My First Million - Buffett’s Money Wisdom, Galloway’s $100M Advice & Why Newsletters Suck

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Episode 493: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/thesamparr) cover everything from the power of charisma in politics to the allure of unconventional ventures and investments. Tune in as they dive into the significance of re-reading books + uncovering the stories embedded in our own lives and breakdown Paperscraper — a tool with big potential that can be copied and pasted in a number of industries. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. — 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/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (0:40) Scott Galloway’s personal finances (2:45) Why big financial wins are rarely from your main thing (9:14) Crazy stories about Warren Buffet (18:10) Takeaways from listening to Founders podcast w/ David Senra (30:16) Why people prefer complexity over simplicity (35:21) Everyone’s looking for a magic pill (42:50) Create a TV show to find our next president (1:06:11) Paperscrapper (1:11:29) Sam could’ve been a Youtuber — Links: • Tony Robbins vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONTbIlCtKM • Scott Galloway's Personal FInance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxQ4agvOvTI • Founders Podcast episode - https://tinyurl.com/zzc3d96f • Seth Bannon Tweet - https://twitter.com/sethbannon/status/1676683104986218502?s=20 • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — 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

And that's how we grew. And that's why I tell people, I say to blog. I don't actually mean blog, but I meant create bangers. Text-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content enough to subscribe. TBB, baby, text-based bangers. That's been our strategy, right? 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. All right. We're live. Can I tell you about a few interesting pieces of content I've consumed lately? And I want to hear what you've consumed. Yeah, let's do it. The info diet section. The info diet section.

Yeah. Let me tell you the first one. So I have been on a Scott Galloway kick. Scott Galloway has a podcast. And I think that's what he's more famous for than anything. But he started a few companies. But he's got this like one of his companies L2. I think it's sold for like 200 million.

It was like nine figures. Dude, he did this podcast. called Scott's Personal Finance. I found it on YouTube where he talks about like money and like how much money he has and what he spends it on. And he's like, he's like, this is all going to sound douchey, but I'll tell you. He's like, basically, I'm worth at least $100 million. He goes, I made it into the nine figures recently.

He said, I'm still incredibly anxious about money. It stems from childhood. He's like, we were just poor and I'm super anxious about it. But then he goes, he does something cool. He says two things that are interesting. One, he goes, I'm spending between $200,000 and $400,000 a month, and I moved to Europe. And the guy was like, why would you move to Europe? He goes, well, America's the best place to make money and Europe's the best place to spend it.

Love that. That's great. Yeah, it was awesome. He goes, look, what I've realized is that I'm getting older. I don't have a lot of time to live. Maybe I have 40 more years or something like that to live. I'm going to spend it and I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it. He goes, it feels incredibly masculine for me to be able to provide these experiences for my family. and I'm doing it. He says, I spend around $100,000 to $200,000 a month now on travel. We fly private.

We went to the World Cup. I brought another couple in their family just because I wanted to. We paid for the whole thing. And he goes through this really, like, detailed thing about spending his money. And another interesting thing, he said, and I want to ask this about you. So he has had, I think, three companies of which one was like a very big success and that it probably made them $50 million. But he said, I've made more money. being on the boards of companies and the equity that they've given me, then actually building companies. And what I'm surprised about is what he said is that I've made more money doing not my main thing,

or at least what I thought was going to be my main thing, doing these like ancillary things. Has that proven to be true in your career yet? 100%. I wouldn't say more yet, but I've definitely seen examples of that. So I'll give you a very simple example of my life, and I'll tell you one that was from a recent episode. So in my life, I started an e-commerce company,

maybe e-commerce brand three years ago, roughly. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on this e-commerce thing. Like, it takes a lot of time to build a real company that actually has, you know, real revenues, real profits that are significant and there's a physical product, tons of energy that goes into it. I have pulled out $0 and zero cents from this business. Now, the business makes a lot of money, right?

We're tens of millions of dollars in revenue. But I pull out zero dollars and all gets reinvested and all my time gets invested into this thing. And it is very labor intensive. So I haven't made much money from this. But one thing that did happen was along the way, I was like, I'm always on my phone. You know, like often if you message me, I'll be like, oh, yeah, I'll send it to you when I'm back at my computer. They're like, I'm not just like at my computer a lot. And I wanted to be able to check on my store from my phone.

