My First Million - Big Fish In A Small Pond, LIV Golf, And Financial Freedom

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about the value of being a big fish in a small pond, Saudi Arabia's version of the PGA that's luring players away, what financial freedom actually means, and Camp MFM. ----- Links: * LIV Golf * Pedal Tavern * The Peak * 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. ----- Show Notes: (02:05) - Hitler on drugs (07:40) - FL math teacher creates winning team (14:25) - Big fish in a small pond (19:40) - Interesting companies (23:05) - LIV golf (31:15) - What's the price to make it big / Twitch story (44:40) - Altruistic jobs (53:15) - What is financial freedom ----- 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

Have you heard of this thing called LiveGolf? I think it's called Liv. I don't know how you pronounce it. LIV. No, I don't know. What's Live golf? Live golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA tour.

It's like the main, it's like the NFL. That tennis thing. Right? No, golf. So, so LiveGolf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged out of the Saudi Arabia thing. Exactly. It's a Saudi-backed.

rival and these guys are basically trying to it's like they're trying to spin up a new league by brute force they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars i think they pledged yeah yeah me too big big swing so this is not this is the opposite of sps right so this is uh bde yeah so basically they they put the the Saudi public investment fund put in they pledged 400 million dollars to start the league i think they've even committed more than that i thought they offered tiger woods like 500 million or something crazy. News came out, yeah, they offered him $800 million, and he said no, which is like just kind of an insane thing.

So, but they have signed other huge stars. So Phil Mickelson, you know, Dustin Johnson, this guy, you know, Brooks Kefka or whatever, who recently won the, he won like four majors or whatever. Cameron Smith, who's like this young star, he signed a $100 million deal. Dustin Johnson, $125 million deal. Phil Mickelson, $200 million deal. They offered Tiger and didn't get him yet. All right. What's going on, dude? How are you?

Fantastic. So I have something that I've been thinking about, that I've been wanting to talk to you about. I started, have you ever seen that video of Adolf Hitler at the German Olympics in 1936 when he's watching the Olympics? And he's like rocking back and forth. Have you ever seen that? Bro. You can't be blonde-haired, blue-eyed. And coming up. here starting off saying, have you ever seen my favorite video of Hitler? No, no, no. Have you ever seen that video? We're trying to go up the charts, bro. We're trying to go up.

Have you ever seen that video of him? So he's like, basically, there's this video that I saw a couple weeks ago where he's at the Olympics and he's rocking back and forth. And he's very clearly on drugs, like some type of Coke or something. Like he's on drugs. And I started getting curious about it. And I started looking into this. And someone in the comments said that there's this really good book called Blitz. So I bought it. It's right here. It's called Blitz and basically it's a it's called Blitz drugs in the Third Reich. So basically, uh, after reading it, Hitler and a ton of the Nazis as well as just a ton of Germany, starting in the 1930s like, uh, morphine, heroin and meth was invented. And they used to think

that it was like a miracle drug. Doctors were like, take this meth. It makes you feel great. Um, it's like this, it's like a, it's like a miracle drug. Like you get euphoria. You want to stay up all time. You'll eat less. It's this wonderful drug. And like, like, It was a legal drug that Bayer, you know, B-A-Y-E-R, the drug company now, they were like selling this shit. And they would even put it in chocolates. And there was like a chocolate that you would eat that had a little meth in it. And it was like always satisfied or something like that. And like it was so common.

And turns out Hitler was a junkie. He was getting injected with meth for years. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, like when they were getting bombed the very last minute, he was like, oh, no, we're doing great. Because he had like these like, you know, he was like hallucinating. You know, he had like thoughts of grandeur, typical meth shit. And I started thinking about this. What other stuff in history was supposed to be one way and be happening like one time? But it turns out it was for a totally other reason.

And I started looking into it. So for example, Henry the 8th, he was the, you know what Protestants are? No. I've heard that word a thousand times. I knew you wouldn't know. Do you protest. No. So like there's like the Catholics.

And then there's the Protestants. It's basically like if you're like an evangelical Christian, if you're a Baptist, if you're like all these other different types of Christian religions, you're probably a Protestants. Maybe by definition you are. Anyway, someone came up with it. Like Martin Luther came up with it. And in the 1500s, the King of England, he basically like had like eight divorces because he couldn't have a kid. Like it was him.

He was infertile. And the Pope was like, hey, you can't have these divorces anymore. This is bullshit. And he's like, no, fuck that then. We're going to switch to Protestant because that allows like. me to get a divorce and I can have all these kids. And so now like there's a billion Protestants in the world because he just turns out like want to divorce. And then like there's this like there's this like story that you ever know how Barcelona people say Barcelona really

funny like Barcelona. There's like this urban myth that the king of Spain had a lisp and someone's like, hey, you know it's pronounced Barcelona? And he goes, no, from now on it's Barcelona. Because you know, That's just how I say it. That's just... My first million. Yeah. It's like, you know, Mike Tyson rule the world. And I was thinking about, like, what other stuff did we think that was going to be like,

you know, was for this, like, grand reason. But it was really just like, you know, like the guy's dad said something like, like George Bush invading, like, you know, looking for weapons of mass destruction because like his dad was like, you know, you're not strong like your brother. and like you or you know because he couldn't find the remote one time yeah he had this like leftover like mission accomplished banner

he's like well we gotta do something with it you know like what else like what else in history has been done just for like totally the opposite reason I don't know but I bet there's so much like I think about this with food all the time when I see oh you know you know people like oh you know that the active ingredient in Advil or Asper and comes from this like oak tree and like blah blah.

I'm like, yeah, but how do we figure that out? Like who was just gnawing on trees and was like, you know, this one? I had a headache earlier and now I don't have it anymore. Right?

Like all foods, what's like, oh, this one kills you, this one's good for you. It's like, uh, okay,

but like, you know, who were the testers? Who was figuring this out along the way? I actually think that that was probably like, what's the most fun time to be alive was then when nothing, when no one knew anything about anything. Like you didn't,

know what was food and what was not food. Like how much just random soil has been eaten by somebody being like, this has to be food. And then somebody else is like, you know, sees a chicken running by. He's like, no, I think under those feathers, there's something there. Dude, there's all kinds of good stories like that. And I never research it. So like, have you heard about like the invention of LSD? No. The guy, uh, he was a European doctor. He was trying to like, he was trying to like, uh, I forget what it was, but some type of antibiotic. Like, just something normal. And he got a little bit of the shit in his skin.

Like he, like, touched it funny. And he was like, oh my God, this is awesome. And then he, like, starts tinkering with it even more.

And he goes, all right, let's try this. And he gives himself a huge dose. And he starts running home on his bicycle. He's like, nothing's happening. Like,

this didn't work. And then all of a sudden, hits him. And he like has the biggest trip of his life. And then he like, you know, it changes everything. Yeah,

I feel like penicillin. There's a whole bunch of drugs that were discovered by, by accident for sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't know where you want to go with this topic. I don't want to go anywhere. I just thought it was interesting. This book,

like I'd just been reading this book about drugs and like the Nazis. And I was like, it's crazy. Like the book says that they, at the time in the 30s and 40s when World War II is happening, that something like 60% of German doctors were addicted to morphine. And they're the ones like, you know,

voting on what the laws were going to be around, you know, how these controlled substances are handled. It's crazy. It changed my personal. Well, I guess it didn't change my perspective, but you know what I mean? It's just like an interesting read. Let me tell you an interesting story.

Have you heard about this math teacher in Florida? No. No. These stories can go one of two ways. Yeah. Yeah. Was he on Dog the Body Hunter? I'm not, I mean, this could go a bunch of different ways.

