My First Million - Billion $ TV Empires, Dating Business Ideas, And More Elon

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Episode 441: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about two TV empires worth billions, dating business ideas, and Elon Musk's latest cringey acts. Click here to sign up for our event... in Austin, TX on Saturday April 29th: mfmpod.com/atx Vote for MFM to win a Webby: mfmpod.com/webby Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: *Homestead Heritage *Brene Brown: The Call To Courage *Love Is Blind *Raya App *The League * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (02:35) - Why you need eccentricities (04:40) - Chip and Joanna Gaines (22:35) - Oprah (38:15) - Would you enjoy fame? (45:15) - Dating business ideas (57:30) - Cringey Elon ----- 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Their TV show got canceled, but Discovery gives them a whole network. Discovery's like, yo, we're going to make the Magnolia Network all around you guys. And you guys are going to create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer-upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house shit, right? And now they've built this empire, the kind of the bottom line of the whole, the headline of the story is this couple in a span of about 10 years has built a billion dollar brand around. themselves. It's that big. It's that big. All right.
Starting point is 00:00:43 I hope they keep in what just happened. So before we hit record, it's like five, four, three, two, one. And Sam, on three, takes out a drink out of nowhere at three seconds left and just chugs it, like tilts up, not only just tilt it up, squeezes the bottle, like it's a, it's a Kool-Aid or like a Capri Sun or something, and just chugs some carbonated drink. and then it goes to one and then he puts up the one simple like hold on, looks at the side,
Starting point is 00:01:12 burps, flexes, re-centers himself and is ready for the podcast. That was elite. That was an elite preps for a podcast. Dude, I'm on top of it. I drink so many beverages. We had this fast company article
Starting point is 00:01:27 written about the Hampton lunch and the reporter in like the first paragraph called out how I left the interview to grab a rupeer and I came back. Yeah, he skimmed the foam off the root beer like it was a Guinness. And then finished it. Held up the one second sign to my lips. Tell me to shush as he drank his roof beer during the interview.
Starting point is 00:01:54 You know how men drink like IPAs and crap? And then they look at the glass after they take a drink and try to analyze it. That's basically what I do at my Coke Zero. Dude, you should, you got to have more weird quirks because like you can't really be a billionaire founder if you're not super weird. So, you know, you got to start picking up some things like, you know, oh, he only wears, you know, open-toed sandals with socks. And like, you know, he wears shorts with, you know,
Starting point is 00:02:21 EMF protection on his pockets because he's worried about radiation. And what are the other weird things that you can do? Well, I had a, I had carbonated water on tap for a while. That was pretty awesome. Like, I like only drink carbonated water, no normal water. Only sleeps during full moons. Do you have, you don't have any eccentricities, do you? No, that's why I'm broke, dude.
Starting point is 00:02:41 I need, I need some of these before, you know, otherwise, how can I be? How can I be the weird rich billionaire I'm trying to be? We have, Sean and I have these friends. I won't name who they are, but they're young guys. And the minute that they got like a mild amount of success, like maybe 500,000 in revenue, they clearly had read like Noval's book on like charging by time or something like, that. And then they sent all of their clients, it's like client services business saying, we don't do meetings anymore. And they were leading into that eccentricity thing. And I wanted to
Starting point is 00:03:18 tell them, you guys are doing great, but you're not there yet. And the biggest customer dropped them immediately. It was like, oh, yeah. Well, we kind of needed to meet to talk about the, okay, well, I guess we'll just find another vendor. Yeah. I wanted to tell them like, it's great. I love the attitude, you know, showed up to meetings with the shirt off. And it was just like, well, that's cool. It's one way. It's one way to wear your shirt.
Starting point is 00:03:46 That's not the way that that particular client was willing to do it. So it's no longer their client, but that is our way. Yeah, that is definitely outwe. They do have a nipple policy. Unfortunately. Yeah, they're not on board with the free the nip campaign, unfortunately. Yeah. Oh, we forgot to shout out.
Starting point is 00:04:01 We're doing a live pod. April 29th. That's a Saturday. If you live in Austin or if you want to fly in, Sean and I, along with MFM guests, Andrew Wilkinson, are doing a live pod. So if you go to MFMPPod.com, you'll see the details and you'll see tickets. We're going to do a live pod. We did this in Vancouver a couple months ago. It's sold out.
Starting point is 00:04:22 This one's going to sell out as well. So if you're interested in hanging out with Sean, me, Andrew Wilkinson, as well as five, 600 other guests and fans of MFM, we're going to be there. So check it out, MFMPod.com. and you'll see the banner up top where you can check out tickets. Dude, we have a bunch of stuff. You have Chip and Joanna Gaines on there today and I went to Waco this weekend
Starting point is 00:04:45 where they are from. Oh, no way. And saw some of their houses, yeah. That's crazy. Okay, so you might know more about this than I do. Okay, so let me tee it up and then you tell me what you know about these people. So here's my trail of events.
Starting point is 00:04:58 And I'll put the disclaimer out there right now. If you actually know about them, that this is going to all sound very elementary. This is going to sound very, very beginner because I was a complete beginner about like, who are these people? I'm walking around in Target. For the listener, though, Sean doesn't know, like, I told him what cold play was last week.
Starting point is 00:05:15 Like, he didn't know. He thought that was like baseball in the wintertime. He didn't know anything about like pop culture. So this is you learning out loud. Yeah, exactly. Like, I still use a flip phone. So I left my house. I go to Target.
Starting point is 00:05:27 And inside Target, there's this one section that my wife always goes into. And it's the only section in Target that looks like this where there's a job. giant picture of this happy white couple and it's their names. Like it's like, oh, here's I'll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, chippin' joanna gain 6, 7, 8, 9. So why do they have their own section? So I noticed that first. And I thought, hmm, that's interesting. Are these YouTubers? Who are these people? Is this the owner of Target? What is this? And so I noticed that and filed that away. Then I was talking to Aldone, who came on the pod, or we talked about him on the pod,
Starting point is 00:06:04 who runs Missouri Star Quilt Company, the big quilt company, a huge quilt company, and he did this thing where he started buying up a section of a town. He basically bought a town and started to build it out. He wanted to make it like,
Starting point is 00:06:18 you know, quilt heaven. So basically a mecca for where quilters would go as like a pilgrimage to go and just like really indulge in their hobby. And he told me. Disney World for grandmas. Disney World for,
Starting point is 00:06:31 yeah, for your auntie. So he was like, all right, well, he goes, I go, does anybody else do this? And he goes, well, there's, there's Chip and Joanna Gaines thing in Waco. And I go, there they are again. Who are these people? And, you know, fool me once. Shame on me.
Starting point is 00:06:46 And fill me twice, shame on me. Finally, I'll look you up. And I looked him up. And they got an incredible story. It sounds like you're pretty familiar with them. But he had told me one thing that caught my attention. He goes, it shocks me, by the way, you don't know about these people. I mean, like, in the Midwest and amongst, like, moms, like, you,
Starting point is 00:07:02 You are so California that you don't know about this. They've been in the game for like 10 years, but I don't know too much about them. Yeah, you know, it's quaint, but I linked them up. They, the YouTube videos are amazing, by the way. If you watch the YouTube videos, so they own a part of town in Waco that they've just branded as their own. They bought these two abandoned, I think, silos, like grain silos.
