and here's the thing

are you the type by the way do you just go or do you ask, what is it? No, I go right away. I can tell. All right, that's a good guy right there. So here's the thing. Listen, I tweeted about this right away.

People were like, well, what would you do? The truth is, maybe the same thing. I maybe would do the same thing. But that's wrong. And if I would have ran up there and bitched, Chris Rock, I would have been tackled and taken away. And he should too.

That's what should have happened. I wanted to see him tackled and taken away or at least not allowed to be on stage for five minutes to an accepted award. That is ridiculous to me. I cannot believe that happened. Greg, where were you? What was your initial reaction?

So my girlfriend texts me and she's like, you're not going to believe what just happened. Will Smith just slapped Chris Rock. And then she's like, wait, I don't know if it was a slap. Maybe it was a punch. And so there was this confusion. There was this like five minute confusion where people didn't know what it was. So first place I go is on Twitter.

I'm on Twitter. And I looked at the video and I was like, I couldn't believe it was happening, right? It was like, you remember when Janet Jackson with the whole Super Bowl thing? Yeah. Like, I feel like I remember where I was with 9-11. I remember what happens when the Janet Jackson boob incident of the Super Bowl. And like OJ. And then now Will Smith.

Yeah, now Will Smith. So I wasn't happy with the video. that were coming out. But I found the Japanese and Australian videos. Did you guys see those? For sure. The uncensored, uncut versions. Yeah.

Yeah. And that one where you got a better view of the punch. You know, I needed a better view. It was a slap, though. I don't know how good your view was. It was a slap. It was a, yeah, okay. It was a slap.

But what bugged me about the whole thing, and I'm glad you invited me to talk about Will Smith, because, you know, that's why I'm here, is I think that, okay, obviously it was a dushy thing of Will Smith to do. But I was unimpressed with how Chris Rock wasn't able to make a joke of the whole thing. And he could have made comedic history and he didn't. And I expected more from him. Wow, disappointed with Chris Rock. That is not the tank.

I thought it was going to come. That's why we bring Greg on from the, the, when everybody's, you zag with the new take. But, dude, Chris Rock, crazy impressive. He took it, man. He took on the chin. He took it.

He did tear up. He didn't, like, when you get punched in the face sometimes, you're not like crying, but your eyes water. None of that happened. He kept smiling, and he was a pro man.

Sam, you know what happens. If you get hit in the side of the head, what's the first thing that you feel here? Your ears hurt and you want to like grab your face. Yeah, you hear this ringing buzz and like the sound. you hear this just giant ringing and then you got to touch your face.

He didn't touch his face. So that, you got to give him respect for the chin that he showed. Yeah, the round was a 10-9 Chris Rock round. But then Greg's Wright actually, he had, I mean,

the world was his oyster with all the potential jokes that he could have gone with, the one-liners. Like I can't believe, I can't believe they had you in Ali or something like that. Exactly.

You know, I don't even know what the joke should have been. You know, Greg, what direction would you have gone with the joke? I would have said, and the winner to the biggest bitch slap award, 2022, goes to William Smith. Yeah, exactly. Could have given him the Oscar for Bichlap for the year.

Honestly, what would your take, though? Okay, so I'm outside of a cold stone, just gave my daughter some ice cream. We're trying to get back to the car. I don't know if you know how it is. Getting kids in the cars like, that's the battle every day. That's the battle. In fact, there's a great Louis C.K. joke where he's like,

the greatest moment of any father's day is the, like, 30 seconds from when you close the door and you have them in the car seat and you walk around the car seat, back to the driver's car seat. It's like the 30 seconds of peace that you have in that moment. That's everything. So I'm trying to get in the car and my wife has stopped. She's stunned. She's doing the like, oh, my God face looking at her phone, almost to, it was like a cartoon

character. And I was like, what? It can't, like, whatever it is, it can't. be, can't be much. And then she was like, no, Will Smith just punched Chris Rock. I was like, what? And so then I watched the video. She made me pull over. We were driving. I pulled over to watch the Japanese uncensored version because we just had to debrief it in the moment. And I was team Will Smith. I thought it was awesome, frankly. The only part that I thought was not cool, the only part I thought was not cool was that when they first said the joke, he's laughing at the

joke. So bro, you can't laugh at the joke, admit that it's funny, and then basically two seconds later build up this rage and then pretend it was so not cool when it was

you were laughing. Like we caught you on camera laughing two seconds before that. You don't think that he should have any consequences? No, no, I didn't say that. He should have consequences, sure. Okay.

Sure, lock him up. Throw away the key. Whatever you got to do. No, no. Jail times. I don't even think, I'm not, I don't want handcuffs.

I don't want jail. Just like a, hey, Will, you can't hit someone. You've got to leave. Like that would have been that would have been sufficient. Well, the thing they showed in the, I don't know, the Taiwanese set cut, they had the commercial break. I don't know if you guys saw this.

Somebody comes running up to him. I think, oh, wow, they're going to be like, dude, what the fuck? When you get you out of here, sorry. It's his publicist. Just immediately giving him notes on how to play this. And so when he goes up for his speech, what do you know? The first line he says is, you know, Richard Williams was a fierce, like, protector of his family. That's the publicist handing them, defeating him the line of how are you going to spin this to your advantage?

Who hates a guy who protects his family? And guess what? It worked. I watched his speech. I think he's losing it. So in a way, I feel sorry for him. I definitely feel a little sorry. He looked a little off, right?

He looked a little off. He looked like he's kind of, he's getting a little, little something's going on. And I hope he works through it and gets back. And also, dude, him and his wife, man, that's some weird stuff. Like what's going on? Like, did you see that thing called Red Table that her show where she just like did a whole show with him on there talking about how she cheated on him and everything like that? I don't watch the news, but I watch everything that's trashy like that. So yeah, I saw it.

I saw it twice. Man. So like that's weird to me a little bit. So there's like a bunch of this dynamic is weird. He's got a lot of pressure on him. I think he just kind of snapped. I think he's working through some stuff. But dude.

So I feel a little sad for him. Everybody knows a couple that's like this where they're like kind of toxic. They're like toxicly in love with each other. It's like they got some weird Bonnie and Clyde shit where they're like, they kind of like, they like make the wrong decision. Sometimes they even like, you know,

hurt each other's feelings. But then they're like, if anybody else ever tries to encroach, they like will murder for them. And it's like, where's the balance here? It's like us against the world. They love this like us.

There's these us against the world couples and they're definitely one of them. Yeah, it was messed up. Do you want to talk about Alex Hermazzi, Hermazzi? Yeah. What did you do? You were like, bro, I'm going deep on Alex Hermazzi.

I was like, we are. So it would have been nice to do before we had him on the pod. You do it like 10 episodes later. I had a call with him today. Greg, do you know who this guy is? I don't know who's that. All right.

Actually, I feel bad. I consider him a friend, but I don't, I don't know if it's pronounced Mozy or Mazzi. Alex Hermose is it? No, Mazi. Alex Hermazi. It's one of those things where it's like two, like you've known him for a decade. Yeah. And it's like, you can't ask him now.

No, you got to be like, I just call him Maas. I just go by Maas. Because I don't know how to phrase name. Dude, one of my best friends name is Siava. I don't even know to pronounce his last name. So,

and I've been best friends with him for 10 years. He's in my wedding. So anyway, this guy, Alex, so basically he had this company called gym launch. And it was really interesting because some people, and I wouldn't call myself totally on that side, but I understand it,

it appeared a little scamy, but actually, I don't think it's scammy at all anymore. He ended up... Sam, you've got to describe the guy's look first. So he looks like a straight version of the construction worker in the village, in the village, was it the village people? I mean, he looks like a construction worker.

So he wears flannel. He's got this beautiful, thick mustache, long, awesome hair, like a, like a Persian Samson. And he is just yoked. He's jacked. He's huge. And he's like good looking. And he just, he's like, looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger a little bit. And he created this business called.

gym launch. And basically, you would pay either $4,000 for one thing or $20,000 for another thing. And it was for people who owned small gyms, whether that's a CrossFit gym or a personal training gym. And he would basically teach you how to make your gym better because he owned gyms. And he would promise you something like you'll gain at least $75,000 in new revenue. But for a lot of people, he averaged that they would improve by $200,000 in revenue. but the business model that he had was crazy and the results were even crazier. So by the time the business was four years old, he bootstrapped it and had paid himself $45 million in dividends.

