My First Million - Brainstorming +$1M Weird Business Ideas With Morning Brew’s CEO

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Episode 543: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Morning Brew founder Austin Rief ( https://twitter.com/austin_rief ). In this episode, the three amigos of newsletters are brainstorming weird business ideas like Gen Z Bingo, Binge-Eating Bars, and Meat Influencers. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) $120M Bingo idea (5:00) Pizza-Binge Bar (11:00) No more alpha in newsletters (13:00) Meat influencers (19:30) Creator brands that actually work (26:00) Interviewing Tony Robbins (31:30) Dinner with SBF (41:30) Being Goggins for 1 hour a day — Links: • Austin’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/austin_rief • Bingo Loco - https://www.bingo-loco.com/ • Bongo Bingo - https://www.bongosbingo.co.uk/ • Beard Meats Food - http://tinyurl.com/2wzszdaa • Museum Hack - https://museumhack.com/ • Jonathan Katz-Moses - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXBNF-A7QlYT3tT-B9N4ElA • Oklahoma Smokes - https://itsoklahomas.com/ • Albany Bahamas - https://www.albanybahamas.com/ • Aman - https://www.aman.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ 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. — Other 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

Dude, this is a great idea. This is why we started this podcast for somebody to come on and say, yeah, I just built a $100 million media company, but guys, smoking meats is where it's at. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. We got the three amigos of newsletters. The short story of Austin is out of college, create morning brew, sold it for, I think I

I said, 75 million. So you don't have to correct me from wrong, but 75 million bucks. You still run it. Hundreds of employees. Amazing. You have a doc here of a bunch of topics. Yeah, someone sent me this deck like last week and I was like, going to text Sam about this. I was like, let me wait for the pod to talk to you guys about this.

This is a, I feel like I'm my first million special. So I've been super excited about a bunch of these post-COVID, get out of your house, do exciting things that's not go to a bar and just drink. I think that's pretty boring. And there are a bunch of these in New York. I don't know how if they have where you guys live. They have ping pong bars and pull bars, and they get more and more out there. And I was tweeting about this.

And some guys sent me a deck. He goes, I got something interesting for you. So if you have your computer up, look up, bingo loco, right? This guy sends me this deck for bingo. I'm like, well, what the hell is this, right? Bingo logo. It's basically a club meets bingo, right? So boozy bingo, performers, confetti showers, the whole thing.

This looks like a Tiesto concert or something going on. What is this? I didn't know people played bingo off of cruise ships. Like I thought bingo was either for old people or cruise ships. He sends me his deck. I don't want to disclose their numbers, but he goes, check out one of our competitors. Bongo Bingo USA. And I'm like, there's no way there's a whole industry for bingo raves, for bingo parties.

Dude, the websites are exactly the same. They just copied each other. It looks like those same. Again, he just sent me a deck. Apparently people in the industry, so these bongo bingo guys apparently, pre-COVID, we're doing $20 million a year in revenue. No way.

Explain this model. Do they own the place or they're just going and like doing a pop-up bingo night at someplace? No, I think they go all. It's actually really smart, right? Because what they do is, I believe they go for pretty off nights for certain places. right. So nights were a club or whatever, wherever they had these wouldn't be that popular, but they still bring that environment, right? So they still use a lot of the infrastructure

that these venues have. And they bring, it seems like the whole show, the confetti showers, the performers, everything. And what I think is interesting is they keep you there with the bingo, right? So there's a shuffleboarding place in Brooklyn, right? They keep you there because you play shuffleboard for, you know, hours and hours and you're just buying drinks. And that that's like the stick. That's the hook to get you in. And it's the same thing. Game of Bingo, I'm sure they have performers midgame. They keep you there for seven hours. You just buy a bunch of drinks.

So I thought this one was awesome. Tickets are $53 right now. Wow. And they sell these out? I guess. They must be making money off the boots, right? I was trying to do more research. I never heard of it.

But they must be making their money off of the booths. Well, look at this ad. So I went to their ad library. People of Minneapolis. A bingo rave is coming to Granada. a theater, March 15th, which is a couple months out. It says after a sing of sold out shows across America, Bigel Loco, it has Minneapolis and its sites, and then it's got like this TikTok video, which literally looks like you're at like a rave. And you go there and then that's the $30 ticket.

And then there's like a, you know, what is this? Basically, there's a host, there's music, there's confetti. There's, you know, danceoffs, lipsink battles. There's a, you know, there's drinks, basically. There's alcohol. This is like the sound. It's like that on a website. That's the business plan. You open up a deck and it just plays that sound. I've got four words for you, investors.

Bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm sure the margins on this are crazy. Their costs are some random performers and bingo. Again, I play bingo one time on a cruise ship. And these guys are making what seems like 20 million bucks a year off bingo. We got to figure out what we can do this next for. So you make a lot of money at Morning Brew doing digital stuff. You just hit send on a little email.

It's easy. Kind of, kind of easy. Why on earth do you care about physical stuff? That seems way more challenging. Yeah, I don't know if I would ever start something in this space, but it's just so fun to go see, to go see the way people, you know, I would never think this would work. In a million years, I would never.

think bingo, own steroids, bingo performers would work. But I think it's so interesting. I love going to these things around the city to try to see how people get people hooked on these things. It's so easy to hook people on a newsletter, right? It's, it's content every day. It's very different people to come back to play shuffleboarder your bingo. So I love these. I have an idea for one. Can I pitch you guys one? All right. So as soon as you set this bingo thing, my brain starts, the wheels start turning. And Sam, you will appreciate this. You like the UFC.

So I don't know if you remember when Conner McGregor was on his come up. He was knocking people out. He was knocking people out. It was the best. And everyone was like, what can't this guy do? Because everybody thought, whoever the next guy is fighting, that guy is going to neutralize him with this, this and this, knocks him out.

And I remember watching one, you know, ex-USC fighter. He was doing like an analysis. And he's like, I'm watching Connor. He does all this spinning shit. And he does this. He's like, I think it's all smoking mirrors. He goes, I think everything is just a distraction because he's trying to land the left hand. And he's like, you know, all this stuff he's throwing, he doesn't care what happens with it.

He's just trying to hit you with the left hand. To me, this is the same business model. Like the bingo, it's like, oh, do you hear about that bingo business? No, no, no. You hear about that alcohol business that uses bingo to get you to the bar? So similarly, we got to figure out what's going to get people to the bar and get him drinking. And so here's my idea. I've always wanted to enter one of those eating contests.