Yeah. Is there a funny, like, viral video of him in a 7-Eleven? No, so get this. So Brandon was telling me about this. This is kind of amazing. So there's this guy. Okay. So you know, like, you know, there's like kind of like school competitions, whether

spelling bee or math competitions or whatever. So there's this math competition. And there's this kind of strange thing going on where one small schools, not a private school, has won like 15 out of the last 17 of these math competitions. And people were like, God, what is going on at like Buckholz High School? And the story is kind of amazing. So there's this guy, Will Fraser. He starts as a banker on Wall Street.

And he's doing like bond trading or something like that. And the guy's, you know, this is like in the 80s. He's like, you know, this is the heyday of where, you know, you've ever read those books like liars, poker and things like that. It's like the heyday of Wall Street. People are making tons of money. He retires by 27. So he's made a bunch of money.

He's like, dude, this is too stressful of a lifestyle. How much should he make? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know exactly. how much you may, but enough to retire at 27. So let's assume it's, you know, like, I would say 10 million at least. Okay. That's my guess.

So he buys a Ferrari. He drives down to Florida. He's like, just dreaming of like a slower, calmer life. He's like, you know what? I'm just going to go to Florida, bought this Ferrari. I'm going to just play a bunch of golf, play a bunch of basketball, and I'm just going to hang out. Do Ferrari shit.

Yeah. For, for a decade, he's, you know, that guy you see on like Tuesday at 1 p.m. Just like hanging out at the park and you're just like, you don't have a job? Like, what's going on? He's that guy. And he does it for 10 years, no income, 10 years. He's just chilling. And he plays a bunch of golf.

And along the way, he's sort of like, yeah, you know what? Like, I'm feeling a little aimless, don't have a great purpose in my life at this point. So he's like, he reaches out to a local high school. And he's like, hey, can I teach golf over there? They're like, ah, sure. He comes over and teaches golf. He was like, I like teaching, actually. Even on Wall Street, actually, I liked teaching the young guys.

So he's like, what else? Can I teach like a finance class? You know, I'm a former Wall Street guy, made it big. retired. Can I teach you find, like, no, we don't have finance, but you can become a math teacher if you want.

And he's like, all right, I'll do it. And so he goes and he becomes a math teacher. And he walks in on day one and he's like, listen, let me say you this right now. I don't need this job. You guys are going to be any shit? This will be my last day.

And they're like, okay. You don't respect. And so he gets, one day, he's like checking his mailbox as a teacher. And he sees this math competition coming up. He's like, oh, like, that's cool. Let's try this. So he enters into the math competition.

They go there and they get smoke. They get fifth out of sixth play. So the second to last. And he's like, dude, I couldn't even solve some of these problems. Like, this was hard. But like the flip, you know, the switch got flipped. The competitive switch in him gets flipped. And he's just like, actually, I like that competition.

I missed the competition of Wall Street where it was just like completely doggy dog. And you were like high intensity. And so he decides to do it again and again and again. And he became. And he goes and they get fifth the next time. And they get third. And so on and so forth. And he basically decides that we are going to dominate these competitions.

That's exactly what's happened. Dude, isn't that the best? We're like... 15 out of 17. Isn't that the best when someone just like sees like a small opportunity and they're like, no one takes us as seriously as we're going to take this? Let's do it. You know what I mean?

I love that. And that's exactly what happened. Just like that cheerleading movie that we watched on Netflix. It's like they just like check it. Yeah, they take it to the high. That one I discovered? Yeah, the one that you made popular. So the guy, so people are like, dude, what's your secret?

What are you doing differently? He's like, oh, I just took a different level of intensity. He's like, it's just an insane hard work. He goes, you know, average math teacher gets 72 hours of classroom time with their students per semester. And then they hope that after school, some of those kids come and they learn for an hour, you know, once a week or whatever. That's what they're putting in.

He goes, oh, I just. switched it. First, I took all the good math kids. I put them in the same class, kind of like, almost like, you know, like blended of age. But he's like, I put all the best people in the same class so they would compete with each other. Then we used our class time to start preparing for these competitions. Then I started creating summer camps where we could get 80 hours in four weeks. So the equivalent of a full semester of teaching in this high intensity thing is like, and I just developed a program because they're like, are you the best at math? He's like, no, I don't even teach the advanced math stuff. Like one of my former students teaches like,

the hard stuff, I just build the program. He's like, I put the high school students with the middle school students, and that, because the middle school students sort of idolize the high schoolers, they teach down and then the middle schoolers rise up. He's like, so I built this program where one alumni, basically like the older kids teach the younger kids, the younger teacher kids, kids even, teach the even younger kids. And we just put in way more time. He's like, then I started scouting like this is like, you know, Alabama football.

So he'll go and he'll look at the scores of other schools and he'll find the high performing kids and he'll recruit them to his program. And then the reputation got built where they started winning. So now parents are coming inbound and being like, please take my kid. And he's like, we only have so many spots. I'm sorry. And so he's built this like talent pipeline. And not only that, they actually, the talent pipeline goes even further.

Now companies like McKenzie and the big banks, Wall Street, they come recruit from his high school, the big schools, Ivy League for interns and shit. Yeah. Because they want his students now. So he built like a platform for where. they can go, which helps them recruit even better students. And so, where'd you see this story? It happened. What's that?

Where'd you read this? It's just like, I think that, so it's been in just like the local Florida news for a while, and then I saw something. Yeah, but what were you doing? Read it. Who's Brandon? No, he sent this article from the Wall Street Journal or something. It was like, paywall, so I only got the first paragraph. I'm too cheap to pay for it. But I was like, oh, what's

the story? And then I found all these local Florida papers that had the rest. And so, um, they said like during COVID, they were like, oh, you guys, to teach remotely and he's just like, oh, okay, yeah, we're going to downgrade the intensity. He's like, hell no, I resign. And then he went to a church, rented out the church. I was like, hey, if you guys want to come and train here, we could do this.

And 140 kids went and trained daily in his church during COVID when everybody else was low, had to lower their intensity. He ratcheted. How old is this guy now? So now he's like in his 60s. And so he's been doing this now for like, you know, a number of years. So he was basically 27. He took 10 years off, so he's closer to 40, 10, 11 years off.

And then basically from 40 to 60, he's just been dominating this one thing. Isn't this incredible? That's incredible. This is incredible. This is incredible. I think there's a few things. One, just the intensity. Number two, I think sometimes if you pick, like a lot of people, including me, we want to move

to San Francisco, New York, L.A. and try to become like a medium-sized fish at a big pond. I think there's so much to be said about being the best or a big fish in a little pond. and like you can make a name for yourself and have a way better life. Like this random dude is having so much more impact by creating a, being like the guy for like this very small math contest versus, you know, rich, he's probably way more fulfilled than being just like another $100 million banker.

Dude, I, I want to get diagnosed with a bad case of SPS. I want small pawn syndrome. Like I, I am a huge belief. in this. Dude, so I lived in Houston in high school. And Houston, I went to a big public school, 5,000 kids, and

kids from all over Houston. And basically my life was basketball. I loved basketball. And I remember a game in ninth grade. The varsity coach, I was on the ninth grade team, and I, you know, the goal would be to someday be on varsity. The varsity coach watching her game. And for

some reason, I think I scored like, I had like two threes to start the game. And then all of a sudden, the most athletic kid on their team decided like, nah, this guy's not going to like see the hoop again. And he starts picking me up full court. Basically like from the moment I can move, this guy is like in my shirt. And, you know, and I literally can't get by this guy. Like I'm trying to go left. I'm trying to go right. I cannot get by this guy. And I don't know what to do. And I'm just basically like getting frazzed. So coach calls time out. The coach calls timeout. The varsity code. walks under the huddle. And I think he's going to give me this, like, epic advice,

maybe like that varsity advice. How am I supposed to get by this guy? And he just goes, you will never play varsity basketball. Oh my God. And I was like, what? Thanks, Coach Hollingsworth. And he's just like, if you can't handle this guy, you will never like, because he's like, I thought you might be.