And then on the fifth year, I believe he sold it and he netted something like $50 or $60 million. And so he was like, yeah, I paid myself $45 million. So I had about $25 million just in cash in the bank. Then we sold and I netted like another $50. And that story alone is crazy. Is that right, Sean? I don't know if those exact numbers are right. It sounds like you talk to them.

So let's go with that. I don't really know. But yeah, you got the product right. The kind of the hook or what's interesting is most gym memberships are like, you know, pay $20 a month and you get into a membership. And like, it's hard to sell people that. And what he was ended up doing was he was like, all right, well, people don't want a membership. What do they really want? They want to lose weight.

They want to lose weight in six weeks or less. They want to lose weight so they look good on the beach. All right. So I'm going to basically sell you a program. that's going to make you look good on the beach in six weeks. And he got good at selling for his own gym where he's like, oh, I can get people to pay like three grand up front for like a fitness training package with nutrition meal plans and stuff like that.

And then someone pointed out to him, I think like Russell Brunson or whatever, the ClickFunnels guy pointed out to him like, hey, dude, instead of just opening gyms and doing this yourself, you should just teach other gym owners how to do this. Like, that's a better product is helping a gym like add 100 grand in revenue. in 30 days is a better product than trying to open your own gym and use that method.

So then he started doing that and then that's kind of how he went. Now he owns something called Acquisitions.com where he'll like buy your business if you're doing, I don't know, $5 million or more revenue,

something like that. Well, so he's buying course businesses and like applying his methodology. And so, but basically what he sold was, and this is where things got, I went deep on. I was like,

how did this work? This is crazy. So he basically sold not a franchise, but like an operating system. And so he used Hub, spot as his back end. And he would get people to sign up through these ads that he was running. And you do an onboarding and you pay 20 grand. You get four months. Then after the end of four months,

you can decide to stay in part of the group. And it's 45 grand year. But you get this, after you sign up, you get this checklist of things that you have to do. So it's like, raise your price to this. Sign up for this software. Use these emails, this shrimp campaign. Get them, get this many people to sign up by doing X, Y, and Z. Here's the ad campaign that you can just copy and paste and already use. And then he had a Facebook group where all the members could talk. And that was it. That was the business. It was super simple. And it was doing tens of millions a year in revenue and also tens of millions in profit. And I thought this was crazy fascinating. And I wanted to ask you guys, what other, he told me a little bit, but what other niches would you use this for? And also,

does this model even interest you? It seems pretty amazing to me. I've never heard of it. I think that if you did this for agencies, like digital agencies, that this is a no-brainer. So, you know, we're, I run an agency called Lay Checkout. We're about 50 people. So we're starting to really hit some scale. Can you say your revenue? I mean, I don't want to say my revenue. But we have 50 people so you can do some of the math yourself.

I will say that, yeah, we work with some of the biggest brands in the world, and it's very lonely to be like the CEO of an agency. Like, I don't know if I'm overcharging or undercharging. I don't know if I'm, you know, doing the right thing. Should I be doing more marketing, less marketing? So, like, would I pay $2, $5, $10,000 a month for like something like this? Like, probably if the ROI is there. Yeah, it's basically a sales.

machine, right? So what he said was, if you have a business and you have, whatever number of customers you have, if I could get you more customers, that's clearly of value to you. And I think he basically tried to get like capture 10 to 20 percent of the value that he was giving. So, you know, if I'm going to, if I'm going to generate $100,000 in new incremental sales for you, how do I capture 10 to 20,000? And I'm taking the risk. If I don't do that, then I don't earn anything. I think that's kind of how he started it at least. And so agency is a perfect one like that because every client you sign is cash in the bank. And typically the agency might be good at one thing, but not necessarily good at going and getting new clients. So what, uh, you just read this guy's

book, Sean, Alex's book. I'm reading it right now. What do you think about it? The book is good. The book is good. It's basically a, it's like a marketing book, right? So it's essentially a marketing book. He does a good job of breaking things down and being simple. It's not altogether new information, but who gives a shit? It's like, it's good information presented well. And if you're running a business right now, it'll help you. Now, the thing I think that he over indexes on is like, he uses like the gym launch example really hard.

So it's like, yeah, this is clearly, he talks about, basically he says, the secret to sales is make somebody an offer so good, they'd be stupid to refuse you. Okay, how do you do that? It's like, how do you get them to perceive that there's a lot of value and that they're going to get it in a short amount, of time with a with a with not a lot of cost and that it's highly likely to happen and so his model was like hey gym owner i on i've worked with a hundred gyms on average i can bring them each 100,000 in new

sales i can do that for you in 30 days and if i don't do it i don't if i don't hit that mark i don't get paid how's that and so yeah that is what he calls a grand slam offer because it's going to work and if you make if you have a grand slam offer you can win a lot of business you can grow very fast. But I don't think that works in a whole bunch of other product category. So I think it works in the like agency consulting world, which is where he was. It's services, I think. It works in services. Services, yeah. But, you know, if I'm selling shoes online, it's very hard to create a grand slam offer for selling shoes because, you know, I can't tell you how much more money this is going to make you, right? It's already the offer is a lot. I'm telling you, it looks cool, you know,

that people might like your shoes. That's just fundamentally less compelling. So I just think it's like, really, really good for a service business, especially a service business that's in the business of helping other people make money. But like, for example, I wanted to send it to my accountant and be like, hey, you're charging me like $5,000 or $6,000 a year. You should really be charging $50,000. And if you did this method, I think you would have, you know, like 10 times more clients and make 10 times more money off them if you presented your stuff this way, because you're an accountant. You're saving people money on taxes. And you could basically offer a no-brainer, offer like this and take more value and grow your business faster if you did it this way.

But it doesn't work for everything. It's kind of the takeaway. I think the pitch is taking a consultancy from a consultancy and turning it into selling luxury. Like that's the opportunity for a lot of these people, right? Like I think when you look at McKinsey, McKinsey isn't a consultancy to me. McKinsey is selling like a luxury multi-million dollar. contracts. Like that you're buying confidence when you're buying, uh, right. A luxury product. Yeah, that's exactly right. He talks about that, uh, pretty extensively in the

book. But I got to say, so I, I, I am reading this book and I have two kind of like, by two like my right hand man and my left hand man. I have, I've been and then I have this guy, Andre. And I told him, I was like, guys, this good stuff in this book that we should be using. And so I created like a little mini book club inside of our company to do this. Have you guys ever done that? Like have you basically, and I've been wanting to do this with podcast as well, sometimes I'll listen to a podcast that's like fucking amazing. And I'm, what I want to do is just stop listening to it myself and be like, hey, guys, we're going to do a meeting. But the meeting is us listening to this podcast. And every time they say something good, I'm going to pause and we're going to talk

about it. And it might take us like six hours to get through this one hour podcast, but I'm telling you it's going to be, we're going to actually apply the thing versus just I share the link. You read it. We each kind of move on with our day and we're busy. Have you guys ever done anything like this to like get more juice out of out of the fruit i haven't i haven't i've done a book club uh that i feel like book club is it's like you know a lot of people go in the gym it's like you start going the gym and then you kind of like stop like it's really hard to create a really well designed book club that keeps people engaged yeah we did book club it's the same thing no one fucking finished the book so i actually think if we all just listen to a podcast together that might be a lot

lot easier. It's a lot easier. It's like when you go to school and the teacher brings in the TV, that's like how I would feel going to this meeting. I'd be like, oh, hell yeah. We're rolling in the TV. Yeah, give me that TV. Magic school bus, baby. The, yeah, at Amazon, they do this too where like people write all kinds of docs inside companies like memos, plans, whatever. And then it's like, hey, did you read my plan? And then you're like, oh, yeah, either I kind of did or I didn't. Very rarely is it like, I read it, I remember it. I took notes on it and I'm ready to take action from it. And so at Amazon, they basically hack that process, which is the rule is you have to write

if you're going to make a plan, if you're going to try to do anything. You have to write your memo. But the memo gets read in the meeting itself. So every meeting, if it's an hour, the first 10 to 20 minutes are silent reading. Everybody reads it together at the same time. And there's zero expectation for you to ever read something beforehand or afterwards. Was that effective for you? itself. Oh yeah. It was, it was huge. And also while you're reading, you know, you're taking

notes because you know right after this reading period ends in 20 minutes, like it's a bit like school. It's like, I'm going to have to have something to say, right? Like I need to have, I need to be bringing something to the table from this. And so, yeah, that was huge. And I think way more companies should do that. It was like one of the few big company things that I was like, this is a process that is so much better than what I used to do at a at our startup. Yeah, well, I think that podcast idea that you just had is actually fantastic. Cool. All right, we lost Craig for a second.