I don't know if you guys have ever done one. I've never actually done it. But like those places where it's like, if you can eat this pizza, it's free. And like I've always wanted to actually go do it. But there's always like this problem where it's like, it's like you have to pay $75 to like buy the huge pizza. It might be free, but you know, whatever. I would love if somebody turned this into like, you know, if I was in college, I would have

been all over this. If it was like it's, it's the contest is who can eat the biggest, you know, who can eat the most hot dogs or the biggest pizza, who can finish it the fastest. And you can go enter and you have to bring friends to be kind of your cheering section, they're all rowdy and drinking and sharing you on. It's free to play because the pizza's is not that expensive, but you're going to fill up the bar with like, you know, whatever, hundreds of people who are in the mood to kind of like binge and go extreme because that's kind of the theme of the night in a way. It's like sports meets binge eating. Well, what's the best thing that

goes with both those things? Binge drinking. Who's with me? The only thing you add is a little bit of gambling. You need to add people gamble. This is like gamble. It's like gambling, right? It's it's It's Vegas meets a party. Beautiful. Beautiful yes and there. I don't know if you've been doing some improv, but that was a beautiful yes and. I really appreciate that one.

Good riff. I follow this guy on YouTube. He's called Beer Meets Food. And it looks like he has 3.6 million subscribers. Have you guys seen this guy? He just goes to small restaurants in England. They have like, you know, you get this free if you eat it. He eats roughly 10,000 calories in each of the challenges.

And he nails all of them. Like one time he ate like, I think it was five pounds of chocolate. Have you seen this, Sean? This guy's channel. It's the craziest channel I've ever seen. And I watch all of his videos. It's one of the few YouTube channels I subscribe to. This guy needs to launch your food challenge gambling business.

And there's actually a bunch of these Instagramers that you could do this with. So, you know, there's that guy who eats the raw meat. I think he's called raw meat experiment. Read his bio. Read his bio, Sean. His bio is great. So 142,000 followers. He goes, eating raw meat,

every day until I die from bacteria. Then it says, line two, seeing if I live for five days or 500 years. And literally, he'll just take like a chunk of ground beef and just sits outside of a whole food. He buys the ground beef and he just eats it raw.

Or he'll just get a chicken breast uncooked. It'll just chew it like it's a, you know, I don't know, like a slim gym or something like that. And I feel like these, there's so many Instagram food, muckbang,

different variations of this. Like, there's a lot of YouTubers that do this where they order just an insane amount of food, watch me eat. And it is entertaining to do. I feel like you could get them to host, be like kind of guest host promotional to do these pop-ups. I used to, when I worked, when I moved to San Francisco, I didn't have a lot. And I would part-time, I had like a part-time job. And I worked for this guy, Joe Garvey.

He had a company called Clash. It stood for California League of Adventure Scavenger Hunt or something like that. It was called Clash Asset. And he was making seven figures a year. And we would host these citywide scavenger hunts. And they were the best. It was so fun. And I got to see some of the economics of like some of these in-person stuff.

And I was actually pretty shocked at how great some of these could be. There was a lot of work. And then we have another friend, Nick Gray. Did you know, Sean, that Nick Gray had a business called Museum Hack. And he eventually sold it. And it was doing many, many millions in revenue. And the way the business worked was he eventually, at first it was just like gorilla

where he would like go to the I think it was the Met in New York, it's a free museum and people would pay $50 and he would give them a tour of the museum and he would explain the art and then eventually he hired lots of theater kids to lead these tours and he had them set up in a variety

of museums throughout the country and eventually he had a partnership after they like kicked him out a bunch of times and he said that business was awesome. Dude I love the way he described it too. He uses the phrase renegade museum tours. I I just thought that was just a great way to pitch it. He was like, yeah, my first business, I hosted Renegade Museum Tours.

He doesn't really explain what it is, but you try to put it all together. And the word renegade, I feel like is underutilized, under-hyped word. I think I'm going to try to bring that back into my everyday vocabulary. I think they made him, I think Time Out made him the number one thing to do in New York. And I think that's what blew him up, right? He blew up. And then, of course, he went B-to-B, because that's where the money and all this stuff is, right? Selling him, you sell it to consumer for $50.

bucks, you sell a morning brew for 20 grand, and our HR team just sides off and approves it. Austin, last time you were here, I think we talked about like the creator economy. And I'm almost certain all three of us were like, this is going to fizzle out. And has your opinion changed? And I know like some things have happened in like the news or the media world that has got you excited. Tell me about that. Yeah, I think last time we spoke, I remember we were all talking and we were like, What's the next milk road for, right? Milk Road for X.

We're all talking about that. And we're like, oh, AI's popping up. Let's, let's, so wouldn't you launch the Milk Road for AI? Milk Road for X. That just got Sean all, all, all. He's all hot, man. You're speaking to him perfectly. Austin got on the call, called me skinny.

And now he said, milk road for X, X instead of Morning Brewer, hustle for X. And I am, this guy's a charmer. I love it. Just try to hype you up, Sean. I mean, look, but there are 10 dows. I mean, there's beehives growing off the backs of, of Milk Road for AI. And I think the problem with these businesses are that their content's not very good.

They've all grown with these these crazy growth hacks, which is great for the newsletter ecosystem as a whole, but it's not sustainable. I think there's no more alpha in the newsletter game. Everyone talks about everything. And I think Beehive did for newsletters what Shopify did for e-commerce, right? E-commerce stores started and people got super pumped. They're like, you know, investors invested it away. and then all these businesses because they're like, oh, Shopify makes it so easy to start an ecom

store. And that's awesome. The problem was they made it too easy to start an ecom store where everyone started ecom stores where you have to be either the absolute best or you just can't raise a bunch of money and have to be okay with it being like a fine business. But everyone's just pouring in. Again, not a ton of money, but a ton of people just think, oh, if I can just create the milk road for marketing, the milk road for AI, I'm going to have a milk road like exit. I just, I don't know what you guys think, but I just don't think these newsletters have it on a value. Let me ask you a different question. You spent a bunch of time in media now. I don't even know this, like seven, eight years, something like that. Coming up on 10. Oh, my God. Wow, a third of your life you've spent

in the media business. I hope you don't spend the next two thirds of your life on the media business too. If you were going to do something different, where would you go? Let's say media was off the table. What would you do next? Yeah, so I think there are two types of businesses I love. I think one is, you know, B2B. I think, yeah, we've all built businesses where the LTVs are like 15 bucks. That's pretty tough.

I love, you know, selling significant enterprise products. The other one is building into passion audiences. That's, I think, where I'd actually go. So, you know, we went to Camp My First Million last year, and we met that guy. I think I was Al, who's building for filters. I don't. Yeah. I think he does hundreds of millions of revenue.

So I think I want to find a niche there, what is a weird niche? And so the one I've been spending a lot, is researching. I almost did something here. I ended up not doing it is meat smoking. I am obsessed with my trager, right? How do you use a trager?