And now I see, no, as like some motivational thing. Then he just gave you a wedge and walked away. Exactly. Exactly. Fucking nerd. So hard. Yeah, exactly. Like,

Hey, I'd like to report a bully. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a checkbox for faculty? But he was right. And in the Houston Pond, I was nowhere near athletic enough to be whatever. Now,

luckily, my parents, my dad gets a job in Beijing. We moved to China in the 10th grade. I go to China. First day, I start playing basketball. You know,

these kids don't get protein. over there. These kids don't get protein. Everybody's scrawny. I'm blowing by everybody. Varsity coach walks over. He's just like, hey, what's your name? I end up being captain of the varsity team.

You know, I got a girlfriend. Like, my life changed for the better. Like, everything got better. Because I caught SPS. I got small, small pond syndrome. And I was able to go be a varsity player over there, captain of the team. The captain of a football team in rural Alabama

with 100 students, they live the life. Screw the big city. Live that life. You know what I'm saying? And there was a part of me, a foggy part of my memory that remembered like, you ain't shit. You ain't shit.

Do the man they could squash that down. It quickly got washed away. Yeah. It quickly got washed away. And I forgot. And I thought, it became like, you're the shit. You're the shit.

You're the shit. And that's what you want to do in life. This guy, this guy's doing it right. I actually have this dream too. I was like, I just kind of want to retire and coach high school basketball basketball.

I think that would just be a lot of fun. And yeah, this small pond thing, I think we're on to something. I've thought about this for a long time. I thought about moving back to St. Louis for a minute, but my wife wasn't down. But I was like, dude, I could just be the man here. You know, I could buy a million dollar house and it would make the news. You know what I'm saying? Right.

A million dollars in San Francisco or New York is a studio. But I was like, it would be one of the biggest purchases of the quarter. I would make the news. It would be awesome. But then I realized I, you know. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. Bro,

what else you got? By the way, I have straight fire today if you want, if you want more. I've got fire too, I think. Did you see what I have in there? No,

I don't even have the thing open. Oh, well, fuck. Well, you could screw. Give me one. Well,

okay. So I spoke to like a bunch of different companies this week. And they gave me all their revenue, all their profit. and a few of them are interesting and I could just like bullet point and quickly go through a few of them you want to do that?

By the way, explain why does somebody why does somebody just give you all the revenue and give you all the profit as you say because it sounds like A, unrealistic and B, like you sort of like tricked them but that's not the case. No, I said them. Okay, so I've got this like community that I'm running

that I'm not going to talk about yet but it's like a CEO community and when they joined, they tell me all types of interesting information so we can place them in the right group and I messaged eight of them and I said, hey, can I talk about you on the pod? And can you answer these questions?

And am I allowed to reveal all of your information? Well, am I allowed to reveal the information that you gave me? And they said, yeah, sure. So that's how I got it. So nothing like crazy. Which one you want to do? All right, I got a couple of them, actually. Give me the most interesting one first.

Let's do, Okay, well, here's one that's actually not on. I don't even think I put it on here. But have you ever seen those pedal taverns in like Nashville and Denver? It's like the bars that you like pedal with like a, they're honestly pretty obnoxious. But you don't I'm talking about? No, pedal what? It's called a pedal tavern. So basically.

Is it a bus? Like a movie? You never see. I guess you don't like leave the suburbs of San Francisco. But in a lot of other cities, Denver, Austin, Nashville, like these like style cities, there's these things called pedal taverns. They kind of look like, um, Imagine a bar in the middle and there's eight people sitting on one side and eight people sit on the other side.

Now imagine that being on top of a four-wheeled platform and you're pedaling that platform while you're drinking booze. You've never heard of that. But you're outdoors, right? You're outdoors on the street. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's like some party thing. Yeah. The guy who created one of the first ones is in the group and his name's Pete and his business does, he bootstrapped it from nothing just out of school.

It's getting close to eight million a year in revenue. and just the pedal taverns do about five million a year in sales quite profitable and they're using the profits to buy the real estate that their pedal taverns stay in overnight. That's a pretty interesting business. Let's see. Another one is, have you heard of, let's find another one, have you heard of, you probably never heard of this. So here's an interesting one. There's this business called The Peak. It's ran by this guy named Brett. So it's a daily newsletter. So it's just like the hustle, morning brew, whatever. Mostly bootstrapped, and it's in Canada.

And so every day it gives you the news you need to know about Canada, Canadian news. Only a team of 10, 90,000 newsletter subscribers, not that much. And doing about 3 million revenue with a million in profit. Pretty good business. A small team of 10, 90,000 subscribers, 53% open rate, 67,000 monthly podcast listeners. The guys were like kind of good writers, but not really that good. And they just started like writing and cold emailing people and hiring writers. And after two or three years, it's already about two or three million in revenue.

So what are they doing differently? Because that's more revenue per subscriber than most, I think. So, right? Yeah, it's pretty good. But basically, they just said that with in Canada, like there's not that many, there's not as many publications and B2B advertisers, software companies. They don't have that meant money places to. advertise. And so these guys have just done a really good job of getting the banks, the telecommunication

companies, B-to-B software companies, all these like high-end enterprise companies to advertise with them. Gotcha. That's pretty good. Okay. We'll do one more. I want to tell you about a company. Oh, fine. You can go. Okay. Okay. I want to tell you about a company that you may have heard of. Have you heard of this thing called LiveGolf? I think it's called Liv. I don't know how you pronounce it. L-I-V. Or live? Wait. L-I-V? Yeah, just L-I-V. No, what's Live golf?

Live golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA tour. It's like the main, it's like the NFL. That tennis thing. No, golf. So, so LiveGolf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged out of the Saudi Arabia thing. Exactly, it's a Saudi-backed rival.

And these guys are basically trying to it's like they're trying to spin up a new league by brute force. They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars. I think they pledged yeah yeah me too. Big swing. So this is not this is the opposite of SPS right so this is BDE

so basically they they put the Saudi public investment fund put in they pledged $400 million to start the league I think they've even committed more than that now. I thought they offered Tiger Woods like 500 million or something crazy. News came out yeah they offered them 800 million

and he said no, which is like just kind of an insane thing. So, but they have signed other huge stars. So Phil Mickelson, you know, Dustin Johnson, this guy, you know, Brooks Kefka or whatever, who recently won the, he won like four majors or whatever. Cameron Smith, who's like this young star, he signed a hundred million dollar deal. Dustin Johnson, $125 million deal. Phil Mickelson, $200 million deal. They offered Tiger and didn't get him yet. But. And Phil can only be on, it can only be on live and not PGA. Exactly. So it's a competitive thing.

So PGA is like, there's like, I don't know, 60 events a year or whatever. And then there's like four majors. What these guys are doing is like there's eight events and they all matter. They're going for more of like the NFL model versus baseball, right? Baseball has,

you know, almost 200 games a year. And, you know, they don't really matter. But there's sort of always something on. Whereas the NFL is like, there's like 17 Sundays or 18 Sundays and like they each one is going to matter.

So that's what these guys are. trying to do with the golf model. And to like put this into context, you know, Tiger Woods, you know, has earned $121 million in all of his PGA winnings like over time. You know, obviously he makes more through sponsors and, you know, other sort of like paid events and things like that. But just from the PGA, his lifetime, I think, earnings are $121 million. So Liv is coming out strong and basically giving these guys like Tiger Woods lifetime money

as a guaranteed contract instead of the way the PGA works is it's like, there's a prize pool for every tournament. There's $9 million for every tournament. The winner gets three. Everybody else gets like a piece depending on how you finished. And they just do that over and over and over again. And so they do 48 events a year. And so Liv comes in and they basically are giving guaranteed money away

instead of saying you have to win in order to be there. And so PGA makes like a billion and a half dollars a year in revenue. 1.5, a little bit over 1.5. And, you know, 85% of that is like, like their tournaments and the meteorites and ads and all that stuff that comes from that. They have like a nine-year-con, they're in year one of a nine-year contract. And then Mr. Steele Your Girl comes in and is starting to just take these stars away and basically is trying to, you know, compete with them. They also have like prize money as well.