Starting point is 00:07:25 And so they call it like whatever, Siloville or whatever. And they have the silobration at the end of the year where it's just like this huge party for them. So their brand magnolia is the like everywhere in this little area. So they have the Magnolia market where you go buy your stuff. And then they have their Magnolia table restaurant, which is served by the vegetables from Joanna's Garden. And then there's the Magnolia other thing.
Starting point is 00:07:48 And then there's a magnolia other thing. And it's just all them. And they get about two million visitors a year just coming and making the pilgrimage to Waco, Texas, which is really the middle of nowhere for Texas. I lived in Texas. And I never went to Waco. Like it was not even in my top 10 places to go in Texas. And so they have made Waco a destination.
Starting point is 00:08:08 They literally have raised the housing prices in that area by like 24% because they have made it an attraction. And their story is kind of interesting. I don't know if you know their backstory. Do you know pretty well? I don't. So the story goes something like this. And again, I'm a beginner. So I'm doing the thing where you read the press release and you're like, oh, that's how they meant.
Starting point is 00:08:27 How fortunate? Or, you know, like when you hear about somebody saying, Like, how'd you think of the idea? It's like, well, I saw a single mother struggling, and I just decided that that would be my mission. It's like, no, dude, you read a report that said this market was growing, and that's why you, you know, you started this business. But like, here's the PR version of their story. They live in Waco, Texas. Chip, the guy, goes into this car repair shop that her dad owns, sees a picture of her on the wall and decides I'm going to marry that girl.
Starting point is 00:08:55 Suspicious, but okay. Keeps going back to the car repair shop. that story, it could go a different route and just totally, it's like it's like when you whispered someone's ear like, I see you versus like write it on their mirror when they're in the shower.
Starting point is 00:09:11 You know what I mean? Context matters here. The ending of the story really makes it okay, but it could go either way. She doesn't end up in a freezer. So he keeps going back and he eventually bumps into her ass her out on a date. They go on a date. Whatever. They end up getting together. This is back in like,
Starting point is 00:09:29 2003 is. And so he was doing house flipping. And she was kind of like, I guess like working with the doing like commercials for her dad's car repair place or whatever. And they get together and they decide, they don't have anything to their name. But they decide to try to try to make something of this house flipping thing. She's like, oh, I could use my design sense. You're a contractor. And let's say they move into this like 800 square foot house and they renovate it while they live there.
Starting point is 00:09:56 End up flipping one, flipping two, flipping three. And they start to successfully flip some houses in Waco, but still no big deal. Then a TV show from HGTV starts casting, and they read about this husband and wife house flipper in Waco, Texas. They said, well, Waco, we're kind of hoping for somebody in L.A. or New York or maybe Atlanta or something like that. But like, okay, whatever, let's go down to Waco and meet him. And he's got this, like, kind of big personality.
Starting point is 00:10:23 He's real outgoing, and she's really good looking. And so it plays well for TV. so they get their show on HGTV called Fixer Upper. And basically the show from day one is a hit. And so they go from kind of husband and wife small time house flippers, like very small houses that they're flipping in Waco, to now on TV and they're doing this and they do five or six seasons. They become very famous on HGTV.
Starting point is 00:10:48 Show gets canceled. But what they did was they had built this following. And they had this brand in mind that they had called Magnolia. Like, they had opened up a retail store back in the day. They closed it because it wasn't really going so well. But they had this idea for this store called Magnolia. So when the show ends, they do two things.
Starting point is 00:11:07 They reopen Magnolia as a beautiful place in Waco. And then secondly, they go to the channel, Discovery Channel, and they go and their TV show got canceled, but Discovery gives them a whole network. Discovery's like, yo, we're going to make the Magnolia network all around you guys. And you guys are going to create. like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house shit, right? And now they've built this empire, the kind of the bottom line of the whole, the headline
Starting point is 00:11:40 of the story is this couple in a span of about 10 years has built a billion dollar brand around themselves. So it's that big. It's that big. So there's no real numbers that like have come out. So like if you go look for their net worth or their revenue, super hush, hush. which you know just makes
Starting point is 00:11:58 these little hairs on my arms start to tingle a little bit I know I know when it's that hush hush that that means it's a lot bigger
Starting point is 00:12:05 than you think especially because you see it like Target partnered with them to develop that line of goods in their store
Starting point is 00:12:13 so like when Target it's not even like they got their brand into Target it's like Target came to them as like let's make a brand
Starting point is 00:12:19 that's like a big deal they have killers move in silence killers move in silence and you hear yeah so if you don't hear about it if you don't hear about it
Starting point is 00:12:25 If you don't hear about it in TechCrunch, you know it's doing good. I thought you were going to hit them with a G's and lasagna type of line type of, no. No, not, no. Well, you know, I think I've milked that one dry. Dude, it's like my mom when she was on the phone with like a customer service person. And you're like, A is an apple, B is in Bob, whatever. She goes, K is a knife. I just lost it.
Starting point is 00:12:49 I was like, I don't think you understand how that works. Yeah, it's like, it's a good. They operate like K as a knife. I grew up on this street called Simpson and I would be like, I'd be like, you know, my address is this, this, this, Simpson, like OJ Simpson. And it works.
Starting point is 00:13:11 Anyways, their app that has their TV show network has like tens of thousands of reviews on it. So that means that app is doing pretty well. And that's a paid, that's like their own version of Netflix. Right. Like that's like kind of stunning. You never really see an influencer that has their own whole, description network. And so they have book, cookbooks, journals, retail stores, paint brand,
Starting point is 00:13:34 furniture brand. They have their TV show network. They got everything. And this idea, and they have their own town, which gets two million visitors a year. Like, if your website gets two million visitors a year, you're doing pretty okay. You're out there. Let alone two million people making the pilgrimage to your small town and Waco to come buy shit from your stores. That's kind of I guarantee you that these people will end up billionaires off of this Magnolia brand. This Magnolia brand has to be worth high hundreds of millions, if not over a billion dollars already. Have you been to Waco ever? No.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Dude, so I went to Waco this weekend because, and I'll tell a quick story. Then we'll get back to this. But basically, last year, I randomly came across this guy who had this new Airbnb. It was basically a piece of land that he built a lake on and he built seven air. Airbnb's. I was so curious. I couldn't find them on social media. I call him up. I get him on the phone. Yeah, he built a lake. Like it was like a plot of land and they built, not a huge lake. A pond is a better word to describe it, but it's a lake, I guess.
Starting point is 00:14:40 But I call them up and I go, tell me your story. He goes, well, I had a part, I was an accountant. I had my own small business for accounting. I just built this Airbnb thing. I think it's going to be really successful. But I really describe myself as an artist. I love to paint and play music. And right away, I'm like, I'm in.