But let's keep going. Did you have anything more on Hermazzi or you wanted to go on? No, that's it. What do you got? I was thinking about doing a kind of like a summary slash lessons learned because I have a whole bunch of screenshots and highlights from the book. I might do a separate pod that's just that if you want to do that. I'm down.

I just, I just bought the book. I've been watching a lot of his YouTube videos. There's just something about this person. He's very interesting to me. He's very interesting. he's so transparent to the point where it's weird almost like it's like I like he reveals so much I don't believe you uh no I believe him I believe him for sure but he's revealing so much that I'm like are you sure man you want to be talking about this this is crazy like you like it's just weird it's just

weird right I mean he talks like I don't think it's weird I think it's smart and that's why I say like do I believe this it's not that I think he's lying about anything I think he's telling the truth it's that when somebody is that forthcoming, it's sort of like, well, what's in this for you? And I think clearly it's, I'm trying to get you to trust me. And so I'm going to be like, kind of like explicitly transparent about something because there's a motive behind that. And I think that's okay.

But I think a lot of people are like, wow, thanks, dude, for the favor. It's like, there's no favors. People do things because they have a motive. They want to build their brand in a certain way. They want to attract more readers or viewers or their viewers or their trying to build trust in a way so that they can get some advantage. You know, that's okay. I think that's a good thing.

I do it too. I do it all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotten to know them over the past few weeks. I'm a fan, man. I'm a fan of Alex's. But what do you got? Well, actually, so Greg, I told you bring three or four bullets.

I don't know if you had time to do that. But I have some if you don't have any, but I'd like to use yours if you do because you're here. You're the guest of honor. Yeah, I mean, I always have a notes file with some ideas. I can tell you, I'm not going to say they're great ideas. But let's start with that. and I'd love your feedback.

All right, let's do it. So, went to a restaurant two nights ago, saw that a bunch of kids were playing these, like picture like an Applebee's, and picture a bunch of vending machines. Like, you know, those games that you can play. I'm thinking NFT vending machines.

So you have to pay like 100 Doge to get in. You can win a board ape. Instead of winning, you know, collectibles, you're winning digital assets. Is there a business to be created around that? You're talking about the thing where you would like, the old way is, you know, you put your quarter in and there's a bunch of plastic balls. You get one out. You got this little shitty toy.

And it's like, I think in Japan, they call these the gotcha games. Is that right? Like gotcha mechanic where you have this sort of variable reward. You might win the good thing, but you almost never win the good thing. And then you kind of keep wanting to open up these boxes and see what you get. Exactly. that, but with Doge. And winning NFTs inside.

Greg, do you own any NFTs? Are you on board with us or no? Yeah, I mean, I've got hundreds of NFTs. That's crazy. Yeah. I think the problem is Doge. I think not enough people own Doge. So I kind of feel like it's like you need to Apple pay to quickly, like,

instantaneously buy Doge and then use it in the game, basically. Like you need some way for their phone to just buy the thing and then just keep swiping their phone. Yeah, I guess like what I'm particularly interested in here is like what are, you know, in real life experiences that you can create that connect with crypto. Yeah, another version of this, by the way, because I don't need at restaurants anymore. I just deliver everything. So it's like, you know, a QR code that comes with DoorDash that I just scan and I get to play the game on my phone, right? Like, why do they need to buy a screen when I carry a screen in my pocket? So, like, really, all you just need is a QR code to do this game.

You don't even have to build the, you don't even have to build the vending machine necessarily. It's true. It's true. All right, I got another one. So I moved out of my apartment December 15th. It's now March 28th. And my landlord hasn't returned my security deposit. Is that in America?

or Miami. Yeah, Miami. Ooh, there's a bunch of laws around that, California. Well, there's laws around it in Florida, too. And I Googled it, and there's a whole process you can go into it. I'm sure it's probably not as intense as California, but, you know, you have certain rights. There's a whole process that you have to go, and eventually you go to small claims court, et cetera, et cetera.

How much was it? It's a few hundred dollars, but it's just like the pain to, like, go through it. it's not really worth it. My security deposit is $5,700. So what I really want to do is scare my landlord, basically, right? That's what I want to do. So I need to get his attention. That's what I really need to do.

So I Googled, you know, sending a lawyer letter. I didn't want to call my lawyer because I was like at $750 an hour or whatever. It's going to cost like $2,000 for this lawyer letter. So the idea is a $99 lawyer letter on demand. Go scare someone, basically. What do you think? Have you, um, scary letter. I love it.

So listen, we got to talk about this, Sean. You know where I'm going to go with this, right? Do not pay. You're going to Petty Court? Oh, I like Petty Court. Oh, yeah, do not pay. But I'm going to go, Do Not Pay. Greg, have you not heard of Do Not Pay?

Yeah. So is Do Not Pay that service that, like, if you have a parking ticket, you like send it to them and they like they deal with it and you get a percentage of it back or something like that. They do a bunch of stuff, but that is one of the ways how they started. How do you explain this company now, Sean, now that it's kind of, they have so many features. Yeah, I think it's start, basically it's, it's just trying to save you money from shit that you shouldn't have to pay for, you don't want to pay for. So it started with like subscriptions you're not using. All right, cool, unsubscribe me from a bunch of subscriptions I'm not using. Then it became, yeah,

But then they also added, you know, like, go contest this parking ticket because, like, I don't know, 20 or 30 percent of parking tickets are, like, filled out incorrectly and you actually shouldn't have to pay. And if we save you money, we will keep a little bit, but it's just, you do no work. And you'll get, they just keep a portion of the savings that they get that they earn for you. And then they expanded into like 83B election, like, hey, we'll do that for you for your startup. So they're just like trying to do, they're basically just trying to eliminate the busy paperwork that nobody wants to do. and they're like, we'll just take care of that shit for you. How would that feel?

And a bunch of people like us who are like millennials who are like, I just don't know how to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't like printing things or going to the post office and like doing all this shit. Yeah, please take care of this for me. So it's a time saver company is how I think about it. And Greg, I had a landlord. I had a $16,000 deposit.

This was for our office when COVID had shut or our office lease just so happened to end right around when COVID was happening. So we got really lucky to you. we just canceled it. And this guy would not give me the 16 grand. I found out, dude, I got crazy on him. I found out where he lived and I showed up at his house and he wasn't there. I found out where he worked and I showed up there and he wasn't there. And I used do not pay to send him like a, like a letter. And finally he got back to me. It was like, oh yeah, you know, just slipped my mind. Like he was like no big deal about it. And I was like, dude, I've been hiding you for six weeks,

man. Where's this money? And so they have that feature where you can just send a scary letter? You send a scary letter and it worked. And so I got my 16 grand. But legally, you're supposed to get 16 grand plus interest, which I did not get. And I thought about fighting over this just out of principle because I love petty shit. So I feel like the idea is really, you know, do not pay obviously is getting really big. It's like the unbundling of do not pay. And it's taking this idea and it's like, okay, I'm going to run a bunch of Google ads against like getting security deposit back.