And so they need, you know, they would need to generate like a billion dollars as well to sort of like have like a similar economics. But what's the play here? Do like Middle Easterns watch a lot of golf? Is that the shtick? It's like this. No, I don't know if that's why, like, maybe. Like, you know, there's like that weird thing where, like, Russia really loves, like, women's basketball.

I don't know if you know that. Like, if you're a great women's basketball player, you play college in the United States, then you try to make it to the WNBA. And the WMBA pays you basically nothing. Like, you know, you'll make like 70, 80K. Yeah, like a shoe salesman salary. And then you'll get, like, 300, 400K for playing the off season in Russia. Yeah.

And everyone's like, why does Russia care this much about women's basketball? like nobody asks questions and like yeah it's a little bit whatever i don't know exactly what's going on there but um but that's like you know they disproportionately like that sport and so maybe there is something in in soudi arabia for this or it's just they have a huge amount of money and they see the business opportunity where pga basically had a monopoly on this and if you can create a successful sports league these are worth billions and billions of dollars like we both love the ufc ufc sold for i think 4.2 billion dollars um which in my opinion is under now like very low undervalued for where it is. And that's like, the UFC's like fringe compared to NBA, NFL, like these major, major,

major leagues. What's more popular, golf or P or, or UFC, golf, right? I think golf is not more popular, but it generates more revenue.

But what's more lame? Because it's like sort of the wealthy. Who beats up who? A golfer with their club or a UFC fighter with his hands. Dude, I fucking hate golf. I hate golf. Hey golf. I cannot stand golf. Golf's not a sport. Golf's an activity.

Answer this honestly. How much of your thinking at the end of the day boils down to who could beat up who? Most. Most. I think that I think because that's like that's like something that we're all like, uh, like we're all afraid of. Like the guy who at the end of the day is like, oh, I can kill anyone in this room with my bare hands. he is, you know, he's the true dog. You know? He has nothing to fear. Somebody said this once. I was reading like an NFL scouting report. It's like there was a draft.

There's four quarterbacks. They were all like top prospects. It's like who's going to go number one. Who's number two? And the guy who does like the draft, he said this line that I thought was so badass. He goes, if they were all on vacation and going for a road, you know, they were walking out to go to the car, they would all throw the keys to Mark. they would check the keys to part, Mark's driving.

And it was like this like alpha mail thing. And I was just like, what was this analogy? And why did I love it so much? Like if you just said it, if it was like, hey, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, go out to dinner. Who's paying? Who's picking up the check? Yeah. Who ordered the Uber?

Yeah. None of these guys are driving. Do you, when you're in a room, like at a restaurant? Who sits aisle? How, what percentage of the time when you're at a restaurant, do you look around and be like, Who's ass can I kick and who's can I not? Really? But I know that you do, which is why I asked you this question because it's hilarious.

You don't think about that? Zero. Zero percent of the time. Dude, I cannot stand golf. Any sport that you wear khaki pants to like play, it's not a sport. That's not a sport. It's an activity. It's a hobby.

It's checkers, but it's not, you know, like. It's barely a job if you have to wear khakis. Barely a job. Sport is out of the question. Tacky's in a collared shirt. That is not, I mean, that's not a sport. Like, you don't sweat. It's an activity.

It's a hobby. This is amazing, though. I don't, like, let's get rid of the Saudi Arabia thing. I think it's pretty cool. But if you're Phil Mickelson and you have fuck you money, hardcore, and Saudi Arabia, who has, you know, a lot of human rights issues, offers you this. What do you do? Do you take it or not?

So you double your net worth probably if you're him. So I think you can't take it alone in a vacuum because you're not trying to go sit on an island doing nothing by yourself and like lose all your relevance. You lose your future earnings if you do that. But what I do is I say to them, look, I'm in if you can go get 40% of this list to join. And you could tell them that fills in if you're in.

and I would basically say you need to sweep a critical mass of us so that this is relevant, that this is considered the top class. I'm not going to go play in the B league or the D league by doing this. And I would tell them that. And I would say,

I'll do it. You're going to have to cut the fattest check of your life and you got to go get 40% of this list. So there's a price that you would take for sure. Oh, of course, of course. If somebody said, hey, you got to go to this podcast on Android.

And I'd be like, is there a podcast player on Google? And they'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're putting a lot of investment into it. I'd be like, all right. All right, I'll do that. I'll take this podcast to SoundCloud. I'll take it to the Google Play Store.

But I'm going to need to see $7.5 million. That's what I would say about this podcast. I would move this podcast for $7.5 million. That is my price. There's a price to pay to be a whore. I'm down. But. So we actually were going to do this.

So at one point in time, I had a startup that was based on, like, streaming of video games. And Twitch was the, like, 900 pound gorilla in the room that was, like, it was the big streaming platform. And we were just like, we were trying to build a tool that worked on top of Twitch. Like, streamers could use it when they used Twitch. And it was working. And every day we'd come into work. We'd work really hard on this tool. But, like, there was definitely a part of us that was like, dude, how did we end up here?

We're making this, like, tool for Twitch streamers that, like, is free. And then we're hoping that we can like after they all use it, then we might be able to monetize this other way. We're just like this guppy and this like in the, in the ecosystem and this food chain, we're like that little fish that like swims in front of the whales, nose, like whatever that thing is called. Like we're that.

And I was like, I like to Furkan. I was like, man, don't you just want to be the whale? And he's like, so badly want to be the whale. And I'm like, yeah. So what can we do? And we just like, we went to the room, we just whiteboarder, like, how would you like compete with Twitch itself? How would you just beat Twitch?

And I was like, just look at the numbers. So we ran the numbers. We're like, Twitch has this insane power law where you can see that the top, you know, X hundred streamers. We take the top 300 streamers. They basically make up all the viewership, all the meaningful viewership. Like, you know, I don't remember what the exact ratios were at the time. But like any power law, it's like, you know, the top 1% or whatever make up a very significant portion of viewership. So let's just make up some numbers.

Let's say the top 300 made up 50% of viewers at any given time. I was like, so Twitch is worth, Twitch sold for a billion dollars, like a decade ago or whatever, you know, seven years ago. It's probably worth five, seven billion dollars now. You're saying that if we could take, you know, half of that half, if we can get to a quarter of that, we'd be worth, you know, we might have the equivalent, you know, 25% of what they're worth, which is like a billion dollars today. How much money would it take for us to throw at those people, right? go get 25% of that top 300. How much money would it take for us to go throw at them to be like, come join our new thing? And we like game theory the whole thing out.

We're like, all right, this guy makes this much today. We basically need to offer him like 10 times what he's making today. How much to come move? How much do some of these guys make? Just on Twitch. So shortly after that, the contracts exploded. But like at that time, the top guys were making like single digit millions per year off Twitch. So like, let's call it between one and five million.

Plus, there's some endorsements you don't really know how to track and they sell some amount of t-shirts. It's hard to know. And then it sort of exploded. Guys started signing like, you know, 10, 20 million dollar deals, but they're like multi-year deals, three-year deals or something like that. So, you know, they're making six million guaranteed or something like that, five million guaranteed, 10 million guaranteed. So that was like the kind of like what our estimates were for the very, very top guys. We thought, okay, so how much would we need? It's like, we basically did the math and we were like, okay, I think you need,

I don't remember what the number was today, but let's call it. Let's just pretend it was $150 million. We need $150 million to go throw with them. But it's like, if I told you, you could go raise $150 million. And you're saying you needed $150 million in order to pay the streamers and tell them, bail on Twitch, come to our platform. And when you come to our platform, you're going to bring your audience and we're going to make all this money eventually through other people coming. You get this much guaranteed.