And the Shopify app doesn't really make that very easy. like you can get in, you can maybe see your revenue, but you don't know how your ads are doing. You don't know how your Amazon store is doing. You don't know how your Google accounts do it. You don't know how your clavio emails are working. And so meet these two, you know, two Jewish guys who were like, hey, we made this thing that's like a mobile way to manage your storefront for any ecom brand.

They're like, oh, we have an ecom brand. We built this thing for us. And I use it. I'm like, oh, this is great. And I'm like, hey, I'd like to invest. And they're like, oh, cool. I think I was maybe the first investor, maybe second, something like that. Very cheap, like $5 million valuation or something like that.

Do you remember what you put in? $75,000 to a company called Triple Whale. Was that all your money? All my investments have to go through the fund unless it's like something that like wouldn't be eligible for the fund. But this would because otherwise it's like a bias thing. So put it in from the fund. So put this money in and I'm like, great. I hope this does well, but I'm not sure.

It seems like maybe just an analytics widget. I don't know, it might not be the biggest thing in the world, but I think it's really useful for me. I think other store owners will find it useful, start telling other owners about it, blah, blah, blah. This company is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So, you know, on a $5 million valuation of entry point, you know, we're up 40x or something like that, you know, 30, 40x somewhere in that range. So, you know, take $75,000 and multiply by, let's just take 40x for a second. It's $3 million. $3 million.

Now, of course, it's the fund. So, you know, my carry on that's 20%, you know, but it's also not done. This is just like, you know, a couple of years in. If this becomes a $2 billion company, you know, I, it's easy to see that I will have made more. And by the way, I invested in six other e-commerce SaaS tools. It's like, oh, sales tax is a pain in the ass. Cool. Let me use numeral for that.

This is like a new startup that's doing, making it easy for e-com owners or sales tax. Oh, I need bookkeeping and accounting. Let's use Final Loop instead of QuickBooks. It's like I started investing in a bunch of these. Whatever I thought was the best tool after I did the research, I was like, well, I'm not just going to be a user. I'm also going to be an investor. And I just did that across the board.

And a lot of these are huge now, PostScript for text message. Like what Ron DeSantis is using for his text messaging. I don't know what he's using, but probably should be using PostScript because it's the best way to send SMS marketing. And you just invest in these because you're a user. But like I have made more money investing in e-commerce SaaS tools. than I've made from my store. And the store took all of my time.

And these other ones took one hour of emails to back and forth to just do the investment. And that's like, you know, not what I would have expected going in. However, had I not done the e-commerce thing, I would have never understood the value of these tools or been able to see them early or been able to be like, hey, let me in and I'll introduce you to a hundred other people that have stores because I'm in that network now. And so you've made money in this like not what you plan to make money. You made money in this other weird way. same way. Scott Galloway didn't make, he makes the money in his company, but then his reputation is where he gets paid to be on boards, way easier and more money, especially when you count dollars per hour. I'll give you another example. We just did a podcast with Samir from

Colin and Samir. And in that, he talks about like, they got their start doing something that like nobody would look at it, be like, this is a good business plan. He was like, we're going to basically, I think they were fans of lacrosse or they were lacrosse or they were lacrosse players or something. And they created like a lacrosse sports commentary network. work on YouTube. It's like niche of a niche of a niche. And they did this pretty early on YouTube. And honestly, it didn't work that well. But it did two things. It taught them about YouTube and making videos. And now their YouTube channel is like million subscribers. It's a, you know, it's a multi-million dollar brand easily. So that taught them that. But also when they were doing that, when they were

following the lacrosse scene, they saw this one guy. He was the best lacrosse player in the country. And he's like, wanted to go pro, but there's like no pro scene for lacrosse. You get paid. nothing. And so he's like, dude, if I go pro, I make $35,000 a year, this sucks. He's like, screw it. I'm going to make my own lacrosse league. And this guy created his own lacrosse league. Well, guess who became the first investor in the lacrosse league? Severe. Um, because anyway, he's like, I didn't have a lot of money. I put in whatever. I don't know what it was. Let's pretend it's 10 grand. But like that lacrosse league is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He got out of the very beginning. So like in this weird way, he's going to make, he'll probably have made more from

that one investment than all of the. the YouTube action he was trying to do along the way, but it only would have happened by being in the game and giving yourself that opportunity to get lucky. I think it's called the arena. It's being in the arena, shot. It's hazardous for brown guys like me to say the arena. I don't want to get caught in that fire. You could say that. He's in the arena. That's good. And by the way, that podcast was great. The second thing that I've consumed lately, I've been reading like crazy. So you and Andrew kind of got me turn on this. I don't really love investing,

but I wanted to learn more about it. And so I read Warren Buffett's biography, not the one Snowball, because that's too long. It's like a thousand pages. This one's called Making of an American Capitalist. Have you ever read anything about Buffett? Back of the day, like 10 years ago, I read a Buffett book, but I don't really remember it, to be honest.