You live in an apartment in New York, like on your balcony? Yeah, I live in the first floor, so I have access to the common space. So I don't I don't meat smoke What even is meat smoking? Can you just give me that? Dude, it's such a pain in the ass. It is such a pain in the ass. Is this called grilling or it's different than grilling?

You cook meat it like 200 degrees for like 10, 12 hours. It's like barbecuing but 10 hours and no fire and they use smoking step. All of my Jewish friends are into this because you guys grew up eating brisket. You got to wait 10 hours to eat? And you've got to buy like special like wood chips for it. It's a fucking pain in the ass. I've got friends that will wake up at 4 in the morning to like get their brisket started. Okay, but I'm a believer. Anything that's a huge pain in the ass that people do,

there's like a shit ton of money there. Exactly, right? And so there's a couple of big brands in smoking. There's Trigger, right? Trigger's the one I have. And the thing is, to Sam's point, you don't just like, it's not electricity. It's just like turn it on and it goes. You have to, uh, it's wood pellets. Right? You literally smoke wood pellets. And these pellets, Trigger gets you to buy the $1,500 smoker. But then also, you're spending $50 every time you smoke meats because you're just burning these pellets. And there's a lot of meat smokers, uh, influencers out there. These guys in Nashville, guys in Texas. And literally it's like how to smoke a rib eye, how to smoke a brisket. And they have tens of millions of views. And they're all like kind of sophisticated.

They have these rubs that you put in your meats. But none of them are taking big swings, right? None of them are built or building the Traeger competitor. I want to build the Trigger or the green egg competitor, sell the $1,500 product, sell the $50 a month, $100 a month pellets, and build the next Trigger, which I think is a multi-billion-dollar brand. Dude, I'm fired up. I'm smoked up right now. That was a good pitch. And you seem pretty lit up about that.

Why did you not do this? This sounds awesome. I've been talking to some meat smoking influencers. I'm working on it. The meat smoking boys. That's what we'll call them. What I like about these guys are they're just so much more down to earth than these New York City influencers. You know, it's not like that the TikTok 22-year-olds.

These are people who just love life. They just want to smoke meats. And if they can sell a grill, even better. There's this guy. Have you heard this guy? Jonathan Moses Katz? You hear this guy? No, who's that?

So he's a woodworking creator, right? And he's done kind of what I'm saying, but in the woodworking needs. So this guy is done. He was a big woodworking creator, and he built some tools for, and it's cool because obviously he's a woodworker so he can build them himself for his audience. Oh, dude, his site gets so much traffic. This guy kills it, I bet. Crushes it, right?

And so I spoke to this guy one time. So I don't have, you know, any insider information, but he crushed it. And what he started to do is he started to partner with every other woodworking creator and said, hey, look, I'm doing, you know, crushing it for myself, selling a bunch of whatever widgets to my audience, let me make you your own custom little thing in your woodworking niche. And I'm going to help you all sell them as well. And then we can build a collective store of all our products. And Sean, if you sell one on behalf of Sam, you'll kick him an affiliate. This is a big business. I bet you he does 50 million a year on. So it's called KM Tools, I think,

right? Yeah, KM Tools. I bet you this does in the 50 million range. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised does more. Dude, this is a great idea. This is why we started this podcast for somebody to come on and say, yeah, I just built a hundred million dollar media company, but guys, smoking meats is where it's at. This is a niche you never really thinking about. There's an opportunity here. Here's the distribution model we're going to use. I'm going to partner with these influencers and then do this kind of affiliate network and build this competitor. This is awesome. We're going to call it the meat smoking jerky boys. And we're going to, this, this way it allows us.

a little bit of a lateral expansion into the beep jerky space, but we're going to call it the meat smoking jerky boys. You know that, you know that cigarette brand that we love the branding and the packaging of Oklahoma smokes? Yeah. I feel like you kind of got to do it. Oklahoma smokes or like a Nashville, Nashville smokes club or something like that,

brought to you by the jerky boys. And, you know, I think it's all that needs to come together into one mega brand. I have not seen this branding. This is awesome. Oklahoma smokes. We're stealing this. We're buying the company just to steal the brand.

Dude, they're so good. Google, like, some of the most popular towns in Louisiana and just pick one name that, like, stands out. You know, like, Tupelo Meats or something. I'm just hoping a big meat smoking influencer, creator, listen to this podcast and DMs me on Twitter. It goes, I'm ready to ride. The Baton Rouge Smoke Company. God, there's just so many possibilities here. Austin, I know when we started this conversation, I didn't even know what smoking meats was,

but I'm in and hold a little check space for me on this company because I love to be a part of this. You know, I'm the opposite of an expert advisor here. I'm actually going to be your in-house beginner. And that's how I'm going to add some value to you. Dude, even Zucks into it. Remember the whole the Zuck meme about smoking meats? Yeah, he loves smoking meats. And you're into this.

I know that for a minute, Austin, you're talking about how you're like, I want to partner with creators because once you can attach with some of these folks, you just kill it. Is that what you would do?

I mean, for this, yeah, I think that is still, it's very popular these days to partner with creators. I still think that's the future. I still think we're scratching the surface. You know, there's feastables and prime.

And everyone talks about those and it's definitely been played out in terms of talking about. but I still think ultimately you're going to walk into a liquor store, you're going to walk in the target, and every brand is going to have a face and association, because why wouldn't it? Right. If there's a brand that could have nobody attached to it or a brand that could have someone attached to it, why wouldn't that brand have the built-in distribution of you guys or

someone, you know, more widely well-known or just somewhat? Like, I just don't see how that doesn't play out. And so, you know, it's been done with the biggest creators. I think the real opportunity is in the niches. Dude, I wonder how big, Sean, how big do you think? First of all, we don't really have that many, like, cool interests that you could have, like, an MFM product in Target. Like, what are we going to fucking sell?

Red Solo Cups. Like, I don't even know. Like, what is there? Like, Tupperware? Like, I don't know, like, what we could possibly sell. What would be the dumbest thing that would be associated with us? Like a notebook? I have no idea.

But. MFM Slinkies, baby, let's go. How popular, like, what's like, so Barstool has like the Barstool Razor. They're in, uh, stores. So,

and they're a way bigger brand than we are. Well, they have a frozen pizza. They have like, they have a bunch of stuff. How famous do we have to be? Do you think in order to make a dent into like getting sales at Target? So I don't think. That famous,

if you pick the right product, I actually think we're past the point. Or do you become more famous? Do you get more famous because your shit's in Target? Like, oh my God, they're actually in Target. I think we're past the point.