All you have to do is just continue to stream and you have to promote it in this way and let us promote you. Can I make a prediction? million to build this platform. My prediction is that would never work. I don't think that works. Okay, so tell me why. I'll tell you how, obviously it didn't happen.

You know, you're partly right. I think it could, tell me why you think. Well, I know that you didn't really try to do this, but, or I don't know,

in earnest, I don't know if you, you didn't raise $150 million. I think maybe the PGA tour could work, maybe. But doing this for consumers, you need to have like a brand

and you need to have some magic about it. It's kind of like, you know, even if you put all of like the, resources into creating a boy band. Like, sometimes that shit just don't work. Even though, like, everything, like, everything on paper, it's like, well, we got the,

the blonde hair kid. We got the mixed race kid. We got the, uh, the dancer. We got the singer. Like, on paper, this checks out. You know, like, this should work. You know what I mean? We should be popular in Korea by this point.

And it's just, there's just no magic, right? It, shit just happens. And then, like, you have some, like, you know, kid who just, like, sings a funny song and makes a joke about, like, wearing a cowboy hat. And he gets hugely famous. like Lil Nas X or something. It shit just happens. And I think that there's like a bit of magic

that probably would be missing out because with consumers, it's quite challenging to like grab their attention. It's like getting a cat to play with something. It's just sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Right. So I do think that that's part of it,

but there have been instances where people have thrown money at the problem and it actually worked, right? For every quibby where you just raise a bunch of money and you go try to do the thing, it doesn't work. For every one of those, there's one where you're like,

No, actually, they did kind of just brute force their way. And I don't know if you remember this, but when TikTok first launched, TikTok was lame as hell, dude. TikTok was lame as hell. It was pigeonholed as like the lame version of musically, which was a pretty lame thing. It was like 12 year old's lip-sinking videos. And now TikTok is huge. And one thing that happened in between, I remember meeting a guy.

And he was like, yeah, you know, TikTok is going to spend a billion dollars marketing the app. Because I was like, dude, there's billboards in San Francisco like at bus stops. to download TikTok. I was like, do they really think this is going to work? And we had an intern, not an intern, really, like a kind of just like a junior guy working for us. He was in ninth grade and he worked at our company. And I was like, he started mentioning TikTok.

And I was like, is TikTok actually a thing? He's like, yeah, you know, we just kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it. And then they started just paying all of the top YouTubers and vine people to just make TikToks. And like, eventually it just worked. Like it's like, we all think it's lame, but like we all kind of started to use it. And then sure enough, the lame thing fell away too by the end of it.

And it became like a pretty mainstream thing. Like TikTok really did brute force their way down. They did a bunch of other things, right? Good product, great algorithm. They did a bunch of other things right. I'm not saying they didn't do that. But it's not like they started with this like brand love and authenticity and like loyalty and things like that. So let me tell you how this, this Twitch thing played out.

So I had a hunch that you might be right. So I approached Discord. And I said, hey, Discord, do you want to buy us? And they're like, maybe who are you? And like, what do you do? what do you do? And I was like, oh, we do this thing today. But here's what we would do with Discord.

We would help you compete with Twitch. You have brand love. Like, Discord is one of the most loved brands in gaming. It's like you have the brand, you have brand love, but you don't do this today. We will build the platform. And like, we can use this strategy to do this. And they were like, well, okay, this is just kind of like a crazy big pivot idea. Like respect the audacity.

Who did you email? What role? I don't know. CEO. And you said, hey, CEO, I'm Sean. This is what I do. Can I come to your office and pitch you? And then you went to the office and told them that.

or you told them this all. Exactly. Why did he take your meeting? At the end of it, at the end of it, his take was basically like, we will acquire you if you want. I don't know if we'll pay the most.

So, you know, that's, I don't know if the deal will happen. And I don't know if we would do this. But the fact that you can come in here and whiteboard this on a wall makes me want you to like come here and do things.

And like, that's the biggest, that was his like take away. That's the biggest bullshit artist thing I've ever heard of and you almost pulled it off. What was the guy like? he's amazing he's a young guy right just like a young nerdy dude jason sitron yeah i was like i never met zuck but i was like the way he talked about their product the strategy and like his like confidence

he's a quiet nerdy confidence i was like oh i don't want to compete with this guy and i see why they've kicked everyone's ass like this is like this guy's really smart and just really uh like has a point of view about the way this needs to go and like it's just simple it's understandable it's different. Why do you think he took your meeting? I just feel like he's going to actually get on that. I think I had gotten a warm intro through his investor, his lead investor. I told his lead investor, hey, we're thinking about selling.

I went to him and I was like, hey, we're thinking about selling. Would you do this deal or not? And he was like, well, you should first talk to the Discord guys. And I was like, great. That's exactly what I was hoping for. Because I just need to create a bidding war of some kind to get the best deal possible. So can you make that interest? So he just emailed him.

It was like, you guys should meet. or like, you know, here's his email. He's like, I think he, warm introed. You should meet. And I just said, hey, I'd love to come by the office today. And like, you know, 40 minutes, I'll sketch out what I have in mind. And, like, you know, you can decide if I'm just nuts or if I'm genius or I'm nuts and you can decide for yourself. But he respected it.

I don't know what I said. Yeah, he was just like, you know, would you like to come like be one of the like C-suite type people? Because I don't think we're going to do that plan that you outlined. But I like you. Which role? Like, you know, there's not. I don't know we didn't get that dude this is how everyone needs the confidence of a Sean Puri this is a great story

this is um proof that you can just create shit out of thin air value yeah you can create value I always say this like at my last startup the the best thing I did ultimately in that and that company was I did right by the team and the shareholders of like at the end I put my best foot forward to try to get us the most value we could um that was like you know of all the things that was the best one. And like I tried to do many other things well. I tried to find product for it. I tried to scale. Try to hire a great team. And I did some of those okay, some of those poorly. The one thing I did great was this process. Let me finish the story here. So then, so I'm like,

okay, these guys don't want to do it, but maybe we could still do it. And so we start trying to set up a meeting. And I realized pretty quickly, oh, you have to do this as one, you have to do this as like a coup. Because it's kind of like a rebellion. And I was like, we need to do two things. we need to wait until people are pissed off about something that Twitch does, which big companies will shoot themselves in the foot. They'll come out with policies. They'll make some statement. They'll change some feature. They'll change the revenue split. And people get annoyed. I was like, so we need to capitalize on that. And then secondly, we need to get everybody all at once. You know that movie that's out that people like, everything everywhere all at once? I was like, that's how we need to do this. We can't just get,

we can't just slowly negotiate one by one. It won't feel like there's enough momentum. And so I was like, we need to do this at Twitch is big. conference where all the streamers will go to, all the big streamers go. Because most big streamers, they don't leave their house. They're like, they're like me, but they actually have like, you know, they're actually, you know, rich and famous from their streaming, but they can't leave their room. It's like their job. And so they go on vacation very little. They take very few days off. The one thing they do is they often go to TwitchCon because they can meet their fans and it's the big event. So I was like, we need to do like a dinner the day before, the day before or the day after

the conference, probably the day before. I was like, you know, this might be the worst time because they're going to be up in, you know, the Twitch kind of like, you know, because It's the only time we can get them all in the same room. I was like, and we'll lay out our case, which is basically, look, you guys are going to make stupid money. If you all are in, there's no risk to any of you individually because if you're all there, this will actually work. And see, like, you don't have to play by Twitch's rules anymore. Like, you have, you know, say in this thing.

I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better. Dude, there's this, like, famous meeting that happened in Atlantic City in, like, 1930s. And that's when they, it was all the mafia guys that got together and, like, Al Capone and all these guys.