Man, I didn't know anything about, I didn't really know anything about him, but there's a few traits about him that are crazy. The one, like, he's got like this aw shucks, demeanor. Like, I'm from the Midwest. Like, what do I know? You know, I just... Super charismatic. He could be president. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's mostly kind of bullshit in a sense, like, the guy's a genius. Like, he's like the 1% of the 1% in terms of IQ, in terms of horsepower. And there's this crazy story where he's like helping to buy, I think it's Solomon Brothers or

no, sorry, it's ABC. So he's buying ABC for multi billions of dollars. And he's sitting at his desk. And they're like, all right, let's work out the deal. He goes, oh, no, let's just work it out right now. And he's like, well, what about your analyst? Like, where are they? He goes, I'm the computer. It's all here. And he doesn't have a calculator.

He doesn't have anything like that. He's like, we're going to do the deal right now. And I can just do it in my head. And he just memorizes all these, their annual reports and all their numbers. And then he like does the math in their head. He's like, if I, Warren goes, if I can't do the math in my head, then I don't understand this deal. And I probably shouldn't do it.

So his IQ is crazy. The second thing is that his discipline is super strong. So before he had Berkshire Hathway, he had a, a fund with like, I think it started with like a hundred grand or something, not substantial, but it was growing 30% a year. And he did that for like 10 years. And in the 60s, he just shut it down. And they're like, why are you shutting this down?

He's like, well, I just don't see any good opportunities right now. You know, like I said, I'm looking for good opportunities. I don't see any right now. So I'm just going to shut this down. And so he just doesn't, he quit investing and had a little mini retirement. He's incredibly disciplined. And then the last thing is that he has super high. integrity. So, like, he's only sued someone one time. And that time was when he gave a guy,

a charity, $25,000, and the guy robbed him of the, and he didn't actually provide the charitable work. That's the only time he sued someone. And there was another time where he was being investigated by the Senate. They thought that he was insider trading because he did a few things that were, like, smart and he just made the right calls. And after investigating him for two or three years. They're like, hey, do you want to like join this committee on like fraud because you're really smart and you're like the most honest guy we've met? And he joined the committee. There's another time where he wants to, he's like in this country club and he's like, hey, why don't we let Jewish people in this country club? This is pretty ridiculous. And he's like, and the guys were

like, look, the Jews have their own thing. They have their own country club. It's 100% Jewish. let the Jews go there. So instead of putting up a fuss about it, he goes and joins the Jewish country club. He goes, hey, they integrate and they let non-Jews into their thing. I think we should do that to our thing. And that's like how he goes about doing stuff. He's like not confrontational, but he's like pretty slick. And then the last thing, I guess, is he basically

for the first like 40 years of his career, he only read annual reports. And that's how he got his information. So people are like, how are you so good? And he's like, dude, I just read like five annual reports a day. And all the information that I'm using, he was like, I don't even have a computer. I don't have a terminal. All the information that I use, any one of you out there can go to a library and get that same information. So super unique guy. So I've been very fascinated with him, but he's got one downside. Do you know what is, you know, he's like a shit family man, right?

Right. Yeah. He's a very weird, a strange family dynamic. So he got divorced. Yeah. But then. He didn't get divorced. So his wife, Susie, they, she was like a hippie. And for some reason, he was into that. and they were married and he loved her and everything. But she was one day, she goes, you know, Warren, I just want to go off to San Francisco and I want to do my own thing, but we're not going to get a divorce. And he's like,

all right, cool. And she goes, also, I have my friend named Astrid. She's going to come over and take care of you. I thought it was her sister. It's not her sister.