We're just. is going to drive, right? I think that works for a few people, but I think you actually need to have a great product. I think had them on the pod, you know, Danny Austin and her husband, Jordan? Yeah. Danny's big, but Danny's not as big as some of these other creators, but her brand is worth way more than almost every brand out there because it's actually a product that has a need. It's not, hey, we're going to rip off, you know, one of the biggest brands of the planet. It was a true need. It's a great product. Oh, Sam, we could have done hymns.

Or like the TRT subscriptions or something like that. We should have done Hibs. That would have been removed. Have you ever taken it? I don't know. Is it good? I've never taken it either. I've never tried it.

Austin, have you? You're younger than we are. Have you done it? No, I have not. All right, guys, we know what we're doing next time we hang out. Yeah. On the Hems and doing a podcast. We're going to be playing swords.

So I think that it's going to be like the new newsletter thing. I think that people looked at feastables. looked at Prime and they looked at skims and they're like, creator brand and every creator's like, I need to do a creator brand and every like former dropshippers like, I just need a creator and then we win. And they're all going to go do this and then they're all going to wash out. There's obviously going to be a few winners because the difference, right?

Like what Logan Paul did with Prime is so different than what most creators do with their product. Like that guy A had like actually like a humongous audience, took it everywhere, built the brand sort of like, brick by brick. Oh, he's at WrestleMania. Guess what? He's going to fucking hit the guy over the head with a giant bottle of prime or like, you know, there's one, and it was him and

KSI, right? So they got two huge craters, two big markets to pair together to go into this industry. You know, Mr. Beast is like, I'm going to do feastables, but he's not just like, hey, go ahead, guys, go buy my chocolate. He's like, I rebuilt Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for $3 million and that's how I'm going to launch this thing. I'm going to make the product,

the content. The content is the product. There's no line between the two. And, you know, so, you know, those worked because the creators really were like actual entrepreneurs and partnered with world class operators to pull them off, right? Like we talked about the guys behind Prime.

Those guys are monsters. Those guys are in their 20s and mega billionaires for a reason, have built multiple beverage brands for a reason. The guy who built Connor McGregor's whiskey brand was also the guy who did like whatever, two other alcohol brands that were multi-billion dollar brands that they

partnered with him to do proper 12. And same thing. Connor is like mega, mega famous and went all the way with the promotion versus other people may not. I think the Danny Austin story is good because it was like her real story was like postpartum. I was losing hair. I was ashamed of it. I bought wigs for the last year. I've been wearing wigs while I've been an influencer.

But instead I really wanted to find a product that would work. And here's the product. Here's my before and after. And it's like that's like the perfect combination of things. You have high margin product. You have repeat purchase because people are going to have to have to keep applying the thing. you have a visual before and after and you have a true story around the creators

like actual need versus just like a nice to have. And that is like the that's the yachtsy of putting these together. Most people are not going to be able to do that. Yeah, but also, you could do it. You've got that operator gene. You could be one of these nerds.

Well, the thing is we're all doing it in the B2B space, right? So what we're doing is not is like, okay, we have one, 100th, the audience of a Mr. Beast or a Logan Paul cool. So we need to sell a product that's 100 times more expensive than a bottle of prime. He sells his for four bucks or whatever. We're trying to sell products that cost $4,000 or $40,000 or $400,000 a year by doing B2B software. That's why HubSpot did it with us. And I think this is the other thing. Austin, you did a thread that was like, this is the new thing. But it's like, dude, people have been doing celebrity endorsements forever. The difference is that now the celebrity's own equity.

I'm like, oh, yeah, people can do this. Wait a minute. We did it. That's us. That's good for their brand, right? To help them sell a product that's worth thousands of dollars, right? It would be smart of us to do that, not the MFM, whatever, like, Target brand mail clippers. Lego set. Yeah, exactly. Adult Legos.

Yeah. And Sam, I think really that is you in Hampton. Like, you really are. I mean, it's a, what, $8,000 product. I think that is the perfect example. You may not be Tony Robbins, right? you may not be Gary V, maybe they're the equivalent of like the Logan Paul and B2B,

but you found a great product and it makes a lot of sense for your brand and your audience. And so, yeah, I think it's a home run. Yeah, keep showing. Speaking of Tony Robbins, Austin,

you know this episode's going to come out right after the episode with Tony Robbins. Yeah, which is good for Austin, I think. That's good for you. No, I mean, maybe,

but I meant to start with this actually. So maybe we'll cut this and put it at the beginning. But, you know, when you start a, not to Shill Hampton again, I hate to do this. But when you start a Hampton session with your group, you air grievances, right?

Everyone says, can you be honest with everyone? Can you really have a good dialogue and discussion or is there anything you need to get out in the open? Well, clearly we could because I didn't say this. But I do need to tell everyone that Monday, you and I were supposed to talk. Like one o'clock, Sean's like, I'm going to call you all. I'm going to give you a call. One o'clock comes by no call. Two o'clock comes by, no call.

So I text him, like, Sean, what's going on? You're like, oh, I'm prepping for the biggest. You're texting me, thanks for the call. Which is even better. And so I'm like, Sean, what the heck's going? I'm, I'm prepping for the big guest. I'm like, oh, Sean's hyping me up. Like 10 minutes later.

By the way, that was actually Tony Robbins, not you. Yeah, so basically, like, he reached out or someone on his team reached out. I had a thing planned. And also, Sean is like the biggest fan. So, Sean, it was awesome that you got to like just hang out. with a guy you admired. How was it? It was intense is the way I would explain it. I mean, when I tell you I prepared for this,

not only did I basically spend every waking moment for two days just like preparing for this thing, which I never do for podcasts. I've also kind of been preparing for 10 years because I follow the guy and I'm a big fan of what he's been to three of his seminars. I know a lot. There's kind of a curse of knowing too much going in. Right.

Like meeting your heroes type of thing. Yeah, it's like you want it to go well. bad, it's almost like you squeeze the, like don't squeeze the bar of soap too hard. It just squirts out. Like if you want it to go so well, it's going to, like, I'll tell you guys the funny part. Interesting analogy. Interesting analogy. It's not the bar of soap analogy you thought I was going to do. I took the road less traveled there. So we're getting ready to the pot. It's me and Ari were sitting there and his team's like, you know, his team's like swarming the computer set up. They're like, Tony will be here shortly. You know, just everything's okay. And I'm like, all right, sweet.

I never get here early. You know, I'm chronically late. But for this one, 20 minutes early. So I'm sitting there for like 10 minutes and I could just feel myself getting cold. I'm like, oh, no. I can't just sit here and I was like, I got to use the shit. Tony teaches you. You got to be in state.

You want to have a peak performance? You got to be at a peak state. Of course, right? Athletes do that. Well, guess what? What's one step down from an athlete, a musician? What's 25 steps down from that? A podcaster.