And that's when they, like, formed, like, the syndicate or whatever, you know, like, the mob. And, like, you know, it's us versus everyone. That's basically what you did. You had, like, your little mob meeting. And that sounds awesome. No, no, I didn't do it. I wanted to do this. I didn't even get there.

Why? Because it was one thing that happened. And when we ended up getting a. acquired by Twitch. Emmett was like, hey, let's grab a drink, we'll celebrate. So we go to, this first time I met him,

like, out of the office. And we go to this bar and, you know, we're talking about stuff. And I was just like, you know, I was like, what do you think?

How would somebody beat Twitch? He's like, hmm, he's like, he's like, it's pretty hard. We do have like a pretty good business. And like, you know, it's hard to compete against

these like marketplaces once they get paid. Did you know about your meeting? But you know, you could, no, no. So I go, I go, I go, we had an idea. I don't know if this would have ever worked.

We got very close and we didn't pull the trigger ultimately. But I always wondered, like, would this have worked? And I told him the idea, he goes. He goes, yeah, we've thought about that. Like, that, I don't want to quote him, but like the gist of what he said was, if you were going to do it, that's the only way to do it. But we knew that. And that's why we started signing exclusive contracts with all these guys.

And specifically, exclusive contracts that don't line up. So we would make one expire in June. and another expire in January. Another one expires and the following year. He's like so that nobody could ever, like they're all off cycle payments, off cycle contracts so that nobody could come and like,

oh, they're all going to be free agents and we all sign them all right away. Tiny ass detail. Tiny detail, right? And I was like, wow. And then sure enough, this actually did end up, somebody did try to do this.

So Microsoft came out with this thing called Mixer and they went and they tried to get the top streamers. They gave Ninja like, I don't know, some stupid $20, 30 million dollars to come stream on Mixer. he said yes, because he's like, dude, if I'm making four or five on Twitch, and these guys will give me 30 guaranteed to go sit here for two years, all right, I'll do it.

And they tell me, like, this is integrated with Xbox. It's going to, like, drive me a bunch of new viewers. Cool. And then they tried to get shrouded and try to get a bunch of others, but they did it too slowly. And so, so this attack did actually end up happening. But that company went out of business, didn't it? Yeah, because they couldn't get the critical mass.

They couldn't get enough people to say yes. But like, this did happen. And like the Chinese streaming platforms tried to do it. Like a whole bunch of people tried to do this against Twitch at the same time. And Twitch did a fairly good job of not only this off cycle contracting, but also figuring out is crazy. There was like this theory, which was how many of your favorite streamers need to move before you move? And so they looked at like, okay, if I'm a viewer, if I spend 100% of the time just watching Sam and Sam leaves, okay, I have a high likelihood of leaving. But as long as I can get you to watch like four people.

the odds of all four leaving are very low and if one leaves I'm like 95% chance to just stay How about the fact that they probably hired some like MIT like rocket scientists And he's like thinking for years Like I'm gonna I'm gonna help get man to Mars You know I'm gonna help

I'm gonna be part of saving the world The human race I'm just a little small part of this But I'm helping And he gets his job offer from SpaceX And it's 135,000 And then he gets this job offer from Twitch and it's like 140,000.

And he's like, man, they got free lunch, though. Like, you know, like it's like the office is down the street from my house. You know,

I can do, this space thing will always be here. You know, like, their office is beautiful. And then they take that Twitch office and then they spend the next eight years of their lives. And the only point is figuring out

how to make it so a streamer can click a button and like a cat pops up on their shoulder. like an emoji. You know what I mean? Or it's like, how do I just make it? So like on Monday night football, the first,

the down line, the yellow line moves perfectly with like the, you know, how do I do that? You know, space will always be there though, but like how do I get this like first? Just imagine someone like

dedicating their lives to that. That sounds horrible to me. That is not far from the truth. And in fact, some people try to use that to their advantage. like, you know, Steve Jobs did that thing where you're recruiting John Scilly or whatever. He's like, you know, when are you going to stop selling sugar water to kids and come like help chance the world? And Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity Water, he's like, I remember he came to Silicon Valley.

He was recruiting for Charity Water. And I was like, how do you recruit from like Google? He was trying to hire somebody from Adobe. I remember. He's like, yeah, she makes four times as much as I'm going to offer. I'm like, why would she take a huge pay cut like that like 4X last? He's like, I just got to hope that she wants to do something that actually. matters. I was like, well, okay. And he actually did succeed in recruiting a bunch of really

interesting people. But yeah, you know, it does happen. Like when you're at these companies, it's like, what percent of your life goes towards like being like, you know, can we get, you know, chat engagement up by 0.2 percent? Like, can we get the, you know, if I add this emoji of this like, you know, bouncing cat, like, are you 34 percent more likely to come back next week? Like, you know, There's a lot of life that comes down to you. If you work a big tech company, you're working inside of a slot machine. And you're looking at this person sitting down on the stool and you're like, can I get another four quarters out of them? And what do I need to?

Let's make that light flash over there. Hey, cherries. You got a flash. Yeah, that'll do it. My wife, you know, went to this fancy Ivy League school. She's this brilliant woman. And she was at Facebook when we started dating. And she was telling me what she did.

She's like, I'm a PMM. What's that stand for? Product Marketing Manager. And I was like, what's that mean? She's like, oh, well, we just help people, like, we want more people to use Facebook. I'm like, oh, are you guys like the thing that puts like the jet above India so like they get free internet access? She's like, oh, no, not really. Well, what do you do?

She's like, well, you know, I create different products to help people to use Facebook. I'm like, okay, but what do you really do? She's like, I'm making it so you could put a sticker on your picture and more people will spend just a little bit more time on this app. And I'm like, oh, okay. yeah, you should quit, right? And like, that's what she quit. She's like, yeah, and went did something that actually she cared about. But yeah, I remember hearing about that.

I'm like, oh, that's why you went into debt for all these universities. And that's why you did all that was so you can, you know, walk around the Facebook campus for like three hours a day and make like a sticker of like poo jean, the cat or whatever the fuck that thing was called. Do you remember that thing poo jean or what was that thing? It was like a Japanese cat. No idea what you're talking about. It was called like poo.

Remember how Facebook, they would have all these like Japanese cartoons. There was like that dog with his tongue hanging out. I don't remember. It was the thing. It was like a cat that was Asian. And like it was like a series of stickers that. Yeah, it's the thing in Snapchat, that dancing hot dog, which has been seen more than like any cartoon or animation ever. They've been seen like 10 billion times or like 100 billion times or something like that.

It's like, yeah. This hot dog is actually more popular than Mickey Mouse. Just like the stupid of ways of time. It reminds me of on that TV show Silicon Valley, one of the apps that they said was amazing was nipple alert and it alerts you of erect nipples in your vicinity. I'm like, oh, this sticker thing, that's nipple alert. Sounds good. Yeah. Honestly, when I was there, when I was, I didn't think it was like, you know, a waste of sort of time and energy in that sense.

Like, I don't know, maybe. I think Twitch is actually okay because Twitch is like, this cool subculture. We're nerds. No one likes us. We finally have a space that we can do this. stuff. Facebook, I think is different. And I respected the game theory of it. I was like when this whole like contract thing was going down and they were like, you know,

basically the question of how much should we bid. I was like, I don't know, you know, like, it's like in sports, there's like this money ball movement where you're trying to figure out the value of a player. And if you can accurately forecast the value of a player, you have an edge in winning in the league. The same thing is true now for all these like big media platforms that are like in Twitch's case here. they were bidding for content. So they're bidding for this. And, you know, I went and met with people or, like, you know, talk to people who are at

Netflix. And it's like, hey, how do you decide how much to spend on the production of this? Or, you know, how do you figure out if it was worth it to spend, you know, whatever, $100 million on House of Cards? And, like, and you go there and you'll meet, you know, you meet the guy who's doing that same thing, right? Like the brilliant data scientist who's, like, job is to, like, A, B. test the thumbnails of, you know, like, the new Garfield movie to figure out which one is

going to lead to higher engagement and like lower churn. And it's like, yeah, you know, you're, your AB testing thumbnails for, for Netflix and YouTube and all this stuff. Like, yeah, that's like, it kind of feels like, you know, bringing a gun to a knife fight type of thing. Like you're, you're, damn, like really, this is where all this brain power goes? It's a scale. It's not binary. It's a scale, you know? And so for some companies, it's like, oh, no, this is just way too lame. For others, it's like, oh, this got a little pinch of lame, a little half a cup of lame, but like, it's mostly pretty cool. You know what I'm saying?