Starting point is 00:14:55 Do you want to hang out? Start hanging out with them. He's part of this thing. I mentioned it called home. said heritage. It's this religion slash community. It's like all different parts of Christianity in it and they believe in like sustainability
Starting point is 00:15:08 and the weird part is they believe in craftsmanship. So the way that they like find God is by like doing things with their hand and doing it well. So anyway, this weekend I went and celebrated Easter at his church and like they like had an old singing thing. Has this been around for a long time?
Starting point is 00:15:24 Or did this? It was like a recently created religion. Okay. Basically the story is is that one of the main guys which is his wife's grandpa, I believe. Her, the wife's, Isaac's wife's grandfather lived in New York, was atheist, found God somehow, and felt like the best way to like show that I love God
Starting point is 00:15:42 is to like just be excellent to everything I do and be kind to people, among other things. But that was basically it. For some reason, they moved to Waco. They get 500 acres and they build a whole community on there. And then this guy, Isaac now has built this Airbnb a few miles away. And he tweeted out his profits. And in his first year of business, he did a million in profit.
Starting point is 00:16:03 And so I became friends with them. And I went and hung out there. And I drove through all through Waco. And basically in Waco, Waco's, sorry, Waco people. It's not nice. It's not, it's like objectively, like a fairly run down place as if maybe it was like an oil town. It feels like there was once something there. And then now it's not.
Starting point is 00:16:21 And when you drive through that area, you see like not nice house, not nice house, nice house. And I told him that. And he goes, oh, yeah, that's the chipp. Joanna's house. Like they like started here remodeling homes and you could distinctly tell which one is their brand. And it's and so like it's like basically like Isaac French who like brings in all these people and chip and Joanne like, you know, way above him. But that's like my understanding of Waco at the moment.
Starting point is 00:16:47 Yeah, there's these like these like kind of simplicity based communities or religions or or cultures where it's like I'm on their homepage right now. It says homestead heritage is an agrarian, craft-based, intentional Christian community. It stresses simplicity, sustainability, self-sufficiency, service, and quality craftsmanship. And then there's literally like a video of a cow eating leaves and then like a boy stitching a baseball himself. Which I say I never did. Well, I was like, Isaac showed me around. He goes, here, let me show you the orchard I planted last week. You know, and it's like, it has 200 apple trees.
Starting point is 00:17:24 He's like, we did this for the community. Anyone can come take an apple. He'll be ready in like five years. And that's what he does instead of watching TV. So if I like, I'll be like, hey, if you see this movie, he's like, no, I don't really watch movies. I'm planting trees. Not a whole lot of By first million podcast listeners out there probably. There were a few.
Starting point is 00:17:39 I think there was a few. But, you know, they're more fans of like Johnny Appleseed than Sean Perry. I don't think. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, there are there like. Johnny Appleseed posters in their room. Yeah. But, dude, when I, so I've sold the story many things.
Starting point is 00:17:57 times, I used to work for Mike Wolf from American Pickers. And that was where I first learned about like entertainment and business and things like that. But Mike Wolf was American Pickers at the time was like the second most popular show on TV when I worked there. Number one was pawn stars. And like number four was David Letterman to like to give you an idea. And we, no, for real, that's the, that was the real rankings. And then I would be at the store. And some days, we would sell $30,000 of t-shirts at the store. And these like were not nice t-shirts. They were just normal like with the logo on it. We would sell like 10 grand worth of mugs.
Starting point is 00:18:30 And so like these shows kill it. And what Mike did was he would film himself. Basically the show is he would drive to Barnes, find old stuff, tell you the history about it, buy it and then sell it. And he would, uh, he spent like four years driving around with a video camera filming this, trying to pitch it. And then when he finally did pitch it, he got the production rights or I guess he kind of like what Rob Deerick did.
Starting point is 00:18:50 I think that's where the money is. And it sounds like that's what Magnolia did too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the breadth of this empire is kind of stunning to me, right? It's like whether it's home goods, it's a restaurant, it's coffee books, it's the, it's the bakery, it's the TV show network, it's the Target line, it's like, and their brand is like they're this relatable, you know, blue collar, you know, salt to the earth people. It's like, yeah, like they are, but they also have some part of them that's Rupert Murdoch. And they are flexing that Rupert Murdoch over the last
Starting point is 00:19:27 10 years. I wonder if they have like a manager or if they're just doing this all themselves. Like Rupert Murdoch in Wrangler jeans. You know, like it's, we're relatable, but we'll gut your heart out if we had to. Right. If succession was in denim. Yeah. No, I dig these.
Starting point is 00:19:43 I dig these people. The worst thing that would happen to them is a Johnny K plus eight. Remember Johnny K plus eight? Of course. How can I forget? Man, they were some of the first guys to get popular like in the reality TV world of TLC and then they get divorced and it ends horribly just like Honey Boo Boo Man, Honey Boo Boo.
Starting point is 00:19:58 Same thing. It always ends horribly. So hopefully it doesn't end that way. I remember like sync. If your schick is just how many kids you can have, that is not a sustainable. It's like sometimes you see these YouTubers and they come out real hot because it's like,
Starting point is 00:20:18 I'm buried alive with tarantulas, 10 million clicks. You're like, yo, but where do you? two from here, son. Where are you going to go with this? Like, this is not a sustainable path for you. Yeah, but I like these people. I mean, they seem like pretty like, I don't know, wholesome, but we'll see how money impacts things. Well, you have Oprah on here. And I think that Chippa Gaines and other people like them, like Brune Brown, they're kind of filling this Oprah gap. Like Oprah left some big shoes to fill, I feel. And I've been amazed by the, do you follow Bray Brown very much. Yeah, my wife is reading all her stuff and like she's kind of killing it amongst
Starting point is 00:20:57 like the empathy crowd. The vulnerability crowd. Yeah. Against those offense who are all about authenticity. Yeah, the capital E empathy. Or like if I hear one more person say the N word, nuance. That's like that's the thing man. It's nuance. It's empathy. Authenticity. I didn't know where you were going with that joke. I was like, Sam, don't end it here, man. We've had a good run, but don't end it here. Nuance. Have you seen her Netflix special?
Starting point is 00:21:31 No, no. I like her, but that's not my speed. It's a got to watch. It's that good? It's that good. So go watch her first Netflix special. It's some, you got to watch it just because you've never seen anything like it. It's basically Tony Robbins, Oprah, and a stand-up comedian at the same time.
Starting point is 00:21:50 Like she comes out on stage like a stand-up comedian and she's funny without telling too many like jokes. Like it's not like set up punchline, but she's funny. But then she starts talking about vulnerability and herself. And then people in the crowd are crying and you're just like, what is that? What kind of event is this? It's like, you know, twister with my emotions. Like I don't know what's going on. I got right leg on sad and I got, you know, left hand on empowered.
Starting point is 00:22:17 I didn't know what was happening. It's kind of an incredible little live. show that she's created. And I could, at first I was like, why would Netflix give a special to this person? I don't even understand what that could be. But it's actually pretty, pretty well done for what it is. And I could see why she's so likable, why she is so like relatable to people. You quickly went from like, wow to, wow.