And so I got up and I start doing my like Tony Robbins power move where I'm like, I'm basically doing this like, really dorky mid back stretch to like, you know, unlock my fucking chakras or something like that, trying to get some energy flowing. And then I just hear, hello? And it's Tony Robbins. I'm like,

rush back to my desk. I'm like, oh, hey. Yeah, sorry. You're just staring at my chair there as I was doing like, you know, Tony Robbins stretches in the corner, trying to get hype for this. He just hears like off screen,

Sean saying like, I'm the man. Who's the man? I'm the man. I'm the man. Even better. I'm visualizing. Thanks, Tony. I had a good time, too. You want my number? Let me get it for you. I'm working backwards from the desired end state.

Just like you didn't. Just me. But here's it off camera. And it went well? I mean, I'm not going to give away too much, but let me just say this. Tears were shed and they weren't mine. And if there's one mark of a successful, Tony, like life accomplishment, I wouldn't say he cried, wouldn't say, but he, you know, teared up. So, you know, I thought that that was a, you know, a good thing. But it's really hard to interview somebody who is a stage performer.

Like, Sam, you must feel like this sometimes when I'm just monologuing, monologuing, like, right now. He's like a next level of that. And it's all good stuff, but it's like, you know, it's like you poke the thing and an avalanche comes out. Were you ever like, uh, all right, Tony, shut the fuck up. Let me ask my next question. So, uh, It's got like Alvin a little bit. And we only have 45 minutes with Tony.

And I was like 45 minutes. Jeez, this guy does nine hour a day seminars for four days straight. Like what am I going to do in 45 minutes? And then I'm like, hey, you know, actually it might be better if we do this in person. I'm, I will fly to you tomorrow and I'll be there. And his team was like, no, thanks. We'll do. You stay over there.

We'll do it this way instead. But it was, it was good. enjoyed it. I do think I'm going to just make a prediction. Awesome. Sorry to the big doggy with the Tony Robbins thing, but I'll give you this compliment. I think people are going to like this episode more because the rapport and also just like the style of stuff we talk about is so like, you know, on point for what this podcast is. Can I ask you a different story though about a big name? Yeah, go ahead. A couple of years ago, you texted us that you were going to dinner with SBF. And at the time, SBF was the next Mark Zuckerberg. SBF was multi-billionaire of the fastest growing private

startup, boy genius from MIT who wore like cargo jorts. And we were like, dude, tell us more. And you were like, I can't put away my phone right now. Like, you know, you know, see you later. Suckers. I'm going to go have dinner with SBA. Can you now, two years later, can you tell us the story? What was it like going to dinner with SBA? Yeah, he's not going to do anything now, right? He's in jail for a long time, I think. So maybe one day I'll get out and listen to this episode. I don't think I've told this story publicly. So I'll tell it. But I have a friend, investor at a big VC, invested in FTX.

And this is probably out of 2020. So SBF was SBF, right? This is pre him obviously getting caught as being a fraud, but he's at the height of his power. He was, whatever the stat was, the top richest person under 35 in the world. The one liner for anyone who doesn't know who SBF is, Sam Bankman-Fried, he was like, the Bernie made off of crypto, 31-year-old worth $20 billion, and it all came crashing down. Now he's in prison for fraud. Okay, go ahead.

Great. Thanks to the background. It's going to make it look really good. So I didn't know that much about him, though. Like, I didn't do any research. I'd heard him talk a couple times, but I didn't know any of the stories. And so my friend's, like, we'd trip to Bahamas. I'm like, I'm in.

It's for his birthday. So we show up. And I've been to a nice place. I've stayed at the Ritz Carlton. I've stayed all these nice places. And so I thought I knew where the rich and famous live. I was wrong. This place, it's called the Albany and the Bahamas.

This is where the rich and famous live. Like this place was, there are 250 foot yachts everywhere. I mean, this is, I think Tiger Woods owns it. Justin Bieber, who I actually met the next day, lives there. Will Smith lives there.

Like, this is where the rich and famous live. It was nuts. And so I get there. I'm like, shit. Like, yeah, we're in for it. So we show up. We actually stayed at someone else at FTX's house. They put you in the guest boat. Which was a pretty nice guest house though. No, it was not a boat, but it was a house. And so we show up and we get there. Here's the first thing I observe, right? It's like the penthouse, $225 million apartment. I had no idea I was walking into.

I walk in and there are 50 pairs of shoes lying everywhere, like crappy Nike's. I'm like, this dude's worth $30 billion and they're all these weird nighties. And they're all these weird nighties. he's laying around. And my friend's like, oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. Like, the entire exact team lives together in this one apartment. And I'm like, oh, boy, what are we? What is going on? And so obviously, now we know in hindsight, like, you know, there are articles who knows

if it's true. They were having orgies and all, all type of weird shit. So we, I knew all this. Like, I knew some weird stuff was going on because if. Did you get the orgy vibe? Did you get, like, could you smell it? Yeah. But there was a weird.

alpha attitude that people had towards Sam. Like, he was clearly the alpha in the room, even though he's super nerdy, super techy. But he just had this weird thing where people, anyone who said anything, looked to Sam to make sure they approved. Like, it was clear he was in charge. He was the man. And so, again, first thing, shoes. Second thing, you look to the left and Sam is in the kitchen cooking food, which I was

like, oh, well, probably the chef cook us dinner. No. Sam is there cooking us food? he does not turn his back, is his face to us. So his back is to us. And he starts having a full conversation with us without ever making eye contact. He's no eye contact. He goes, the first thing he ever says to me and my friend is, so what do you think about

Indian crypto exchanges? What? And I'm like, what is going? He isn't turned around yet? He doesn't realize you're white guy. I don't know. So my friend, you know. Did you have an answer to that?

I probably said four words the entire dinner. They were speaking a different language, you know, all crypto stuff. So I show up in the kitchen and Sam's cooking us dinner. I put dinner in quotes. Everyone got one Beyond sausage and two Russell Sprout. That was the meal for everyone. So I think the vegan stuff's true because he cooked us all beyond sausage. So that was pretty weird.

We sit down. So again, $20 million apartment, but there's hardware everywhere, cables everywhere. It was like post-apocalyptic. It was super, super weird being in this $20 million apartment, but there's like PS3, he's an Xbox, there's like everywhere, a complete mess of an apartment. And so we sit down, and I think the craziest thing about the dinner was Sam was a genius when it came to the things he had to know for FTX in crypto.

So for example, Tom Brady was a, like, sponsored by FTX, right? Sam could have told you every single thing. about Tom Brady. Could have told you his stat line, everything about him. But I don't think Sam knew what a first down was. I don't think he knew a single thing about football. But if it benefited crypto, he was the smartest person on the planet. Same thing with politicians.