Florida, getting security deposit back, California. And I think there's a big business to be created here. Because then that's a good wedge to sort of expand a bunch of different services. And I think there's the other version. I think we've once said, which was like, call my politician. There's all these things where it's like, oh, this bill could get past. That's bad for crypto holders. Make sure you call your politician and let them know you don't want this.

And it's like, I don't know. I don't want to call my politician. and like, what if they pick up? What am I going to say? You know, like, there's all kinds of problems with this idea of calling. Don't like calling. What happens if they pick up? You know, I really want to go down that road.

But I would happily, you know, sort of tip, you know, 10 bucks to just have someone annoy the shit out of my politician about this issue that I care about. Like, if my donation funded, like, 18 annoying calls, like, if there's just a website that said, would you like to donate $10 to the cause? and that will fund 18 annoying phone calls from Sri Lanka to this politician, I'd be like, fuck yeah, put me down for 20. And so I think that's the other version of do not pay is like, go hassle for me. That's awesome.

I'm on board with that. What else you got, Greg? My other one, it relates to law, actually, a little bit. So, you know, we've been, and Sean, I know you're into crypto. So I've been spending a lot of money on, you know, crypto accounting and crypto law firms. And I think that there's an opportunity to create a Web 3 crypto accounting firm and a Web 3 crypto law firm.

But all you have to do is basically you find an existing law firm that understand securities law. And you're like, hey, you know, you're a shop of 10 lawyers and you're like, you know, you understand securities law. maybe there's some, you know, up-leveling in terms of learning specifics about NFTs, etc. I'm going to be the, like, marketing engine for you. You know, use things like the Milk Road and use things like lay checkout. And I'm going to send you leads.

So the customer is happy because they're like, wow, this is like a Web 3 related, you know, law firm. And I want to work with someone who's... What does that mean? I don't know what you're using, you're using words that I do. I don't have no idea what they mean. What does a Web3 related law firm mean? Okay, so let's just say you're creating an NFT project, but you want to make sure that you don't go to jail.

So that you don't do any SEC violations. Do you feel comfortable calling up your regular lawyer who might not even know what an NFT is? Or would you specifically want to talk to a law firm that lives and breathes Web3? it depends if they have um what's like for example if i what's the term if i follow something my lawyer says and they're supposed to be the expert and i get in trouble sometimes i can like blame them um what's that called god i can't remember that i can't remember but scapegoating yeah no it's like it's like it's like when you hire a c it's like when you hire a c if you hire a CPA and your

CPA screws you like blatantly. Sometimes you're not always, you can, you know, that goes, you're taking to account like, ah, dude, I thought he was doing it right. And he's a CPA. So like your CPA can actually get in trouble, not necessarily you. So it depends if that lawyer has that. But I don't know, I'd rather just go to a legal for a lawyer that special, yeah, that specializes in this thing.

But I don't know why you'd call it a Web 3. That's what he's describing. But he said a Web 3 law firm. Yeah, like they specialize. And they know the laws around. they specialize in advising around this web three not a digital law firm yeah okay yeah all this is is like i mean this is a marketing challenge more than anything and you know one of the hardest problems about running a law firm is you know or an accounting firm is getting clients and and we

talked about this with the agencies the same thing is true with you know law firms and accountancy firms i think you know i don't know the like i don't know the margins of some of these businesses but i imagine and they're quite big. So I think there's something there. So I consider doing this with my, before I did the Milk Road, I was like, all right,

what I want to do? Like, I got this audience that's growing, right? It's like Twitter's pretty big now. So I don't know, quarter million followers, newsletters growing.

I could just like, you know, make no money off this. That's fine. How big would your newsletter? I could put some ads in the newsletter. What's that? How big was the newsletter?

It was like a 30, 40K, something at the time. Before, in there. Yeah, before Milk Road. And I was like, I could teach a course. So I did that. I taught a course.

I was like, all right, that's cool. It makes way more money than ads, but it's more effort. And then I was like, you know, what's like the highest value business? What's like the best fucking business? And I was like, so I started making a list of like places where I spend a lot of money that I feel like they're just kind of like rinse and repeating the same stuff for me. And so I narrowed it down to two. I'll give you the second best one was accounting. and I was like, I could just start a bookkeeping firm for startups and entrepreneurs.

Just in my own portfolio. If I invested in 45 companies last year, just within that, I bet I could get 14 clients of just companies that don't have a bookkeeper because most companies don't have bookkeepers. You were considering starting a bookkeeping service? That's like the worst idea for you. That's a horrible idea for you. I was just going to be the marketing front end. I wasn't going to operate it.

I was just going to buy or hire like a good bookkeeper and be like, cool, you're going to do the books and I'm just going to send you clients and you just close the clients and we split this 50-50 or whatever. And so that was one idea. The better idea is insurance because insurance is like the best business of all time. And because for insurance, you don't even really do insurance. You just broker the insurance with another like carrier basically. And most businesses don't have, most like especially like e-commerce businesses you need. business insurance. And you don't know, like, I didn't know exactly which insurance I needed how much, how much coverage I wanted. Most traditional insurance firms don't cover e-commerce, which is insane to me.

And so I was like, all right, well, I could just do that. And so that was another one, which is, you know, startup slash e-commerce insurance was another one. I basically did the math. And I was like, I could make so much more money doing that than if I ever did, like, ads in my newsletter. If all I did my ad was say, hey, by the way, don't go to jail. You should have a bookkeeper. You know, like, hey, don't lose your business because somebody, you know, whatever, chokes on the button. What was your math for the insurance? What would your math? First of all, I think that's, I think you made 100% the right move doing what you did because those businesses do not fit your skill set or mine at all of like insurance, like being on top of things, like crazy amounts, sweating the D.

But you're assuming I'm going to run it. I'm not going to run it. I'm just going to find a good person. You and I both, though, it's that easy. Send them leads. But all right, so what was your math behind it? I don't know. I have to pull up all the spreadsheets.

But basically, just with my existing audience size, I think they netted out where it's like, I could be easily clearing, you know, $3 to $5 million a year in profit if I, like, kind of, like, hit all my marks. Tell me more about this. This is actually really a full capacity. This is actually really interesting. So what are we going to call it? Like Sean Shurance? What was the name?

It was going to be something, I don't know. The name was the last thing on my mind. Okay. So I even talked to the, I had this one lawyer, one accountant who I really love. There's this like Ukrainian woman who is like this like amazing account. She was the first accountant I talked to that felt like they worked for me and not like as a, they weren't just like a narc. And so they were like, she was like, have you thought about this?

You know, like, does your business need a vehicle? Because I think right now, just last week of the year, if you just bought a vehicle, we can actually like depreciate that and use that against your books here. Like she was giving me ideas that were completely legal, but she wasn't just sitting there and saying, yeah, if you give me all your paperwork and your receipts, I'll file your taxes for you.

It was the first person who was saying, wow, you're paying a lot in taxes over here and over here. Let me just make sure I'm, you know, saving you money. And so that was the first person. So I was going to basically talk to her and be like, hey,

should you do this? Like, do you want to do this? Do you want to like leave? Start your own firm. I'm sure you're scared of all that. But guess what? you would just do the things you're really good at,

which is doing people's, you know, like tax strategy and accounting. And I will get you all the clients. That was, you know, the core premise. But of course, I went down, I said I created a free crypto newsletter because I just figured it'd be more fun. Dude,

I think these are great ideas, by the way. I think you made the right decision. But these are actually, this is crazy interesting. I wish you would have told me that you're working to do this. Can I tell you about a fucking genius idea that came out of that? So have you, I don't know if you've ever like onboarded,

well, like, you've probably done some onboarding with some, some software that you're trying to use or some company you're trying to use. So, for example, with this bookkeeping company, right, the one I hired, I eventually hired for my e-commerce thing, they sent me this like super long checklist. It was like, all right, great, excited to work with you. Do these 54 things and then we'll get started.

Like, that will be the start of your journey. That will get you to the starting line. It's like, go to Shopify, give us access. To do that, you need to go to view accounts, permissions, add us there, add us as a bookkeeper, blah, blah, blah, now go to QuickBooks, do the same thing. Now go to Stripe, do the same thing. now go to Bank of America, do the same thing. Like, there was just all these fucking steps.