Starting point is 00:22:39 Yeah, exactly. No, I'll watch her. Can I tell you a little about Oprah? So we, we're going to talk about Oprah last. time. We didn't really know what we were talking about. So I dug in a little bit. I guess the theme of this episode then is, you know, one of the TV empires, or female TV empire or something like that? I don't know. Let's see where we can go with this. TV empires that everyone knows about that you and I are just discovering 20 years after the fact. Empires with empathy that the boys discover seven years after they're off air.
Starting point is 00:23:14 Capitalize both those ease. All right. I'll tell you a little bit about Oprah. So she started at 17 by doing beauty pageants. She won Miss Black Tennessee. At age 19, she got her first job at CBS station in Nashville. A few years later, she moved to Maryland and then back to Nashville. And eventually, she was the first African American news anchor on TV, and that was in Nashville. She basically had an issue where she struggled to show objectivity because she couldn't really report the news because she was showing too much empathy and she was pretty casual. And at the time, like, this was like, hey, Oprah, you got to like, you know, keep it straight. You can't like express remorse or like show too much emotion.
Starting point is 00:23:55 She was like, well, let's take this a different way. So she created a show called People Are Talking. And that aired originally in 1977. And she would improvise and she was casual. Kind of like you and I, one could say. Yeah, she was like the MFM of the 70s. And by the end of the decade, so after like three or four years, she was beating Phil Donahue in the local ratings.
Starting point is 00:24:19 And Phil Donahue was God. So he was like the man in charge. So eventually she keeps doing that for a little while longer. But in 1986, so about 10 years after starting that, she gets her own show. It's called the Oprah Winfrey Show. And she, along with a couple outside investors, established her own production companies called Harpo Productions.
Starting point is 00:24:36 Harpo's Oprah spelled backwards. And at 32 years old, she became the first black woman to have a nationally syndicated show. And she still owns 80% of that production company. And all along the way, she started innovating. So in 1996, she created her book club, which made $130 million in sales in year one and arguably set the groundwork for this massive influencer industry that we have. Then in 98, she co-founded the Oxygen Media Group, which has programming towards all types of shows, mostly towards women. She launched Oprah Magazine.
Starting point is 00:25:11 She had a radio show. In 2010, the Oprah show ended after 24 years. years and she had, you know, all the best guests leading up till then. In 2011, she launched own Oprah Winfrey Network. And then all along has been doing all types of stuff. So for example, in 2015, she bought 10% stake in Weight Watchers and then the stock six-axed, like within a year or two of that happening. In 2008, she sold most of her stake to own to discovery. And she's done a ton of interesting stuff between now and then. But listen to her empire. So she has the Oprah Winfrey show, which had over 28,000 guests, giving away 570 cars, had five presidents on.
Starting point is 00:25:52 She got 20,000 fan letters. The finale had 16.4 million views. She also owns Harpo still to this day. Collectively, it's done $2 billion in profits. It made a couple movies as well, including the color purple, beloved, and Selma. They have 200 employees in Chicago. The own, so her network, Oprah Winfrey Network, it started. with $100 million in funding.
Starting point is 00:26:16 Eventually, she's sold most of the stake, but she's still CEO of that. She has Oprah Magazine, which in the first year did $140 million in revenue just from subscriptions. And then she has Oprah and Friends, which is a XM radio contract or show where she got $55 million in the first three years. She's invested in Weight Watchers, True Food Kitchens, which is basically a restaurant that has 42 locations. She helped start a food science.
Starting point is 00:26:44 startup backed by Oprah, Katie Perry, and a few others. That has a billion dollar in valuation. And she also is a big investor in Oatley. Then, and this is finally, she has a $45 million estate in California, a $14 million one in Washington. In Colorado, she has 60 acres for $14 million. In Hawaii, she has over 1,000 acres. And she has basically her net worth grew from at age 32. She got her first million. At 41, $340 million, 97 at the age of $43, $550 million. And at the age of 48, she became a billionaire. So that's Oprah's story. Super fascinating.
Starting point is 00:27:20 I mean, she's been in the game forever, it seems. And I think she's, what, 60-something now and still killing it. I didn't realize she was the CEO and, like, active and all this. I thought she was more so like a face. But I think she's actually not, you know, not just a face. But it seems like she's actually like a mogul, a tycoon. Right. You know, what's, one thing that stands out when we talk about these is that there is this, like, flywheel that happens.
Starting point is 00:27:41 Once you become a certain level. of famous. It's almost like, you know, that graph that's like going viral, the fuck around and find out graph. It's basically like, fuck around and find out,
Starting point is 00:27:54 but the positive version. So you could kind of like, if Oprah was like, here's Oprah's maple syrup. Here's Oprah's, you know, like new line of spoons. Here's Oprah's,
Starting point is 00:28:03 you know, new board game. Like what does it really matter at this point? It'd be like, her board game does 50 million in sales. Her syrup is the number one syrup in the, in the country right now. like it's kind of at that point you just choose
Starting point is 00:28:16 because so much trust and distribution has been built up. And I have a friend who this week, I can't say the details, but they went to a very famous person. They went to a very famous person and they said, they had a business idea. They said, hey, our friend has a background in a certain industry and said, hey, famous person,
Starting point is 00:28:36 you should be doing something in that industry. Let me walk to you, show up at your door, knock at your door and say, here's a full business plan of exactly how you would dominate in this category. So they go. They fly out, knock on the door. First, they don't meet the famous person. Famous person sends a manager to them. By the way, are they like A-list famous?
Starting point is 00:29:01 They're super famous, yes, super, super-famous. Got it. Okay. A-list famous. And so they go to them and first they get hit with a manager. They're trying to look over the manager's head, be like, hey, is a famous person? I just wanted to talk to, just hoping to get a word in with the famous person.
Starting point is 00:29:15 Can you get out of the way? And they're like, no, no, no, you have to get through this wall first. They talk to the manager first. They say, hey, look, here's my background. I've been super successful in this industry. I think you guys could crush it in this industry. Why don't, can I meet the famous person now and tell them the idea? They said, no, no, tell me the idea.
Starting point is 00:29:30 I'm in charge of this. I said, okay, here's the idea. And then the person says, manager says, that's a good idea. Okay, cool. And then they get the meeting with the famous. And the whole time, they were told. hey, you fly in on Monday, you'll meet with the famous person sometime this week.
Starting point is 00:29:45 Just hang out in the hotel, just be here, which is a pretty big time move to try to pull on somebody, to not give you a time, but say, hey, we'll hold this walkie-talkie.
Starting point is 00:29:57 When you hear me, put your pants on, get ready, the meeting's happening. But I can't tell you what it's going to be. Like, they've got a special calendar in Google. Everything ends in ish,
Starting point is 00:30:07 but it's, you know, Monday ish, you know? Like, it's all it. Right, you're giving a window, and you better be prepared it during that window to strike. Okay, so end up getting a meeting with the famous person. Famous person comes in, explain the whole idea.
Starting point is 00:30:21 Famous person likes the idea, but also has a bunch of their own ideas, of course, as famous people do. And so I asked my friend later, I said, so what happened? And the response was this. They go, well, I'm pretty sure we convince famous person that they should do this and do this with us. And I'm pretty sure they convinced me that I should not do this with them. And I thought that was just a hilarious takeaway. And I was like, okay, well, why? They said, well, they have all their own ideas.