Netflix, I actually think that's cool. It's like, oh, I'm giving the world a little bit of entertainment. Facebook, it's like I'm just making people hate themselves. Yeah, the thing that I, the way I ended up thinking about it was, like, do I matter here? Like, if I left, like, who cares? I call this the Django Law. Like, if you remove this block from the Jenga Tower, Tower still there, I guess that wasn't a key block. Like, you know, sure, we'd love to have it there.

It's more, it's better if it's there. But like, nah, nobody really. cares if I leave. I was like, well, if I don't really matter here, then like, it's very hard for me to get excited. And that's kind of an ego thing, but it's also like an impact thing. Like if I at a startup, like, I can I can just by myself create a product, give value to customers that didn't exist, and I can capture a huge amount of the value. And at a big company, I'm neither the key person creating the value nor the key person, nor the person who captures any of the value, right? Like, your value capture inside of a company is fixed. Like,

You get paid what you get paid in most cases, you know, aside from like maybe a bonus that you could get, whether your product succeeds or fails, which is why a bunch of products fail or go really slow inside these companies because it doesn't matter. You don't get a prize if it works. You know, you get praise. And so and then the other side, which is like, you know, does this matter? And I think there is a counter argument. Like I talked to this guy, Josh Elman and actually even the chief product officer at Twitch, this guy,

Dan. I was like, Dan, why do you always join? You know, worked at Google, worked at Nextdoor. He worked at now Twitch. I was like, why are you doing this big company? Like, have you ever wanted to go to your own? He's like, yeah, but I wanted like impact scale. And I was like, I was like, oh, that's weird.

Like in my head, it was always, if I'm at a small company, I have a bigger impact. Right, right. I am big relative to the company. He's like, yeah, but that's not how you think about it. Like here, if I can improve one product that 10 million people use or at Google, you know, a billion people use search, you know, every single day. And so if I can make that better. like I created the book search feature.

I was on the books team. We created that project. So now you could search for books and like a bunch of people on earth do that. Not a startup, but it would be very hard for me to do that. And I was like, okay, like that is the counterpoint is like if you're working at Apple and you're working on

the app store, like you know, the app store, if a billion people use it every single day, I guess like making that better reaches a billion people, you know, making their life 1% better or whatever, you know,

that day is higher impact than at a startup. But it doesn't feel that way. The action doesn't feel the same to me. No, I agree. You want to do another topic? Can I give you a framework that I think is pretty dope that I heard? So I was talking to somebody about like, you know, I guess I can really say what I was talking about. But I was talking about something.

It was sort of like, you know, let's say the topic of money. Like, you know, should I do this? Should I do this? It's going to yield this amount of money or not. And the person was like, well, the way I think about money is. is, you know, he goes, the value of money is what can you say no to if you have this money? And I was like, what do you mean about it? That's interesting.

I started, actually, he didn't even respond. I was like, my head, I was like, that's interesting. I've never heard that before. And so like, I started thinking about it. And I go, that's true. Like people always say, you know, I want financial freedom. I want freedom. I don't care about money.

I care about freedom. That's like a common thing you'll hear. And it's like, what does that actually mean? I was like, oh, it's actually not the freedom to do something. It's the freedom from having to do something. So it's like, what can I say no to? So let me give you kind of like, so I started thinking about my own life. I was like, when I had $25,000 in my bank account, I could say no to a really shitty

job. Like I didn't have to go flip burgers or be a janitor because I could, I could pay my like monthly bill. And I could do that for like, you know, six to 12 months and like, cool. That means I didn't have to go get a bad job, a shitty job today. But then at like 100K in the bank, you could say no to like a shitty. manager. It's like, okay, I don't, I can't just retire, but I can like quit this job, take a gap and like find another job and I don't feel like this like financial stress in doing

that. So 100K lets me say no to a shitty manager. I was like half a million. That's when I could say no to work for a couple of years. I could just say no to work for a little bit. Temporarily say no to work. Like a six or 12 month thing. Yeah. Yeah, I could go for a year. I could try a startup or go backpacking or whatever. Like I could pursue a passion of some kind. So that's a new thing you could say no to. It's like work for a little while. Then it kind of like, I would say three million. You can just say no to jobs. Like, I'm only going to work for myself.

I can bet on myself and give myself enough time to figure stuff out without having to stress about it. At 10 million, I think you just say no to working in general. It's like, my money makes enough money. I just don't need to use my time to make money if I don't want to. And then it kind of goes on. And I think that you say no. Well, like, I've been thinking about this as well. at like between some number, maybe around 100, you say no to having to be in one location.

So, for example, right now, I rent a place in one location and I own a place in another location. If I had $100 million, I'd probably own three or four homes. And it's just like, hey, let's just go from place to place to place. I don't have to spend any time organizing a rental or anything. And then maybe around like two or 300, it's, I'm going to say no to wasting time at an airport. I'm just, we only, you know, we only fly private. So I think it's that, but the numbers are a little bit less. I said at 50 million, I think you could say no to any inconvenience that money can solve.

You could. I think you could. But you could fly private at 50 million. You don't have to own the jet. You could fly private. Sure, for sure. You could hire assistants to do anything you need. You can hire, you know, chefs and drivers and, you know, errands and accountants and anything

you don't want to do, you don't have to do once you get to sort of the $20 million range. I talked to a guy there day who owns a jet. And he said it's about two and a half million a year. And expenses. Right. And he owns it. If you want to rent it, I think you could go most, you can go to a lot of places and spend half a million dollars a year.

And if you have 50 million, that's, that's doable. But you can't own like an $8 million house in Brooklyn and then a $3 million house in Austin and then a $5 million house in L.A. But you could own pretty nice shit in those places. Right. And so, you know, like the top ladders, you get to $100 million. And I think you could say no to the way the world works. You get to change some rules.

And at a billion, I think you say no to like politicians. You say no to the police. You say no to a bunch of people when you get to a billion because you have the ability to kind of fight back. They kind of, there's a different level of respect. So to me, I liked this framework of what does this amount of money allow me to say no to that I want to say no to? Did you, what hourly rate would you say no to right now?

For a project that you don't want to do for a one hour phone call, what would you, have to accept. So like, I think there's like what you say and then there's like what you actually, like what the market clearing price actually is. So you would, you would, right now I charge $2,000 an hour and I take about two hours a week of phone calls. Would you do that or not? So that's the exact borderline.

So on GLG, that's like what you could, the max you can set my rate to is $2,000. And if I get a, if I get a bid and I'm like, this phone call doesn't sound like it's be a lot of fun. It's like right at that borderline where I feel like, I kind of should. Like, for an hour, I should do it. I don't take the calls because I need the money. I take the calls because I feel guilty saying no. And so.