It was like, then send us this, then send us this. And it just felt, and it was all done in Excel, right? So I discovered this startup that basically takes that process and just wraps beautiful user experience around it. And I saw it and I was like, this is so smart. I invested it instantaneously, didn't have a meeting with the founder. I was like, I totally buy it. In fact, any word you say is only going to make me less bullish on this idea because I

have already convinced this is like one of the. the best ideas I've ever seen. So it's called doc.us. I don't know if you guys have checked this out. And Julian Shapiro sent this to me after I was like seeing this problem and then coincidentally he sent me the same idea. So here's how it works. So basically it just creates like kind of like a notion space. So the company who's trying to onboard you, they just create this thing that's like, it's like this is just a beautiful experience. So it's like, hey, Sean, so glad to have you on board. first three things we need to do are these three. Click the checkbox when you're done with them,

so I'll know that you did it. If you have any questions, just put it in the comment thing here or click this to watch our tutorial from our library that we have about how to do it. And so it just turns that like back and forth email or like Excel spreadsheet, like, janky thing into like workflow for a client

and a service to like onboard each other. And I was like, dude, that's a problem that like, I don't know, like two million businesses a year have with every one of their clients, this is going to work. I think this is going to work. What do you guys think of this idea? Well, I love it. I just got a mortgage after my landlord, Stephanie.

Same thing. And, you know, I go on Chase's website. And I don't know if you've done this, but you go on Chase's website. You go to a mortgage. And there's like a thousand things to do. Plus, you're like transported back to 1996 because you're in this like weird thing. There's like JavaScript. breaking everywhere.

There's like, you like forgot about flash and like flashes somehow in there. My, my, my, my, uh, banker calls me and just like, you didn't finish this one thing. And I was like, what? She's like, I added it to your client portal. It's like, dude, I don't get a notification. I don't know. I don't go check that. I ain't that place.

I fucking hate that place. Yeah. So, yes, yes. This is one of those no brainer ideas. I hope that they, they actually embed. like create an SDK. They do? They do. Okay.

I think, I don't know if they already do or they're going to, but that was like a big part of, yeah, I was like, this can live inside of your app or whatever. So you know, you can just kind of like onboard people right there inside their experience. This landing page is beautiful. This is a beautiful website. Yeah, so it is absolutely beautiful. But I have a question for you, for you guys.

Because it relates actually to this and also Jim Shark and even the, the lawyer stuff, which is, you know, sometimes when we're creating businesses, you can do one of two things. You can either, like, create something brand new, which is like this, or create, like, a new gym, like a new way of, you know, doing something. Or you could, like, help existing people, you know, do some marketing, make some money that way. Do you guys, you know, and the Silicon Valley way is very much like, go raise a bunch of money, invent something new. and it's really frowned upon to do, you know, the marketing piece of it and sort of positioning on top of it. What are your thoughts? And, you know, do you think about that a lot? You know,

because I've been thinking about it a lot. Say it again. Give us two examples. So give you an example. Give us to examples. So, you know, my last company, the founder of 24-hour fitness, invested in my company. And he told me that before the 1980s, there weren't membership. based gyms. Like, it was a new thing. And he invented the first one and it became 25er Fitness. I think they sold for three or four billion dollars. It was a major success. And then there's a lot of people who copied membership based gyms. That's an idea of going zero to one, creating an absolutely new product. Whereas what he could have done was created a gym shark of that era or whatever and consulted. Gym launch. Yeah, exactly. Gym launch. Sorry.

and consulted to, you know, add additional revenue to existing, you know, trainers, etc. So the question is, you know, how often you are thinking about creating something brand new versus, you know, just kind of a money-making additional marketing layer on top of? Sam, what do you think about that? I don't think I think of it. Anything that I think of, I don't think any of it's brand new. I think zero. Close to zero, I think about that.

Do you agree, Sean? No, I think there's sometimes new things, but it's extremely rare. It's extremely rare. It's extremely rare. But I would even argue that most anything that's new, you could probably actually say, oh, well, it's just like a different version of blank.

You could trace back, right? So like, let's take an Airbnb, for example. Airbnb was clearly like kind of like this breakthrough product became this huge success. And it's like the category killer, the category leader for sharing economy, whatever. And now it's like bigger than hotels, like than all hotels or whatever. So it started off as this fringe thing. But there was like couch surfing before that. And like that was like a product that did a very similar thing.

You know, and VRBO. And there's other stuff that's like around it. So I think you're right that it's very hard to do something completely original. But let me frame it slightly differently. which is, it seems like what Greg is almost saying is like, do you want to go for, try to try to have either a new behavior or an existing behavior or another way of looking at it would be, do you want to create a product or do you want to have a service company? Right?

Like it's kind of, to me that in those examples is like 24R Fitness was a new product you needed customers to go by versus servicing, you know, trainers and whatever, whoever else. That was, that's like a service business that's going to have. have great cash flow and doesn't require you to have this like winning brand and new product and new customers from scratch. Is that is that kind of is it more about the services versus product? Is that the? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think, you know, Sean and Sam, like, you know, having spent time in SF, I feel like when I got to SF, I was all about new behaviors. That was really important to me. And Sean, I know that was true for you too because like blab, you're always pushing, you know,

the envelope with like, you know, and BBO. It's like new, you know, user interfaces and like new friend finding and new, just like new ways of doing things versus now that we're in our 30s, it feels like we're doing less. And this is just an observation and correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like we're doing less of like the new behavior type stuff and more of like, hey, let's just like iterate on this thing and like focus it on this niche and do that. there's this guy named Roger Dickey.

I don't know him. I think Sean knows him, right? I never met him. I think Greg actually knows him. Oh, right. So I don't entirely know his full background, but he used to do like a bunch of high-tech stuff. I know that he had the,

what's the startup that helps you code stuff? It's like a new age, new agency. What's it called? Supposed with a Gickster. Gigster. Okay, and before Gigster, Greg, what was he doing? He was doing something like very traditional Silicon Valley, right?

I just know him from Twitter But yes, he was doing He was the co-founder and CEO of Gigster Which was huge But he did it through a really interesting way I think he did it through a search lab Do you guys know what a search lab is? Yeah. And but I think before that

Like he maybe was at Zinga or something like a like a He made like a mafia game or something like that Yeah like something relatively cutting edge right That's what it was. Yeah, okay Which at the time was cutting edge Now his latest business, I think it's called revolution. Is it called revolution? Made. Made. Made. And they are

renovating bathrooms. And as a recent homeowner who needs a new bathroom, I went to the website and I was like, this is sick. I love this. I've in. And it looks from the outside, like the company is just crushing it. I saw another guy, the guy who started Casper, his name's Luke. One of the four founders, his name's Luke. I think he has a new business that's also renovating bathrooms or maybe kitchens. And I thought it was interesting that these guys, Casper, not exactly like cutting edge, but kind of, like kind of new behavior, buying a mattress online. Roger Dickie, you know, definitely new behaviors. They're going to like these like older businesses.

And they're definitely using technology. But at the end of the day, they're not like re, they're not inventing anything new. They're just inventing maybe a more efficient process. And in my opinion, those things are far more interesting. And it's kind of intriguing to me that these guys are doing that as opposed to, some new cutting edge thing. So I'll give you my take on your question, Greg, which is, in my 20s, it's like, the way I traveled was I'd be like, oh, you know, fuck it.

I'll go tomorrow. I'll spin the globe, put my finger down. All right, I'm going to go backpacking through, you know, Eastern Europe. Or I'm going to go to Australia and I'll be, you know, sleeping in a van type of thing. And I wanted the adventure. It was actually the right move to do at that time because it's like, how do you get Max's adventure, Max, sort of like discomfort and like out of your comfort zone, you know, Max, spontaneity, all that stuff. And, and then like now it's like, where's like a sandals resort that I could take

my kids and like, you know, I just want to sit down. I just want a place I can go sit. That's not my house. This is basically the extent of my adventure right now. And so similarly, like, that's my my whole. My business career was the same. It was like at the beginning is like, yeah, I'm going to build the next social network. I'm going to build a dating app where you, you know, you might die. whatever. It's like these crazy ideas. It's like, every idea was like trying to be crazier than the last. It's like, you know, and it all appealed to me that way. And now I'm like, cool, I could sell a product that I, you know, let me import a product from China and sell it through a Facebook ad. I click three buttons. I can just sit in my chair and do that. I don't really need a staff.