Starting point is 00:30:51 They go, honestly, everything they're trying to do in the space probably won't work. Like, I think they're going about it the whole wrong way, but they'll probably end up being successful anyways. That's the crazy thing about this. Like, their margin for error is so large and they can kind of do anything and still have at work because their brand, their celebrity, their distribution, their trust and loyalty in their audience, it's so large that you can kind of mess up eight out of ten things and still get it to work eventually. Whereas most startups, most businesses don't have that margin for error. And so I don't
Starting point is 00:31:26 know what the big takeaway is. It's kind of a no-dub, but it's a if you're mega-mega-famous, it's not hard at that point to do the empire thing because it's like, what was his name? they got Moise from Native, when he was selling his company, and they're like, you sell just deodorant, you know, you're asking for this big valuation.
Starting point is 00:31:45 He goes, yeah, because do you know how to write the word native on a bottle of shampoo? Do you know how to write the word native on a bottle of toothpaste? Cool, that's your expansion plan.
Starting point is 00:31:55 Like, I left a lot of room for this to grow. If you could still write the word native on something, it will work. And that's how I feel about these mega celebrity brands, which is like, if you put my face on something, it's going to work.
Starting point is 00:32:07 So let's, let's put this in, in a very realistic context. So you and I have that minus or no, divided by a hundred. So we're Oprah divided by a thousand, whatever it is. But we have a very small taste of it. And we also have friends, you know, like the Tim Ferrissus of the world and whoever else who have it, you know, times 10 or 20 for us and are in this like potentially billion dollar space. There's been three things, I think, that I've narrowed it down to that make this empire strategy that hold me back and I imagine someone like Tim who's a perfectionist or someone like that holds them back.
Starting point is 00:32:43 Number one is reputational risk. So putting your name on crap products and then how on earth can you actually like track it all to make sure that you're not putting your name on bad products that you actually stand by. And so because of that, it's almost like you have to pick and choose. But then there's other people like Richard Branson that put, you know, virgin on everything. and it kind of has seemed like it worked out. So that's like the big thing. Number two is finding people who you can trust. When you have five or 10 or 30 different things going on,
Starting point is 00:33:13 you need really trustworthy people. And even if it's your family, even if it's your brother and your cousin, people can screw you. And like you have to really stay on top of it. And you have to find a partner who's good enough to like really have your back. Like even my accountant or I imagine if like your lawyer or your accountant.
Starting point is 00:33:30 And every once in a while you're like, is this person actually thinking of me or how are they incentivized here and who's actually making the right decision? That's actually exhausting and I think in quite hard. And then the final thing is like, do they want the headache of that? So like a Joe Rogan, he's just like, no, F this. Like I'm on my island here. I have what I need. I don't want to put my name on anything. Screw that. I don't need anything. And I want to keep things small and tight. And so those are kind of the three things, I think, prevent, like, empires from being built like this. Yeah, I think that's true.
Starting point is 00:34:04 So say that, say the first one again. What was the first one? Do you remember? Reputational risk, having people that you can trust, and then just, like, not wanting more headache. And here's the counter to each. Okay, reputational risk putting your name on crap products. Do you, have you drank Prime?
Starting point is 00:34:18 Once. I tried it. It's fine. It's fine. It's also the fastest growing drink in the country right now. And it's fine. and I think that that's the counter to that is, yes, you can't put it on a crap product or do something that would,
Starting point is 00:34:33 you know, hurt people or do something like that, you know, nothing on the sort of terrible end of the register. But there's a lot of leeway between the best product in the market and it's fine. And you just got to fall somewhere there, right? It's like you're playing golf and the fairway is so wide. You really got to screw it up if to hit it out of bounds. And that's how I feel with these products.
Starting point is 00:34:53 Like is Kylie's lip product. the best product on the market, I have no idea, is, you know, for most of these products, I can't tell you that Connor McGregor's whiskey or the rock tequila is, is anything better than fine. They might just be. You're saying there's got to be a threshold. There's a threshold, and the threshold's pretty goddamn low. So I think the reputational risk is a little bit less than what I think a lot of people would worry about.
Starting point is 00:35:19 The rest is true. It can become a headache, and you do have to find competent people to run them. The good thing is, when you have that brand, And it's like Prime. The Prime didn't start by Logan Paul and KSI saying, let's create a drink. Let's go to the flavor house and create a formulation. There were some entrepreneurs who approached them that said,
Starting point is 00:35:37 we do this. We've done this at, you know, medium scale. With you guys, we could go super scaled. We will take care of everything. You guys take the cut.
Starting point is 00:35:46 You guys help us with the promotion. But like, look, we come with this track record. And I think that's what happens for most of these celebrities. Is they're approached by people with track records, like even the example I was just giving. somebody with a track record came and said,
Starting point is 00:35:58 I know this industry, I've done this before. With your brand and your distribution, we could do this again in a big way. And I think those opportunities just come knocking at your door. So it's not even like, where do I go find somebody great?
Starting point is 00:36:10 It's like, can I filter? Can I just like recognize great when it shows up at my door is really the question for most of these people? Do you think you would enjoy that type of fame like Chip and Joanna? No. Um, not only would I not enjoy it from a like, oh, I don't want to get bothered when I'm out and about with my kids and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:36:33 But also I more than that is I don't enjoy what it takes to get there. And that's actually what goes like that's actually the most important question of business. I was talking to Ben, leave you about this day of the day. We were talking about business ideas. Earlier, earlier I asked you this a while ago and you go, there's a price to pay. I ain't willing to pay it. Yeah. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:36:53 Know the price and then decide if you're, if you're going to pay. pay it. When we were talking about business ideas, it was like, oh, do we like this idea or this idea? And the easy thing to do, I think everybody gets this wrong is like, I love basketball. So I want to do a basketball based idea. Or I love, I'm really passionate about like helping people. So I'm going to do this healthcare startup, whatever it may be. And they think that their enjoyment of the of the thing is going to be based on the product or category that they're in. But in reality, most of the time you spend when you're an entrepreneur is trying to grow or sell. It's trying to get more customers and grow the actual business.
Starting point is 00:37:31 And so your not playing basketball. Your day-to-day experience is actually about selling and trying to grow. And what ends up happening is that some ways are more enjoyable or suit you better than others. So for some people, they love Facebook ads or they love SEO. And for some people, they love phone calls. For some people, they love high-level business deals, enterprise sales, where you're nurturing a long relationship for a long period of time. And the big mistake people make is they think,
Starting point is 00:38:00 oh, I'm creating a basketball-related startup. Where they don't realize is that the only way for that business to grow is through enterprise sales. And they hate enterprise sales, or they're unwilling to go and sell to these facility managers of NBA stadiums. Or they're unwilling to sell to blah, blah, blah. And they think they're in the basketball business, but they're in the enterprise sales business because 90% of their day day-to-day work and the challenge that they're faced with and the stuff they have to do,
Starting point is 00:38:27 whether they're selling basketballs or ping pong balls or books, it doesn't matter. It's the sales channel, the sales process is where you're going to spend most of your time. So you've got to figure out which sales process do I like the most or at least tolerate the best and then find a business that uses that sales process. I think that is like a, I wish somebody had told me that earlier because I I got tripped up with this for many, many years. And when I look back, I'm like, oh, I just really like growing things through Facebook ads. It's like, to me, it's way better than these other ones.