He could go every single senator, every Supreme Court justice, he could tell you their exact stance on crypto. I don't think he could tell you a single other thing about them. It was incredible. Dude, Sean, you and I, I don't want to say their name because I don't want this to be an insult, but you and I hung out with someone who was the best in the whole world

at what they do. And fuck it, I'll say it. It was Mr. Beast. He was the best at, whatever, this is not an insult, I guess. It was Mr. Beast. You know, he's the best in the world. And I remember, I think it was either

you or me or me and someone else. And we were just shooting the shit about, like, a TV show that I thought everyone knew about. And he had no idea. And I was like, I was just like, curious about this. So I asked him more pop culture. stuff, didn't know anything about like this normal stuff.

He's like, sorry, I just pay attention to YouTube. Like, that's all I do. He had the exact same thing where he didn't know anything about anything outside of his expertise. There's a funny interview with Connor McGregor on BBC. It's like, you know, usually UFC gets covered by these small niche outlets, but one time like he got on the main BBC, they were like, they were shooting the shit before the interview.

They were like, oh, how about the game, you know, whoever, some soccer game, like some famous soccer game. And he's like, he just laughed. he's like, he's like, ha ha, yeah. It was great. He goes, yeah, it's great. And they go, you don't watch soccer, do you? He goes, no, I have no idea what you're talking about.

And he goes, he goes, I don't know what's happening in the news. I don't know what's happening in the world. He goes, I've lost my mind to the game. And I only know about my shit. I don't give a damn about anything else. And I think that's like actually kind of common for people who get like top 0.1.11% of like what they're trying to become. It's like when they asked Trump what his favorite, like verse in the Bible,

And he goes, you know what? I love all of them. I love all of them. Yeah, too hard to pick. I love them all. That's what Connor McGregor was like, I love all this sports. In the video of LeBron, he's on Instagram live and people are like, oh, who are your favorite soccer players? And LeBron's like, because he's like, I love soccer.

No, no, they asked him about the team he owns. They were like, who are your favorite PSG players or whatever? And he's like, he owns the team. And he's like, he names one. And he's like, you know, such as, such as I mean, you know, so and so forth, there are so many. It's like, what's the way? Et cetera, et cetera, such as. Yeah.

You only use the middle words of a sentence. You didn't say the subject. Did you get fraud vibes when you were there? Or were you also tricked? I mean, I was totally enamored. Because the perception at the all of me, like there was a butt. We took a cab to the Albany, and the guys like, oh, you're going to, you know, like the Albany, that's where that's where FTX is headquartered. We're like, oh, yeah, we're going to see Sam.

And everyone's like, you know, one of the security guards said, you know, here, you know, you think the celebrities are famous. The famous people, they want to meet Sam. Sam doesn't want to meet the people. They want to go meet Sam. Like, this guy, he just had this aura around him. Everyone wanted to meet him. Now, in hindsight, I feel like a complete moron because there were so many red flags. The whole effective altruism thing, he parody doesn't know about that?

Yeah, make as much money as you can to give it away. Yeah, so I heard about this and everyone's like, yeah, you know, Sam lives a really low-key lifestyle. I'm like, guys, he lives in a $25 or $20 million apartment. It's a nice apartment I've ever been in. And they're all like, no, he only lives there because it's the most convenient to the FTA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He lives in an orgy compound and he lives a low-key life.

We just drove by the FTX office. There were 75 neighborhoods in between here and the office. That doesn't add up. What is going on? These videos came out that was like, Sam still drives his 93 Corolla and he's just like shrugs like, why do I need to get a better car?

And it's like, oh damn, this guy's full of shit. You know, like, wow. He's got like a full Olympic-sized swimming pool on his balcony. but he's an EA. He's not spending his money. There was a rumor that he was, that they were high on some type of like,

you know, Adderall type of medicine that was like a patch. Did you see any of that shit laying around? No, I wish, again, hindsight's 2020. I wish I was looking for this stuff

because I was just so enamored by this guy and how well he knew crypto, but I just wish I started like digging and looking through more stuff. I'm sure there was crazy shit everywhere. Dude, you also, I don't know if you probably can't say this, but you went and hung out

with Kid Rock as well, which is like a crazy story. You've hung out with some cool people. You've had some diverse experiences. Yeah, the Kid Rock thing. I think I might have spoke about that last time. The Kid Rock thing was awesome. He is obviously super interesting.

He told us he is the only person to play at both President Obama and President Trump's inaugurations. And he knows both of them. He's the only one that can heal this country. He's the only one that could bring us together. He, He lives in this, he actually on his compound,

which it is a compound. He has like a full bar. And I don't mean like the physical bar. I mean like a whole hub at on its compound. He also lives and I, it was being constructed, but he lives in a house that is a replica of the White House. I'll show you guys pictures.

He modeled it after the White House. So you walk up, you're like, oh my God. Like it actually looks exactly like the White House looked like. It's nuts. All right, everyone. Really quick,

this is Sam. I'm going to do a thrill. the chill. So basically, I've gotten asked for everyone out there. I just launched this new podcast. It's called Money Wise. It's a personal finance podcast for high net worth people. You can find it by looking up Money Wise on Spotify and iTunes or wherever else you get your podcast. But here's the deal. This podcast is a ton of work and I'm only hosting the first handful of episodes. I need someone to be the host of this podcast. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty big and it's going to be great for whoever hosts it. But I need help hosting it. I don't want to do all the work. Our first

episode, you can find it on whatever, all those platforms. It's pretty great, I think. It's with the guy who sold this company for $200 million and we get to hear how he breaks down his net worth, how much he spends each month, all this transparent money stuff. That's pretty interesting. And so if you want to host it, I'm actually not going to give out my contact information. You've got to figure out how to contact me because that's what you're going to have to do. You've got to find guests. So contact me and let me know if you want to be the host of this and send me something that is impressive that shows that you have what it takes. All right, back to the show.

Awesome. Did you ever hear the story Cody Coe told on our pod about about when he went to Elon Musk's house for a party? No. It's so funny. It's a very short story, but I find it hilarious, even though it's not meant to be a funny story. He's just telling what happened. But the whole idea is so funny to be.

So he goes, he's like, yeah, I was hanging out with, so Cody's like, you know, L.A. YouTuber cool guy also makes some music. So I think they were hanging out with Post Malone. So he's out of the thing with Post Malone. He's like, oh, Elon asked us to, you know, come over for a party. He shows him his phone. He's like, of course, okay, let's go. So they go to Il-A-Mas house.