It's the same thing, right? Like feeling like I should means feeling like I want to say no, but I don't think I should. And therefore, if I say no, I kind of feel like I made it, you know, I'm guilty, right? Like what I've done is, I've used the app intro and I just like, for example, I'm flying down to your event and then I'm flying to L.A. I schedule it so I know when I'm going to be. You can assign the money. Well, I know when I'm going to be in the Uber and I just make my availability there. So I'm like, sick. I'll just take this in the Uber and now I can afford like I can justify a $200 Uber black because I'm making $2,000 in this hour. And so I'm going to be comfortable and I'll

order it even early. So if I arrive early at the airport, I can just sit outside of the airport and finish this call. So that's kind of how I've been justifying it now. But it feels weird selling time hour. And I don't even know if I like that in general. Yeah, exactly. So I would say my true answer is if I don't want to do it right now, I think that the number is something like two or three thousand dollars for an hour. If I just, if I don't want to do it, I actually just don't do it. But if it's like borderline, if I'm not sure if I want to do it or I don't think I would like it, but it's not so painful. I think that's my current thing. But I'm actively trying to get away from it. Like something that came up yesterday that was like this. And I was like, I was,

By default, I was just going to say yes. And I was like, should I say yes to this? Let me just like recheck what I want to be saying yes to because I think that, you know, one of the most important decisions in your life is what are the things I'm going to say yes to? What are the things I'm going to say no to? So there's your default box, which is like, oh, I obviously say yes and no to these things. Then what are the non-obvious things? So it's like, I want to be saying yes to things that I know will be fun and help me grow,

but scare me a little or put me out of my comfort zone. Right. So it's like, I know I want to say yes. I know I want to say yes to if my friend is in town, I want to go pick them up from the airport or if my mom needs to get to the airport I want to drive her there.

Like I want to say yes to tasks that like, I don't want to do, but I actually want to be the person who does those things. So I'm just like, I'm deciding consciously. What are the things that are like, what should I be moving into the yes box and what should I be moving into the no box?

What's some shit I do today that I should be saying no? Do you have a polite way of saying no to all the inbound or do you just ignore? I used to just ignore. And then I realized like it's totally fine to just say, hey, this sounds cool, but I just got my hands full. I don't want to do anything else. Or like, hey, this, you know, hey, you know, thanks for reaching out.

I don't want to do any more phone calls that I'm doing right now. But if that changes, I'll let you know. Yeah. And like I'll just say something. And I think, you know, people, A, they just appreciate a response more than a blow off. and be, I think there's some level of respect for, thoughtful emails, yeah. For, you know, somebody just being honest and like just saying, look, I don't,

I don't want to do that. You know, I've decided I want to travel less, you know. So I'm going to say, so I'm saying no to travel. Dude, I had this guy messaging me saying he wants to come on the pod and I was just like, I ignored it. I ignored it because I hate when people ask to come on because I'm like, dude, why are you going to make me say no? Like I say no to everyone practically, even good friends.

So we just say no to most everyone. And this guy, he was like, I was like, can I come on? I'm a huge fan. And I just said, like, thanks for reaching out. Like, I didn't even, I tried to avoid it. Like, it was quite obvious. And he's like, hey, so can I come on? And I go, you know, this isn't a good fit, but I really appreciate you listening.

And he was like, can I get some feedback? I was like, it's just not a good fit. And he goes, okay, but why? And I was like, okay, because you're not interesting and you're not that successful. And he was angry at me. And I was like, dude, what the hell? I mean, I was trying to, like, you know, make a point of, like, avoiding this topic and being kind, but you, if you're going to ask for feedback, and I'm going to tell you, you know, what it's about, don't get angry. Right.

It's like, well, what's not interesting about it? He said. I go, it just, there's, you know, I just don't care about you. So my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, lock's thing here was, I was too cold when I just blew people off because they didn't like that. And then they would just stop like, you know, I found I would miss opportunities because I wouldn't reply to things. Miss opportunities I cared about in the long run. Then the too hot was I would just be like, I don't do phone calls. I was like, okay, you know, you're sort of a jerk for just being like, I don't do phone calls or like I don't meet with people I don't know.

Or like, you know, I don't do this. It's like too hard of a rule. And I found that the sweet spot was somewhere in the middle of just saying, you know, hey, thanks. But, but, you know, I'm trying to do less of this right now. Or sometimes I'll say like, they'll be like, hey, did you want to do this? not be like, you know, I haven't decided and, you know, like, I don't know. I don't even know what I want yet. So let me get clear on what I want. And then I'll come back if I, if I, you know, when I get clear, if I ever get clear on it. But like, it's not about you. I just don't know exactly what I want

to do right now. And like, I'll just say like something honest like that. And I found that that tends to work a little bit better. Dude, we went from Hitler to Saudi Arabia to saying no to people. Mental models. Yeah, mental models. Good pod. You, I'm going to be in LA on Sunday. You're not coming, right? LA on Sunday? No, I don't think so. But then I'm gonna see you in.

What are you going to, what are you going to LA for? I told you about it. I'm hosting an event there. Dude, for the New York event that I'm hosting, we've got like 1,300 RSVPs. I'm eager to see how many show up. You gotta cut that down, right? You can't do it.

You're gonna do a thousand person event? No, that's how many people said they're coming, but it's free. So like maybe half will come. But we put up 10 grand. You're gonna do a 600. 50% event. Dude, it's all guys, by the way.

It's such an absurd number. It's all guys. I like scroll through. It's all dudes. I could smell that event already. It's fucked up, man. So many chads are going to be there. And then I'm doing the same thing in LA. And that one has like five or 600 RSVPs. I just, you and I were talking about an event and I was like kind of like actually, this is like a toilet decision. And I just wrote it on event right on my phone and just

posted it right away. And people signed up. said we're committed. So we're doing that. And then I'm going to be, and then we're going to go to the Carolinas for the thing you're organizing, which everyone's been reaching out to me. Did we talk about it last spot? Yeah,

we mentioned that they had the last pod. Dude, so many people are reaching out. They reach out about it. They want to come. Basically people wanting to come. And I'm like, this isn't, no, no, sorry. It's not my thing.

So I came up with a, I was like, what do we call this? And I was like, I want to call it Camp MFM. So it's Camp MFM. And I was like, we could do these a, We can do a bunch of these. We could just do like adult summer camps basically. Great idea.

What is something that's really fun? Because I don't want to go to something that's like, like even this like a thousand person meet up. Like I'm sure it's cool and there's cool people. Well, it serves a different purpose. It's a party versus an experience. Yeah. So I want to have experiences.

You know when you were like, I'm a fucking artist, man. Yeah, that's how I have. Like I don't have experiences. This is going to be a good one. Now we've got to come up with another one. Let's go to like hope. And so some of these will be like this one, which is like ultra like more. like super exclusive right there's only there was only supposed to be 12 people going it's expanded to

24 and um you know that's a lot and i wanted it to be more like 12 but i'm like there'll be those and i think we should do some that are for like dude if you can like if you know the phrase you know we don't do public math manifest cowboys you know uh sam wants to own a lake like if you know the inside jokes of this pod then you that's your admittance into this this camp and i was like i think we should do these like twice a year that are just like fun and awesome and get people together. I think Camp MFM should be the thing.

I never wanted to do the work for this and neither do you. And so that's like, you know, one of the challenges, but. But it wasn't a lot of work for this one, was it? Kind of feel like it is. It's a lot of,

because as soon as I try to do something, I'm like, well, let's make it fucking awesome then. Like, you know, and so like all of a sudden, like, for this basketball thing, we got like,

Nike's giving us all like, like, sneakers, like, from like one of their players. And then we're getting like, custom swag. We rented these like dope Airbnbs. We got like a chef. We got like all this stuff come together. I was like, well, if we're going to have good people, let's get like some like good names in here. Let's get like some people we're excited to meet. And then it's all coming together.

And like, but like each one of those now, I'm like now I want it to be like awesome. If we're going to do it. We got we got like we get a space. We can get a sponsor to say like are you get you get $300,000 a year to do cool shit. But we get to be there at all the events. Yeah. Okay. If somebody wants to do a sponsor. Camp MFM, you can do this. And all the body will go to basically hiring a planner to actually do these things for us. And secondly to the venue and logistics of it. All right.

That's a pod. I'm out.