Starting point is 00:39:00 And so like, so I have a list. I'm like, my favorite sales channel is just mention it on the podcast. It couldn't be anything easier than that. Like, if I could just tell people what I think about this product and then they go buy it because they already trust me and they like me and we have enough listeners to this product, to this podcast, that is the number one easiest sales channel, most pleasurable. So if I can think of a business that works in that, Fantastic. Number two for me is Facebook ads. Why? Because I don't have to talk to anybody. I sit behind
Starting point is 00:39:27 a computer. I set up the budget. And when it works, I just scale it up with the push of a button. I don't have to hire more salespeople. I don't have to like go do something new. You can take one image that works or one video, one 10 second video that works in Facebook ads and put millions of dollars of spend behind it and make multiple millions more off that ad. I love that. I love that model. I like that. I can look at the dashboard, see a number and know what to do. I, you know, so that's like my number two. And my number three is cold emails because I'm good at cold emailing. And it's kind of a pain in the ass, but I've done it before.
Starting point is 00:39:59 I can train people to do that of how to cold email in order to generate customers. Those are my three favorites. Everything else, I don't like as much. And so when I think of an idea, it's got to fall in that top three. Have you, so we had, I guess technically the hustle kind of was enterprise sales. I mean, we had six, maybe once or twice. We had seven figure deals. And that's like a long process.
Starting point is 00:40:18 I wasn't allowed to go to those meetings because. because like I remember like I had to go and buy like brown shoes and like tight jeans and like tuck my shirt in and like a certain way. I was like dude like I'm Todd. Huh? Nice to meet you. Like it wasn't for me. You got all the details wrong. Just a tank top tucked in some khakis which are tucked into some brown shoes.
Starting point is 00:40:40 Yeah. A giant tunnel you created with a tucking everything here. Right before the meeting they're like, Sam, the buttons are supposed to be in the front. Ah, that was a breakaway. Yeah, so I was like, was learning as I went. But as the owner of a company that had enterprise sales, it is awesome. Because what I didn't realize, there's this amazing thing that I learned, which is that sales teams can create demand.
Starting point is 00:41:07 So even if your product, our product was great, but even if your product is okay, if you have a good sales team, you can truly create demand. And I didn't understand that until like your two or three of like having a team like this. I'm like, oh my God, this is how the world works. because most big companies, they just have a certain amount of budget. They have to spend it on something.
Starting point is 00:41:27 And if you just get in with them and you wine and dine them and they like you, half the time the product doesn't even matter. They just have to spend it. Otherwise, next year, they won't have the same budget. If they don't have the same budget, they don't have a job. So, and you can like that or you can not like it. Frankly, I don't love that.
Starting point is 00:41:42 That's like the truth. But if you can make it work, it's pretty amazing. And I like learn that the hard way while running a company like this. And if you don't know which one you like, your best bet is to go get exposure to a bunch of them. So go, go try your hand. Do like a six month rotation where you're basically like, okay, how do I do this enterprise sales thing? How do I do cold calling? How do I do Google ads?
Starting point is 00:42:04 How do I do these different things and figure out which one of these appeals to you? Because once you do that, then you could kind of pick a choose. I know most people, and I would think you would find this to be true. Most successful people we know, they don't really hop around sales channels that much. It's like, no, if they're good at... Find one thing and you kill it. Yeah, they're good at SEO. They just do SEO four different times and four different flavors.
Starting point is 00:42:26 Oh, you're good at Facebook ads. You do Facebook ads for one business, then another business, then another business. If you're good at enterprise sales, you just figure out which business is to plug into that over time. And they kind of make a career out of really understanding one growth process because being a master at any growth thing is super, super valuable. Do you want to talk about hustle GPT3 or do you want to go to another topic? Let's do some quicker ones. I feel like we did a long, long winded thing. So I have a couple quick ones.
Starting point is 00:43:02 Tell me. Okay. So I'm going to give you my two bad dating ideas. And by the way, I'd like to put another drunk ideas on the books to just put that out there. This would have been in my drunk ideas thing, but we don't have it scheduled. So I'm just going to do it sober. So two bad dating ideas. Number one, do you watch this TV show Love is Blind?
Starting point is 00:43:24 Sarah does. So it's on my TV all the time. Okay, good. So you know the premise. You and my wife have like the exact same TV stuff. Like for the listener, Sean and Sarah are texting about Bachelor or Bachelorette or whatever it's called. Yeah. Or no, what do you guys talk about?
Starting point is 00:43:39 The challenge. The challenge, but also these other shows. So love is blind is this like sensation show on. Netflix, which is basically like, you get a bunch of single people together. They're in these rooms. They can't see each other. So you kind of speed date, you date other people, but you never get to see them. So you're only supposed to say to fall in love with their personality.
Starting point is 00:43:58 And then after you choose who you like the best on their personality, then you get to see them and you get to see what happens. Okay. And don't you like get married at the end? Yeah. Well, of course, to like any great story, you need stakes. And so they raise the stakes by saying, you don't just get to pick, say, oh, I like Sam the best.
Starting point is 00:44:13 I mean, I want to see him now. It's like, in order to see him, you must get any. engaged, blind, and get married four weeks later. So that's how they make it a TV show. And some people walk on the altar. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people, when they see the other person, they're like, oh, hey, it's so good to see you.
Starting point is 00:44:29 Like, they're just like, oh, man, like I imagine something different. And now I've stuck with you. And now I look like an asshole because I fell in love with your personality and I fell out of love with your face. But they can't say that. So they have to find some other excuse. One guy on the show was like trying to get an idea of how they looked
Starting point is 00:44:47 and they go. So I'm pretty, the guy was like, I only weigh 150 pounds. Could I give you a piggyback ride? No, no, he goes, he goes,
Starting point is 00:44:55 it was so smooth the way he did it. And by smooth, it would be terrible. He goes, I love to go to music festivals. She's like, me too.
Starting point is 00:45:01 He goes, at music festivals, you know, I usually put my girlfriend up on my shoulders. Um, do you think I'd be able to do that? With,
Starting point is 00:45:11 he's like, He's like, did she catch it? Yeah, she was like, uh, like, no, that's my worst nightmare is a guy like struggling to lift my body weight. Oh. And so she was just like, what the hell? But, uh, what size robo do we need? On this, on this season, there's one guy. She, they fell in love and then they meet.
Starting point is 00:45:32 And he's just, he's not, he's not bad looking or whatever. But he's does really intense eye contact. Like, the guy doesn't blink. And she's like, you're going to never know. this from behind the wall. And so she's like, ha ha, how can they're not licking away?
Starting point is 00:45:47 And he's like, what? What do you mean? I am blinking. And she's like, no, like, please look away. It's like so uncomfortable to watch. So anyways, great show. I think somebody should take this show on the road.