I was like, what's it like? He's like, first thing, no furniture in the entire place. An empty house. And he was like, does everybody live here? Like, what is this? He's like, no, Elon's house across the street. This is like his party. He hosts people here.

He lives over there. I was like, oh, naturally? Okay, there's a stupid question by me. Dumb. All right, I won't ask him questions. He's like, so we're just sitting there. And he's like, it's like a fire. And they're just kind of like eating.

like eating marshmals or whatever the fuck. And he's like, he's like, you know, got kind of late. People are doing the own thing. And he's like, you know, I'm just going to go. I'm just going to kind of dip out of here. This is like, you know, it's late. This was weird. And he's like, so he's trying to leave.

He doesn't know his way out of the house. So he's like trying to get out. He turns the corner and it's just Elon making out with grimes. And he's like, he just turns and he opens this door. And he's like, he's like, dude, I thought I just going to open this door. And there's just a rocket. And they're like, get in. There's no time.

He's like, I just wanted to leave so bad. You guys read the Elon book? I didn't read it. I'm kind of over Elon. Sean and I are both over him, hardcore, but I don't want to read that book because it sounds so stressful.

Yeah, I just finished it. I read it over the holidays, and it definitely gives you a different lens into Elon Musk. You really see the full spectrum of who he is as a person. And I think people try to draw inspiration from Elon, and I think you can in little bits and pieces. But to me, my big takeaway from the whole book was like, Elon is hardcore.

Like that is the one word he uses and like that is who he is. He's hardcore. He's extreme. I don't think you can be like 70% Elon and be successful. Like he just has no regard for any person he works with. He's basically fired everyone he works with, right? He treats his family like shit. He's starved from issues with his dad.

And my big takeaway was like, Elon is this unique one in a billion, one in 10 billion people. And all these people who are inspired, that's great, but don't try to copy him. Because this guy is to the extreme. I don't think almost anyone can be as extreme in every facet of life. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't vacation. He has crazy relationships. I mean, obviously, that's all public with all.

He has so many kids, but it's all, everything's extreme. Every single thing he does is to the, as extreme as you can possibly do it. It's incredible. You should read the book. Dude, I just don't want my blood pressure to rise reading that. Like, just hearing you talk about this because on one hand, I'm like, when I hear about him, I'm like, oh, I'm soft. I should step it up.

And then on the other hand, I'm like, his life sucks. I do not want that. And so there is that whole, you can't be like him. It be 70%. Have I told you my David Goggins point? I think that's what applies here. Which is what? You only want to be David Gagins for one hour a day.

That's the whole trick with David Gagins. You can't be, you don't want to be out on all of David Gagins because he's inspiring and he's so tough and he's so like mentally strong that there's something to learn there. You also don't want to subscribe to the David Gagin's lifestyle or even like try to emulate you know, half of what he's doing. You would just want for one hour a day when you're working out to just shift into David Gagins gear for that one hour and then never touch it again.

I don't know if you saw this post that was David Gagins is engaged. And his fiancee. Fucking insane. It sounds like an onion article. I was going to say there's this video of her fall. I didn't even know he's engaged.

I don't know how he's in a relationship, first of all. But here's what I actually saw. We put this on the YouTube. We just like delete our account. Are they like we just got home from dinner or something? First, there's a picture of his toes, which is just like, I don't know if you've ever seen it.

ex-athletes toes, but they're like all nasty as hell. This guy, I don't even know what's going on it. He's literally just ripping off his big toenail because he's like, ah, don't need this shit anymore. Like, and then his house is like, no, David, please don't. And like, whatever. And he's like, why are his feet so jacked up because he's running 100 miles out of time? And so she posts his thing.

She's like, yeah, a lot of people think that David only turns it on for the camera. I just want to show you this. He's two weeks, two months out of, you know, two weeks off of surgery for his leg, where they like broke his leg and fixed it for, whatever reason. And he just came home and was like, I want to run 100 miles tonight. And so she's following him in the car. She's been with him in the car for like eight hours. She's falling behind that like five dollars an hour or whatever. And he's just running. He's on, you know, three a.m. seven. Yeah, hour seven. It's like, you know, three a.m. And he's almost done with a hundred miles.

I think it said like, I think it said like, should we got home from dinner and David just looks at me and goes, I've got to go run a hundred miles now. Or like, I got to run a truck. What are they called trucks or something like that? I got to go go to a truck tonight. I figure what they're called. but like a ruck. So I'm going for a ruck tonight. And I don't, I'm at this out of shape. I don't even know what a ruck is,

let alone have run a run. It's running with a, it's running or walking with a backpack on that has weight in it. Okay, so he's doing a hundred mile, wait and run. And,

you know, then you see that, you're like, well, this is fucking stupid. This is not the way to lose. Right? The only,

the only intelligent response to that is that. And so the trick with David Guggis, is you want to be David Guggis for one hour a day. The trick with Elon Musk is, you only want to be Elon Musk like 15% of the time in your company, right? When you're establishing the vision of like thinking big about what you're doing, he's amazing. You want to channel your inner Elon. When you are, you know, telling a story about your product, the way he demos, you know, Tesla every time and sells hundreds of thousands of cars before

they're even ready. People pay money just to buy, to wait for the car, right? That's when you want to, you want to reserve your thing. Or like, when he came into Twitter was like, I'm going to do this really hard thing, hardcore. I'm going to do a sprint. I'm going to sleep in the office. And like, I'm going to make sure everybody knows if you're in this, you're in this in a hardcore way versus like, dude, awesome, I don't know how you run your company, but I was always on eggshells with my employees. Like, like, hey, we got, you know, we got to do this tomorrow.

But if that's too much, Tuesday's okay, right? Yeah, is that okay with you? I don't know. I just don't know what the boundaries are versus like Mr. Beast or David Gagins or Elon. These guys have like kind of no sense of boundaries. They just, they're on their mission and you're either all in or you're out. And I think that's pretty cool and that's the part to steal.

Yeah, I think so. I think the thing to steal in particular is that vision, right? Elon starts with the vision and then builds a business, builds the business model. That's really impressive. I think the way he treats people, the way he, some of the things he says, that could be in the 85% of stuff you leave out. Right, right. And actually, SBF is kind of the same way.

The SBF book kind of highlighted a bunch of things that happened. My friend read the SBF book. And he was like, I think I'm supposed to hate SBF, you know, because of everything that happened. but reading this book made me like him more and it wasn't because of the spin he's like actually I found a few things

I really respect about what he did he's like let's take away the fact that he was taking customer funds to do these things but like let's just say he was using the company's money or his own money or whatever right which he was also doing he just overextended and used company

the customer funds too but they were like the fact that he was like okay if I have a hundred million dollars he didn't like feel any fear towards losing it nor did he feel any attachment to it. He's like, great.