I don't really, you know, I'll just kind of outsource this and that. I'll just write a newsletter. And I'll just write it in my browser and then that's it. Like, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to like become the next mark succorberg i just need to get to like enough people where i'm making a few million dollars a year and living a sweet lifestyle um like that's that's a win you know and that's and i don't have to like stress out about this thing and i don't have to know how to code i don't have to know any of these things oh yeah great and so i basically now i'm in the the sort of sandals resort part of my career and i mean that the best way of possible which was back then i was like almost like intrigued by the degree of difficulty.

And now I'm completely put off by the degree of difficulty. And instead, I just do the thing that sounds like, what's going to be easy, simple fun for me? And, you know, I'm just going to go that route. And so I am much less interested in, like, inventing the next big thing as I am, like, crafting a dope lifestyle doing something I enjoy. And, like, part of me feels like.

But do you think that's going to change when your kids get older? So when your kids become eight, nine, 10, maybe eight to like 16. They think that you are the coolest guy ever. Or if they don't think that, maybe it's on the other end of you wanting to think that you're cool and you want to impress them. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I'm like, do I think that my attitude will change when my kids become five, six, seven,

eight and I want to impress them? Do I think like instead of just like having a sick lifestyle and be like, oh man, I want to do something like that they are proud of? Do you think that's going to change? not because of that reason. I do think it's going to change, but not because of that. Like, I don't think your kids think you're cool based on, like, your business success necessarily. I don't really think that that's the main way that kids think you're cool.

And even if it was, that's not why I would do something. I would just have more free time, right? Like, when my kids go to school, that's going to be, like, a fucking game changer. It's like, I'm going to get a third of my day back that I, you know, I don't have today. And so when they go to school, I have a lot more bandwidth if I want to do something more. more intense, I can ratchet up the intensity and the difficulty level if I so choose at that time. Right now, like, dude, before I do this podcast, like, I'm not, I'm not like, you know, researching every detail for the 20 minutes before this podcast, typically.

I'm, like, reading this book called Goofy's Adventure to my daughter, putting her down for the nap. You know, like, that's how I prep for this pod. Like, 20 minutes before is, like, I'm literally reading Disney books, putting my daughter to bed in time to come back out here, right? So it's like, there's a lifestyle I like right now that's doing this. And so I'm optimizing for that. I think in five years, I'm going to be picking a very different challenge than I'm picking today just because it'll be time for another chapter. And I'll probably be like, oh, that lifestyle shit's boring. I want to go do something big. Or I'm going to be like, fuck business. Business is stupid. I'm going to go like try to write a comedy

show and I'm going to like try to sell a show for TV. I don't know. I'm going to do something else my life. Every five years, I want to kind of reinvent myself in terms of what I'm doing. So you've come a long way, Sean. So one of the first times I met you, you invited me to the Bebo launch party. And I was like, could I bring a plus one? You're like, sure. I bring this friend who is visiting. And we walk into this warehouse or something in San Francisco. I remember we had to like walk upstairs and like. Where was it, Sean? It was in a, you know, like a car manufacturer, car repair. Yeah.

Like a garage just like for car repairs, whatever. I don't know. I forgot how to speak English. But like basically Michael had bought one of those, like got rid of all the car like car maintenance stuff and just turned it into like his man cave. And he hadn't filled it up yet with his like fancy cars and cool shit yet. So it was just an empty warehouse in the middle of San Francisco, downtown San Francisco. And we threw our launch party there before he filled it up.

So I'm there with. one of my buddies from this small town in Quebec. The guy has never left his town basically in his entire life. So he had land to San Francisco. He's staying with me. He gets into this, you know, car shop or whatever, and it's like dark and there's smoke and there's lights everywhere. And then you walk in and there's all these people and there's lights everywhere. And he like literally whispered to me and he said, is Kanye West coming to this? Did you say yeah? I've said yeah.

And it was like one of those moments. Like I'm sure a bunch of people have like watched the social network when it's like Justin Timberlick is like talking to I guess it's Mark Zuckerberg in the club. And it's just like it's intense and larger than life. And you were kind of like living that. lifestyle in San Francisco, not like, I mean, I'm painting you as very playboy, and I won't say you're 100% playboy, but in the sense of like you were living that lifestyle, you're, you were doing that like Zuckerberg thing. And now, you're, you know, you're kind of doing the complete opposite.

And my question to actually both of you, but particularly for Sean, is if you could redo it, would you have done more of these product bets that are there's really less risk like for example milk road like there wasn't that much risk there yeah let's be real right so like I feel like people like now that we're in our 30s we're focusing on different

niches and we're taking things that are working different communities and we're just pushing that out there with low product risk would you have done that or do you think that you needed to do these crazy bets in your 20s to be where you are today. I have a very easy answer, but I'll let Sean go first. No, no, go.

No, I want you to go first. I want to hear what you're going to say. Playboy Sean. Well, as Playboy Sean, by the way, for that, I flew in this painter that I had met, and he did, I don't know if you remember this. He did a live painting where he's painting this, like, abstract thing. He's breakdancing while he's doing it.

And this is a guy I had seen at a fair in Greeley, Colorado, many years before that. And I was like, hey, dude, I have like a, I have a company that has like a bunch of funding. Like you want to just like fly out for this party and do something dope. Do that thing you did at that little town fair. Do it in front of like hundreds of people at this thing. And he's doing it.

And then at the end, he spins the canvas. And what looked like this crazy abstract thing was he had painted like a fucking Bob Marley upside down. And it's like he does this like whatever. He flips the thing. And then he's like done. And he slaps it with his hand. It's full of paint. And it was like that was the moment.

And I was just like that party was dope. That was a dope party actually now that I remember it. So do I regret it? Well, now that I'm thinking about that party, no, I don't regret it. That sounds pretty awesome. I'm glad I did it because I'm happy with where I am now. Having said that, there were so many things that I did foolishly during that time. And I'm not just talking about like, you know, oh, you know, I wasn't as good at this thing as I am now.

It's like, no, like, there was so much opportunity right under my nose and I was blind to it. And like, one of the biggest, like, scary things for me now is like, what are those things today that are right in front of me? me that I'm too stupid to see, just like I was too stupid to see it seven years ago when I was doing that other thing. For example, Greg, you were in our early mastermind groups and the founders of calm were there and they were talking about how hard it was and how they're just, you know, it's just Alex. He was just kind of like, yeah, it's hard to raise money right now. I'm trying. And we were just like, dude, it's cool app, man. You should stick with it. He's like, yeah, I'm going to just keep going. And like, that's a $2 billion plus company now. And we were

helping him like, dude, why didn't we cut the check? You were there too. I don't know. You didn't cut a check either, did you? I remember at the time, like, if I'm being honest, like, I felt that it was too niche. Like, I was like, we were, like, Sean, you and I were focusing on like, big stuff. We were doing big stuff that was going to be big. Yeah, exactly. One aquire later. And he's got the huge company. Exactly. There was so many of those. So in our masterminds, it's I think Loom was in there. That's a billion dollar company.

And I remember kind of like trying to mentor shy it and be like, bro, like, you know, don't worry. You'll figure it. Maybe it's not this one. But like, when you get to your real game, you're going to be like, good because of this experience. You were friends with him too. Like, did you invest in that? Like, I missed.