Starting point is 00:46:01 Literally, I think somebody should do a, I think the show, but if not the show, then somebody should spin this off. Do a love is blind tour where you go city to city and people pay to be a part of the, experiment. So people pay to actually, like, do the show themselves. I also think you should do a podcast version of Love is Blind because podcast is audio only. So it's already no visual. So you could have two people talking and you could sort of edit and cut this together and make a pod version of
Starting point is 00:46:29 Love is Blind. So I think people could take this concept of this dating show or it could be other dating shows too, but make a tour out of it, make a show out of it where it's going from city to city and people get to participate almost like American Ninja Warrior. So, People get to participate and other people get to watch the show going down. And I think that these things would generate a lot of money ticket-wise because Netflix has done the hard work of educating the market. And so once you get that education in the market, now somebody should go to them and get the license. Like we talked about this with kids cartoons. Or they can just call it like love with poor eyesight.
Starting point is 00:47:06 Fuzzy love. Yeah. I forgot my glasses love. So, so, like, people did this with the cartoons. That was a three out of time. Yeah, it's okay. I gave you a laugh to try to, like, you know, smooth it over. But, like, kids' cartoons like Blippy or Cocoa Mellon.
Starting point is 00:47:23 There's these companies that go and they license the rights to create the Coca-Mellon live tour or the blipy live tour. And I've gone to these. And I did a segment on the pot about these. These things make millions dollars a year. Yeah. Well, every parent loves it. It's like, you can't really, there's not many places you could take a tiny kid. That's like kid friendly.
Starting point is 00:47:40 But this is perfect because they already love these cartoons on YouTube. And so I'm willing to pay 50 bucks a ticket times four. So I pay 200 bucks. Then I buy the merch. Then I buy the snacks because, of course, my kids want snacks. And we go there and we've dropped $400, $500 by the end of it or something like that. And so these shows can make a lot of money. And so I think somebody could do this with other television shows, including the dating shows.
Starting point is 00:48:04 That's not a bad idea at all. Well, that's a great idea. I'm a skilled pitchment. You need to come up with something worse. Yeah, you should have seen an. average person try to explain that idea. You would have laughed at them out of the room. Okay, here's my second.
Starting point is 00:48:15 Love is blind on tour. Ah, even that sounds all right. So my second, uh, bad dating idea. Okay. So you've heard about this like dating app Raya, you know, about this app? It's basically a dating app originally for famous people, but now it's like dating apps for people with like verified on Instagram or something.
Starting point is 00:48:35 Yeah. I don't even really understand it. I think somebody needs to come over the top on Raya. and make the even more elite dating app. So I'm calling it Daddy. Here's what Daddy is. So Daddy or Zaddy, you know, we're debating it internally. So Daddy is an app where for a guy to be on Daddy, actually let me first start with the
Starting point is 00:48:56 girl's side. Okay, for a woman to be on Daddy, she's got to basically audition or apply. And we're only accepting the top 1% of eligible women. So this is beautiful, but not. just beautiful, smart, but not just smart. You got to be living in a town, a big city so that, you know, you're available to be, to be, to be, to be, you know, reach, to be dated. So, beautiful, smart, top 1%, maybe even top 0.1% of applicants get in, more elite than Harvard. And then on the guy's side, you got to pay $25,000 a year to be on the app. So that's the
Starting point is 00:49:34 app idea. 5,000 men, if you can get 5,000 men who have the money to drop 25,000, G's on their dating app. They get access to this elite pool of women who want access to this rich group of men. And it is what it is. That's our slogan. It is what it is. Is it right? No, but it is what it is.
Starting point is 00:49:57 And so it is what it is. It's rich guys with beautiful smart women. And the business model is if we can get 5,000 guys to pay us this amount, that's $100 million a year business. Does that sound like something you might be? be interested in? So when I was studying, like, for Hampton to launch Hampton, I was like curious about communities. And there's a bunch of, a lot of people were like, you should charge like a hundred grand a year. And the reason being is there's a bunch of communities out there where the whole thing of making it elite and community is just can you pay the money.
Starting point is 00:50:30 And I was thinking about that. And I'm like, first, like, the audacity. And second, if you can get. My first question is, how dare you are? Yeah. Who are you? But if you can get past that, how amazing is that where your whole business is just, if you can pay it, you're probably good. So we'll just, we'll be, we're happy to be that middleman and check it out. And so there's this app called the league. Do you know what the league is? It's a dating app. It started when we're in San Francisco by this woman named Amanda Bradford, who I'm friends with here in Austin. She sold it recently to what's the big, the big company, IAC, who owns like match and Bumble and or not Bumble, Tinder. And when Amanda was getting started, she was, or the league kind of took off. And so I don't, you probably don't know this.
Starting point is 00:51:20 It was like Ivy League was the premise, right? It was like only Ivy League. But then one day she was like, how hard can I push this? And so right now the league costs, I believe it's either $499 or $999. So it's either $499 or $999. It's one of those two. and the reason being is that's the highest price per month that you can charge on Apple's, on the Apple store.
Starting point is 00:51:45 It's $399 per month. Sorry, yeah, $399 per month. So, yeah, it's the highest that you can possibly charge. And she goes, screw it. That's what it's going to cost to get premium features. And people like at Earth, I think her team was like, this is crazy. We can't do this. No one will do this.
Starting point is 00:52:01 And it crushed it. And IAC came to her and they're like, we want to buy you because how on earth are you able to charge this. And I imagine in her head, she was like, well, it was actually pretty easy. I just added an extra nine at the end of nine. Actually, you're right. The highest here is called investor. It's member 299, owner, 399, investor, $999.99. And 99. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, there's like an episode in South Park where they come up with this like new MBA. And they're like, look, I don't make up the rules. I just think them up and write them down. You can't argue with me. I didn't make up the rules.
Starting point is 00:52:38 And it's like, well, how'd you increase pricing so much? Well, I just clicked at that button nine. And we made it instead of 99. We made it 900 or instead of 99.99. It was 99. So anyway, it's killed it. And so I actually think that there are a lot of interesting opportunities in the market where you can just charge way more.
Starting point is 00:52:58 And it feels very weird. I agree. That's the business model. And actually, now that I think about it, $25,000 a year, that was complete small boy stuff. and I apologize to the entire audience, this needs to be $100,000 a year. This has to be $100,000 a year.
Starting point is 00:53:12 And guess what? We only need 1,000 members now. We only need 1,000 guys who are willing to drop $100,000 in order to get access to the most. And in fact, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take a portion of that money and we're going to pay some women to be on this app. We're going to say, look, you are so great.
Starting point is 00:53:28 You are casted onto this. And you are going to be paid to be a part of this network because we want to blur the, lines between prostitution and legal dating. Oh my God. It is what it is, as we say. God bless you. Maybe this will work.