Let's use the $100 million to pay off Steph Curry, you know, Tom Brady and whoever, because we're going to build the brand that way. And go and cut absurd deals in order to pull these things off. Or like, there's that email that leaked of him and the guy in L.A.

He's like, I went to this dinner with this guy in L.A. He's the most connected person I've ever seen at this dinner was whoever. Like, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Leonardo DiCaprio and like, whatever, 12 other people. He's like, we need to give this guy $200 million to invest in his fund.

And I think he'll open all the doors for us after that. Wire him the money now, please. And just the ability to throw your weight around is actually pretty badass. And if you take away the fraud stuff, I know other successful people in our life that do this. Andrew Wilkinson does this. He throws his weight around. When he wants something or he like sets his target on someone, a relationship or a business he wants to buy or whatever, he really throws his weight around in a way that I definitely don't.

Right? Like Sam, what he wanted to buy the hustle? dude he flew me private up to his house he's like oh you he's like I want to buy this company let's talk and you're like cool we can talk at the phone he's like no let's meet in person

you're like I don't like to fly and Canada's far away he's like my jet will be there tomorrow let's go and you know he throws his weight around in a way that I think I am like often either too cheap or too afraid or just don't even think about those options and I'm learning to steal that part of my my game have you guys thought about that or do you guys

think about how you're going to use that I'm the same way as you I appreciate it and I'm fearful of it. It's a very scary thing. But when I see it, I get inspired. Yeah, I think it's a, for me, it's a conviction play. I'm more inspired by, like I read the Warren Buffett book, for example, right? And he's more cerebral in the way he does it.

But it's the same thing. It's like he sees an opportunity and he's not dipping his toe in the water. He's not a diversification guy. It's like, oh, Bank of America's going under. I'm going to buy a ton of preferred debt. This is a can't lose bet. And by the way, I'm sitting on however many billions of dollars on my balance sheet. So I'm going to own whatever, 10% of Bank of America.

And so I love when people have conviction. And they just say, you know what, this is it. I'm taking all the chips, all the social capital, everything I've made, and I'm doubling down on this. Dude, your chips on the table moment right now is just praying Bill Ackman doesn't crush your company. Because morning brews, oh my. Taking your chips and running away, hiding under the table, actually. Speaking of throwing your weight around, right? That's what he's doing right now.

He's trying to throw his weight around in a way. I think, I actually don't think it's about... Well, Morning Brew is owned by Business Insider, which is owned by Axel Springer, and Bill Ackman is at war with B.I. and Axel Springer. Awesome. I'd like to hear your response to this. Yeah, what's your official response? You've got to message Bill Ackman to be like, Bill, same team, same team.

I'm all right. Yeah, I'll save my response for the private group chats. I think that the idea, I think you don't want to be excited to just like plow chips into something because you're you're you're naturally going to just kind of make make an impulsive wrong decision but I do think there's a good question which is am I throwing my weight around right like am I um you know how how much gas versus how much breaks am I applying to the things that I want in my life that's one of my themes I think for this year that I'm gonna I'm gonna focus on. Remit safety has this good thing where he talks about

spending and he was like and he'll message me privately he's like what interest you and I'm like well I've got this cleaning lady that comes every two weeks I wish they would come every day almost. And he's like, I'm going to challenge you to figure out what makes you happy. And I want you to spend 10 times the amount that you're spending now. And so, like, for him, it's like travel. And he goes, when I travel, I will spend $50,000 on a trip. And that's a ton of money, but I know that's what makes me happy.

And I'm going to 10 times spend what I used to spend because that's what I love. And that's what he was saying to me about services, like cleaning ladies, things like that. He goes, I challenge you to spend 10 times more. And that's like a miniature version of what you're talking about. Awesome. What about you? You made a bunch of money selling Morning Brew. Do you use it in any way that was interesting or like improve the quality of your life meaningfully? Yeah. The big thing for me is I love traveling and love staying at nice hotels on vacation. And so I, when I, when I travel, that, that is my money dial is traveling. I think Rameet since is two actually. You were texting up about this, Amman Hotel. What's the deal? Do I need to know about this? What is it? Have you heard of it? It's just like supposed to be the fanciest hotel ever. I've heard about it like two times this year. And I don't know if I just started hanging out with different people or it's new. I'm guessing this has been around. I'm guessing this has been around.

around for like for like a while. We're growing a lot. But essentially Amman, I think, is the standard for customer service for any business, right? You know, we're talking about the Milk Road for X. I think the good way to think about a business is what's the Amman for X. So Alon is just the absolute top customer service. I mean, I think the cheapest amount, there's maybe 60 or 70 of them. The cheapest one is maybe $1,500 a night.

I think they're regularly $2,500. There's one out west somewhere. I think it's, I'm on Arizona. Yeah, that's what people love. It's like six grand in night. And people go there and they're like, it was worth it. What do they do? Why is, how would that be worth it?

Well, it's beautiful for one. But it's sort of like, remember Sean, the bear that episode? I'm better be touching my body for six grand a night. But you remember like, I remember there's like season two episode six or something is where the guy goes and learns how to like wash the silverware perfectly. It's like that. And I think that that type of excellence. helped make it popular where people are like, oh, I respect this craftsmanship. But have you been,

Austin? I've never been. So I've never stayed at one. I'm planning my honeymoon now. And that's, that's our goal is they had a bunch of Amman's. But I've been to a bunch when I travel. So I travel, I always try to get like a drink or go to them. They're also interesting because they're typically not in the heart of a city. They typically are on the outskirts a little bit. They actually, and I think this is really cool. I think they just intentionally, they make you travel there a little bit, right? It's not accessible. And that's part of the alert. is it's like a destination. You have to really want to go to an Amman to be at the Amman. Now they've grown and they have one in New York City. So maybe that's not quite as true. But they really want

you to be in the Amman essence when they're there. And it's just again, it's the pinnacle of customer service. Give me an example. What are they doing that such good customer service? Yeah. I went to a motel eight with a slip inside. Do they have that? I mean, the highest quality food, the best quality bed, bedding, the mass. mattress, every little thing, right? When the toilet paper is folded the right direction, every detail is perfect. And if, if nice hotels is not your money dial, you're going to be like, I just wasted $5 grand a night.

But if luxury and having everything you need cater towards, if that's a sign that you get joy out of, you're going to go and you're going to love it. I get why you like it. No slip. Yeah, is there a mini fridge though or not? I just need like Kit Kat and animal crackers at midnight and I'm gravy. Like live stream cheese. Just give me that and we good.

Austin, thanks for coming on, man. This is good. Yeah, it's fun. All right, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.