I missed. I missed. It was called opentest.com. And that's what Loom was originally. And it, you know, it felt like, you know, when you're, you know, when you you're doing your first startup and it just feels so shaky because it's your first time doing all this stuff. Like that's what it felt like. And so it was, you know, and then also the the narrative at the time was don't invest in other people's startups. You got, if you, if you want to

make it in Silicon Valley, you got to give laser focus. So I, you know, my mistake in my 20s was I came San Francisco and you know I listened to all these VCs with all their narratives and I did it and if I were to redo it I would frankly just be doing what I now which is just doing like what I'm doing now which is like focused on communities doing agency services you know focusing on niches and and and web you know yeah just build an experiment and not have the big biggest exits in the world I there was like 10 examples like that like I remember Alex McCaw came over one day and we were catching up and then

he went on to start clear and I remember thinking this guy's fucking amazing I should invest in this clear bit thing and I went over to his office and we like hung out and I was like we had to meet the guys I was like I love the energy of this office man like if I just couldn't do anything

besides feel this office I would be like they're building a winner in here and that's also like I don't know if it's a billion it's multi hundred million dollar company and he told me at the end he goes oh by the way I'm buying up I was like what else are you doing finally I started to ask smart question

I was like, what else are you doing? He's like, oh, I bought up some stripe shares. The stripe shares available for like $2 billion. So I'm buying a bunch of striped shares. I think it was him. Maybe Josh Buckley. He's one of them. And he's like, I'm buying up striped shares for $2 billion.

Let me know if you want in. And I was like, well, that's like the most a startup is worth. It's like a billion is like the top of the mountain. So like to me it was like, oh, there's no upside left, you know? I didn't like think from first principles about like everybody knew stripe was fucking amazing. And it was like the best startup in the whole like, you know, in Silicon Valley. And I had this opportunity to go buy Stripe shares at $2 billion. And I thought how late I was.

And I was like, man, I wish I could have got in earlier. And now, like, you know, the things I would give for Stripe shares at $2 billion now, like, that's already like 100x, you know, from there. And that was proven, right? Forget that. Then there was all the services we were using. Like, Furcon, who's my CTO, he would be like, oh, this is a cool, cool product. Let's use this in our tech stack.

if I had just invested in all the bills we were paying for like software we were using like pager duty and elastic search and so you know like one after another those were all huge winners that were pre-IPO um so first was investing the second was like project selection so like you were talking about gregg i did the same thing i was playing by the rules of like i was playing by other people's rules meaning like what was considered cool at silicon valley was to be like a product guy who was building who had like cool product taste and was building like you know, like new markets and like going for the big billion

dollar prizes. And then I met Sam who was like, I'm writing this newsletter. It's free. I'm going to have like newsletter ads in it. And I was like, yeah, but like, are you going to do a startup someday? Like that's all I felt about it, right? Sam's company sells for more than more than my company sold for in the end. He goes, uh, he goes, look, you're good.

But basically like, you're showing up to a knife fight with a knife. And I wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition. I'm like, sounded cool, right? I was like, that's a great analogy. That's a cool story.

But like, I don't know, man. I think the math kind of, I think it might achieve the desired outcome, which I'm trying to do here, which when I started, I was just trying to be financially dependent by the age of 30.

That was the only goal. And so, so like if I could go back and just whisper three things about like, just strategy, like forget life advice, just strategy advice. I would have said, um,

invest in all the small. people you know, like it'll work out. If you don't have the money, go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that. Now, do it in the first thing. The second is invest in all of the expenses on your P&L. So go find all the places you're spending money and go try to invest in all those companies. That will also do fantastically well. You'll make more on that than your own company. Okay, if you really want to do your own company beyond that, fantastic, that's great. You're going to build up skills and you got a lottery ticket there that might work. I would have just said, like, don't try to do. to be Mark Zuckerberg from the social network, like, think about what, like, like, basically just open your eyes to the problems and the opportunities that exist today. And so, like, you know, whether it was like e-commerce or Shopify apps or like, these sounded small at the time, but they sounded small because that's where they were early. And like, at that time, I needed a VC to like stamp their approval that this was a good market or good opportunity, which by that time is pretty late because what's the VC doing?

they're looking at what companies are raising huge rounds, which means like four years ago, those were great opportunities. Three years ago, those were great opportunities. And so I wish I had just kind of been more eyes wide open on like what projects are available to you. And like the things that sound kind of nation funny, those are actually better signals for you

than the thing that the VC is saying is going to be huge or is already huge because it's often, you know, those companies to start are like you're in an absolute dog fight And it's just like one winner out of 100 is going to emerge versus other things where like you could basically take no product risks, no market risks. So I had a friend Vishal tell me this once. He goes, I invest in companies with no product market fit risk. I had never heard somebody say that. It didn't even make sense to me.

I go, what do you mean? Like every startup is product market fit risk. He goes, no, it's not. Like what? And he goes, he was the one who convinced me to buy Bitcoin initially as well. He was like, Bitcoin's going to be the, you know, the biggest thing in the world. He's like, I just put up basically all the money I have into Bitcoin. I was like, what the fuck?

This is like back in 2016, 15. Nobody was really saying that back then. So for the product market fit thing, he goes, he goes, for example, I just invested in a company that's making a robot that makes pizzas. And it makes pizza, it makes a perfect pizza every time 24-7 at a lower cost than a human being can do it. He goes, I don't know if they can, he goes, there's a ton of engineering risk. Like, they may not be able to technically do it.

But if they can do it, there's zero market risk. every pizza shop will want this over paying an employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah blah like for a higher cost and i was like oh shit that's true there are things that have zero market risk and i was taking like maximum market risk before so like that's the other strategy is like you don't have to take as much market risk the thing you're doing now gregg is like way less market risk the thing i'm doing with milk road had like zero market risk basically and there's just a like, there's a lot of money, there's life-changing money that could be made and a lot of fun that could be had without taking on unnecessary risks.

What happened to that pizza company? I think they're still in engineering risk mode. They got like a big contract from Domino's, but then their CEO got, in trouble for something so they hired a new CEO, something, something, something. You know, like, again, these are legit engineering risks. So I'm not like, that doesn't mean they'll all work. But like, what I'm doing with the newsletter is like neither technical risk nor market risk. Yeah, operational risk.

It's just, are you going to be able or wanting to do it for a long time, which is pretty good. That's a pretty good thing to try to overcome. Right. Yeah, it's really tough. You know, I remember coming in San Francisco and hearing all these narratives and these BCs telling me this. And also entrepreneurs sort of repeating a lot of this stuff. And I will say it's tough to go against what these stamps of approvals say to do. You know, like, you have to tell yourself every day, like, and I have to do that, too.

Like, when I started a services business, all my, most of my Silicon Valley friends were like, a services business. Like, an agency? That's what you're going to do. You know, like, and you just kind of have to push forward and really just remember that, you know, just because, you know, certain people on Twitter say a certain thing or Sequoia or Andreessen say a certain thing doesn't mean you can't have a, you can't have a. great like i would say you can have a better lifestyle not being mark zookerberg than being mark zuckerberg yeah exactly the pope catholic bro a brown bear shits in the woods right obviously yeah what was that a brown bear shits in the woods yeah that's a sampar special that's a sampire special is that the number seven sampar's specialty i just ordered because i think I got it.

Does the brown bear shit in the woods? Yeah. That's why people listen to this podcast, though, for a couple of Sampar specials. Did you just, what did you say? Did I just order a Sam Bar special number seven? Because I think I just got it.

Yeah, that's good. By the way, I made a joke recently where, Sean, you go, yeah, so there's these short traders. And I said, oh, yeah, how tall is he? And you just like, totally skipped by, it and the people that comments on YouTube are like, I think the joke was funny,

but it was definitely funny that Sean just ignored him. No, people were like, dude, how did you not acknowledge that absolute gem on time, on target? You were quick with that one. Yeah, it got no love, and the commenters pointed it out. You're the new Chris Rock, man.

You're the new Chris Rock. You're a better version of Chris Rock. Thank God this is digital. He's going to bitchlapped me right in the first. dude i can't believe that happened i'm gonna like right after this i'm gonna go see i can't wait to see uh will smith apologize oh yeah he's for sure gonna come out with something by the way the form on his slap if you look at the photo full extension crossbody i mean like do you i've never slapped anyone if i tried to slap someone once i'm not gonna have perfect form that guy has to have slapped before

because you don't just wake up with perfect form on a slap like that like the just look at the extension and tell me that's not a 12,000 slap. Miff is a habitual slapper, man. He's a perpetual slap before. We got to stop this guy before he gets out of control. He's definitely slapped before. I wonder as he was

walking up the catwalk, there was like five seconds there. So I wonder what he was thinking. Was he like, you know what? Am I going to punch him? I'm going to slap him? Like, I wonder what was going through his mind. I think he's off his rocker a little right now. I've done that before to my sister where like I knew I was mad.

and I started to charge. She was five years older than me, so I was like, you know, a kid at the time. And I knew I was mad, and I had a, I have to do something, but I had no plan. And so I had like three steps to improvise the plan. I remember this. And she always tells the story.