Starting point is 00:53:48 But yeah, good luck. I think there needs to be more apps that do this that go over the top with it. Like, I agree. Basically find the theoretical max of what the market will bear or what people actually want to do, right? Like, what does the actual behavior people want? and what are they willing to do? And it's usually more than you think,
Starting point is 00:54:09 or more than, you know, sounds reasonable. Like what if you just took an unreasonable approach to the same thing? What would you do differently? Is it a question you can ask about really any business? Like there's these guys, they created this thing called the Unreasonable Institute back in the day. And I loved it. Is that real? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:24 It was a great idea. It was called the Unreasonable Institute. And it was for, I just loved the name because I love the entire premise, which was, what good has been come from just taking a reasonable approach to something? If you're trying to make any big shit happen, you're trying to do anything, change the way anything works, you know, like create a new system or improve something or innovate,
Starting point is 00:54:42 you know, in a way, by definition, you're going to do something slightly unreasonable. Is this called the unreasonable group? Yeah, it was called the Unreasonable Institute. Then they had the unreasonable, like, tour where they like, they like got a cruise ship and went into international waters. And then they did a bunch of these.
Starting point is 00:55:00 Now it's probably called, this is like 10 plus years ago. So, yeah. That's so funny. It's probably. Well, there's a thing called Unreasonable Group, and it's the Unreasonable Collective is an international community of sophisticated investors. We pool capital as a community and co-infest and world class. But then there's the Unreasonable Institute, which is a fast track program to give altruistic entrepreneurs skills and funding to affect a large-scale change.
Starting point is 00:55:21 Yeah, I think that's the one. The first one maybe sounds cooler, though, but that's cool. I like that name. Speaking of Unreasonable, you want to wrap this up by talking one thing, Elon Musk. Okay. Did you see what he did? So you see the Twitter thing? Well, which Twitter thing?
Starting point is 00:55:39 I feel like every day there's an almost Twitter thing. Yeah, that's where he blurred out the W? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. This is news. No, no, I saw this. I saw this. This is, explain this.
Starting point is 00:55:50 Dude, this is dumb. There's this thing in the UFC called, if you win, so basically the UFC and all about fighting, it has weight divisions. And every once in a while, someone like Connor McGregor or someone else comes along and they achieve greatness. And they earn what's called the champ champ status, meaning they have a champ. They're the champion in one weight division. And then while having that belt, they also gain a few pounds and go up and win another belt.
Starting point is 00:56:13 It's unheard of. In my opinion, Elon is the champ champ. He has amazing products. He's one of the best entrepreneurs out there. He's the champion. He's also the most tringiest. He's the champ champ right now. He does whatever the fuck he wants.
Starting point is 00:56:29 That's what champ champs do. And recently, like last night, He tweeted out that there was a dispute with the landlord saying you can't alter the sign or something like that. So he took like a piece of white sheet or paper or something and he blurt out the W. So now Twitter, the sign, it's a huge sign when you live in San Francisco. I lived a block away from it. It says titter. And it's the most cringed thing I've ever seen.
Starting point is 00:56:56 Why on earth would he do that? I love a good troll. But that's not like funny. It just makes like people like, look, I like trolling. I love punching up, but this is like, this is punching yourself in the face. I like making people uncomfortable. This is the bad type of uncomfortable.
Starting point is 00:57:12 Go to his Twitter right now. Do you see what his name is on Twitter right now? Because you thought that was the cringiest thing he's done in the last 48 hours. Well, he's one-uped himself. Oh, my God. What an idiot? What is his Twitter name right now? His name right now is hairy balls.
Starting point is 00:57:33 He spells balls B-O-L-Z, but it's hairy balls. That is his name on Twitter right now. Oh, Elon, you're so, you're so irreverent. Yeah, dude. Oh, these billionaires have senses of humor. They're just like us. I would love to see what Elon thinks the other people's reaction is. He must type these in and just sit back and just smirk.
Starting point is 00:58:00 Just have a smug look on his face. Just imagine. Oh, man. the internet's going to love this. I'm super rich, but I don't take myself too seriously. Look at this. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:58:10 Next week it's going to be like, like Elon Baller 69. Like it's just like, this is the lamest thing ever, man. I don't know how. I mean, I guess like, look,
Starting point is 00:58:22 with extreme personalities comes extreme success, but they don't tell you there's another end of that bell curve and that's extreme cringe. And we're experiencing that a little bit right now. I know a lot of billion Not a lot. I know a couple billionaires and I know a lot of wildly successful people and they do every once in a while. You're like, oh, hey man, you don't know how to hold the conversation appropriately.
Starting point is 00:58:43 Let me help you out here. This is kind of what's happening with him. It just so happens that it's in front of 125 million followers. He has like the cringe version of Tourette's like, dude, just stop. He can't, he can't stop just blurting out these cringy things. Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. I actually think that he's kind of ruining his legacy for sure here. Um, like maybe five years ago, he was the man. Um, and he still is the man, frankly. Like his accomplishments are amazing, but he's a little less of the man at this point. There was a funny, just a little back and forth.
Starting point is 00:59:16 He, uh, somebody tweeted out a, um, a graph of all the billion dollar, or chart of all the billion dollar companies in. Yeah, I saw that. And, uh, Paul Graham retweeted. And he says, oh, you know, what's interesting here is like, we're clearly like over indexed on like software and like, you know, real world things like hardware or manufacturing. There's only like a few companies in that bucket.
Starting point is 00:59:39 But don't let that hold you back. You should still do it. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And Elon replied and was like, yeah, like a complete waste. You know, it says something like it was like a big waste of resources or brain power or talent that that was the case. And then the response was the biggest own. and I've seen in a week. It was a really good reply.
Starting point is 01:00:04 Paul Graham goes, yeah, can you think of anybody right now who's really talented and could be doing those things but is wasting their time on a software project? And it's so good because obviously, talk about Elon. And yeah, it's like a perfect self-owned really by Elon. Yeah, it was pretty good. Too good. It was good. That was good.
Starting point is 01:00:26 I'm a big fan of him of Paul Grant. I'm still an Elon guy. I think I might get myself a Tesla, but I don't like this. It makes it hard to want to wear like a Tesla T-shirt, that's for sure. Not that he cares, but it makes it challenging to like root for him publicly when he makes these stupid comments. People in our comments hate when I make fun of Elon or dis Elon or Chamath or these guys because they're like fans of them, which is totally fair. You can be fans of whoever you want. But I just want to, for the record, I'm out on Elon early.
Starting point is 01:00:58 Because guess what? More and more are you going to be out on this guy over time? And I just want to plant the flag. I'm out on him early because his cringe will eventually wash away all these people or he's going to get canceled for something. I'm telling you it's going to happen. And I would like the record to show that I was out early. Dude, these people in our comments are crazy to me because why can't someone do a lot of really good stuff and also some bad stuff? like why can't like someone kick ass at a at a ton of different things and make a huge amount of
Starting point is 01:01:29 mistakes totally uh because whenever we talk about this we say yeah he's he's the best at a bunch of different things he's the greatest entrepreneur he's of of i don't know the last 30 years 50 years that is true also true he's pretty cringe and uh corny and disingenuous about some things right it's also true yeah it's like i can love michael jack and music and also not love what he did, you know, like both like both can exist. I can like chick-fil-a chicken and also not stand by what they, what they stand for, you know, both can be true. And I, and I can't stand that with the, with the commenters on our, on our stuff. But we're going to get a reaction on this. I'm eager to see what it is. But anyway, that's an
Starting point is 01:02:18 action-packed pod, I think.

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