We were in the kitchen, and I was pissed because she made fun of me. And I'm five, six years old. And I was walking. And I am in the kitchen. I just grab a butter knife. And I go, Nisha, this is the end.

And that was my statement. And like, she was like the end of why. And I was like, and like, nobody knows what happened after that. We both just blacked out. She thought it was hilarious that I had, you know, said like a movie line, like a loser. And I was holding this butter knife.

I don't know what I was going to try to do. But it wasn't going to work. She could overpower me pretty handily at that time. Sean Porry special. All right. That's the episode. By the way, Greg, you said something. Don't end it yet.

I want to leave with, with, Greg got my wheels turning. Even while we're joking, my wheels are still turning about what you just said about the narrative. here's my challenge, each of us. What's one narrative that you think actually you should be going counter to that narrative? Like there's a narrative that we hear as entrepreneurs, as people in kind of tech. And like, what do you think is the like, actually, I don't know. Maybe it's this other thing instead.

So if anyone has one, do it. But otherwise, I'll give you one. Yeah, go for it. So mine would be, I'll give you two. There's the inside crypto, there's a narrative that's basically like, oh, there's all this innovation happening. It's like the next protocol, the next token, the next whatever. I'm pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things, like if you buy Bitcoin,

Eath, I put Luna in there now, just buy those three. And you just chill. Either all of crypto is going to work and those will work amazingly or crypto is not going to work. And no matter what you did, like if those fail, if those don't go up dramatically in value, um, crypto just didn't work and none of the shit will work. And so I think actually a basically like for a while, the best strategy was Bitcoin and chill and now it's Ethan chill. I basically think it's still the same.

I think it's like buying two or three tokens and not even needing to know anything more, just chilling on those is probably the best investment of the next like 10 to 15 years. It's going outperform everything during that time. So I think like going deeper down the rabbit hole and like, like, like learning more is actually going to fuck up your returns versus just buying the main ones and just holding for like 10 years and not thinking about it. That's one. And then the other is I think that angel investing doesn't make much sense anymore.

And I say this as somebody who angel invests. Like the valuations are so high that like if I think about like that same money going into like one of these sort of boring cash flow businesses is so much better for your life. So if you're like an individual angel investor and you have, let's say, $100,000, you know, or $300,000 that you want to go put into like a basket of 20 startups, it's like, are you sure you shouldn't just buy like, like, get an SBA loan and go buy like some random website that's already producing profit and that'll pay itself off in two years or less. And now you own this cash flowing asset. Like I'm pretty sure that's just going to do better. Dude, I agree. Than a basket of angel investment.

Our friends who have all crushed it on angel investing, it means they made their investments five or eight years ago, and it was different. It's outlandish at the moment, so I agree with that. I think for mine that I think that it's actually, I think that you only have a few swings in your career, and a lot of people are like, oh, you should be patient,

and you've got a lot of time to do certain stuff. I actually think you should try, you should dedicate your 20s to getting your first significant win. Because after that, life gets a lot harder. You get a lot less energy. You're a lot smarter, which is actually bad. You actually, it's kind of good to be kind of ignorant. And not enough people, I think oftentimes people go the other route where they go, we'll just go join something for a little while and learn. In my opinion, F that. Your 20s dedicated to getting a win and get it, even if it's relatively small and do it as fast as possible. Because after that, life is a lot easier. I'll give my... What, Sean? I was going to say, give the Moyes quote about getting rich quick.

He goes, why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick. I don't want to get rich slow. I got two real quick. So I got off the phone with a friend of mine who works at Facebook. He told me this morning,

he told me that he works roughly 90, 90 to 120 minutes per day on average. I thought you were going to say 90 to 120 hours a week. Yeah, it's the best when you measure your work in minutes. He texted me, he texted me today. He said it was 912 a.m. He said 912 a.m. Finish work for the day. 12 minutes.

And so. You know, put us in a group chat. I want him to text us every day. Just the timestamp of when he's done. That's what I told them to do. I said, you need to create like a Twitter and non-account. A Twitter. So I'm going to stay tuned.

Do that. But I think that in your 20s, like potentially go work at Facebook. Go work at Google. Get those high-paying jobs. I think that, by the way, I think that's a good way to get a win. You know, do that for a few years. While you're doing your learning on the side, like, join a Dow, build a community, build a newsletter, do whatever you want to do.

It really speaks to you while you're not, you know. Yeah. So you're making money and you're learning. What more could you ask for? And then my, you know, just because you gave a crypto one, Sean, I think that, and I spent a lot of time in NFT land and Web3 land too, I think that NFTs are going to 99% free to admit. It's going to be a free.

freedom in thing. I think the idea of selling NFTs will be a very small thing. Okay, so what happens? Why would I give away something for free? What's my incentive? So what happens after it's freedom in? So yeah, I mean, you know, okay, so the idea, right now, it's like people are selling NFTs and projects for 0.05 to 0.2, let's say, on average, for some of these, you know, 10,000 PFP projects. I think that that's going to burn out at some point. And I think we're starting to see it burn out a little bit. And I think that, you know, did you see the 100 Thieves drop?

Yeah. What do they do exactly? They did a much smaller amount. So they basically, first of all, it was in gaming and gamers hate NFTs. So the fact that they did a successful gaming NFT launch, like obviously Kudur, goes to them. But basically, they won this championship and they were like, okay, in order to get this like collectible, you can go grab it. It's free. We're not saying it's going to be worth anything. And they got 700,000 people to collect this collectible. And it's a trophy. And then they

make money on if there's value, right? So if it grows in value, they get royalties. And I think that's what you're going to see a lot of is like creators and big communities. basically doing free to mints. Even though people today think that selling NFTs is the future, I don't think so. Right. By the way, I'm going to change mind to just simplify it.

Instead of starting a company by an existing business, I think that is the most overlooked, obvious thing for a smart person to do is how do you take your market risk to essentially zero? You buy a business that's already working and profitable, and you just say, cool, I'm a better operator than this person, or I know about a different form of operation than they do. And so I can grow this using Facebook ads,

or I can grow this using outsourcing, or I can grow this using, you know, code or whatever it is. So you hear almost no narrative. You hear tons of narrative around the genius visionary startup, start a new thing, building a new project, launching a new thing. And like you hear like one or two examples of people buying businesses. And I think that for most smart people,

buying a business is a far better idea than starting. Yeah, but when you're in your 20s, my pushback to that is like when you're in your, let's say, early 20s, like do you know, like you're saying that now. But I think like you do need like that operational experience. And that's where my point is you got to like it's worthwhile to just potentially take a high paying job. And then on the side kind of like experiment and do stuff. Yeah, that's true. I'm not really limiting mind to the 20s. I think I'm still making mistakes of my 30s, so I'm assuming other people are too. And I guess it's more like, what narrative do I hear now that's easy to float along with that I'm like, you know what? Actually, I don't think I just think this is true. And like that's the one for me, which is like for most people who want to be entrepreneurial, they default to starting a business. And I think actually maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe you should default to taking on an existing business and growing.

it and only create a new thing if you like actually have a new invention in mind, a new idea that really you can't shake in your head versus like just starting a new start. I like that. Because you want to be an entrepreneur, right? All right. I think we lost Sam. We got to go. All right.

Greg, thanks for coming, man. Where should people find you? Twitter at Greg Eisenberg or on our pod where it happens. Or in the mountains of Canada. Or the mountains of Canada. Unless you're the IRS, in which case he's in Miami, at least 180 days after you. At least. All right, see

Yeah.