It's just a friend. It was someone she was friendly with. Okay. And so within a week of Astrid taking care of Buffett, of Warren, they are like lovers and like she moves in and they like date. However, like,

they're all friends with each other. And so Susie's like, Hey, Ashtred, I think you should redecorate the house from when I did it. It's getting a little old. Like, she gives her tips on taking care of him. And then, like,

when Buffett has to go to, like, these big, like presidential public meetings or he's meeting with Senate or whatever, Susie comes. When he wants to go and do like some local stuff or like some stuff that doesn't require a lot of press,

Astrid comes and they take turns. And every once in them up, it's like a really big thing. They're both go and they'll team up and they'll support them. It's very interesting. and it's very strange. But he's not a very present father,

and he's super fucking cheap with this kid. So there was a time when his daughter was living in a really crappy apartment, and she had just had a baby, and this one of Buffett's friends goes to check on her, and the daughter can barely see the TV because it's a little small black and white TV. And the friend goes,

Warren, you should buy her a big screen TV, man. She just had a baby. She's sitting in this shitty apartment. Just buy her fucking TV. And he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to buy her a TV. And it took him convincing to,

He's like, I don't want to spoil them. And so he's really cheap and like it didn't seem like the best father. I like that. There's one thing I always remember about Buffett that are like two things that I really like about Buffett. I have a whole doc that I keep called Buffettisms. And because he has this skill of telling like these tiny stories, these little parables that are both funny and interesting and then make his point for him. And I just feel like he's got an arsenal of these. And so I've been, I don't read a lot of his books, but I watch a lot of his talks.

and I watch a lot of their annual shareholder meetings to try to find these. Little phrases he uses that I am like, oh, this guy is so charming, but also he does a great job of making his point using that. Another one, another thing I like about Buffett is he said one thing once that really stuck with me. He goes,

the stock market, like people like, why don't more people get rich? He goes, because they don't really understand how the game works. He goes, the best rule of this entire game in the stock market is that, you don't have to play.

He's like, most people's problem is that they just do too many things. They make too many investments. They buy and sell too many things. And they feel constantly compelled to like come to an answer on should they or shouldn't they do X? And he's like, you really just have to sit and wait for the fat pitch.

You just don't have to do. You don't have to swing. That's where you got your fat pitch thing. Yeah, exactly. There are no called strikes in investing. Like you could sit there all day and just watch pitches go by and just wait for the fat pitch. The problem is people suck at waiting. And that really stood out to me because I'm somebody who historically is very bad at waiting. I'm a very impulsive, impatient person. It serves you

well as an entrepreneur to be very impatient. You take a bunch of action. As an investor, impatience and impulsiveness is a terrible trait. So as I've shifted my career to go from an entrepreneur to investor, I had to ask myself, what do I need to relearn? What do I need to unlearn? What served me as an entrepreneur that's not going to serve me as an investor? And let me make that, a switch. And that was one of the key switches that I realized I had to make. And I just and I agree. That's a that's a really good lesson. And I think he stole that from, um, Teddy Williams, like a famous baseball player who hit lots of home runs. And he like, Teddy Williams made this like graph. He just, he was a strike zone. So it was just a strike zone. And he's like, look, my batting average,

if I hit a pitch in this bottom corner is pretty low. I might make connection with the, with the pitch. It might be a strike, but my batting average is low. I should, I really shouldn't even swing at that pitch, even though it's a strike. He's like, I'm looking for stuff in the sweet spot because here I'm over 400, right? So Ted Williams has the greatest batting average ever. And one of the reasons why was he was more disciplined than others in what pitches he would swing at. He would really wait for those fat pitches, whereas most batters get quite impatient and start just hacking at everything. But my issue with Warren's advice on that stuff was, all right, well, what's a good pitch look like? And so I ordered this book that's going to, it's like,

they didn't make a lot of copies of it. But so I had to find out. on Amazon, and it's going to take two or three weeks to come, but it's... Like how you just said Amazon, like it's like some niche bookstore you went to. It's a small thing. I had to go to Amazon.com to find it. It's this little book,

this little mom and pop boutique. But they analyze all of his deals and they write out what he saw in them. Because I'm trying to figure out, okay, you're telling me what a bad one looks like, what's a good one look like? And so, that's some of the content that I've been consuming.

It's been good. I've been reading like a book or two a week. It's because Kindle, you read on Kindle ever? Yeah, yeah, that's all I read on pretty much. I'll start on Kindle and then if I like the book, I'll order the hardcover so that I have it around the house to just remember it, pick it up whenever I want. But I start on Kindle. Well, they have this like percentage bar at the bottom where it says what percentage of

the book that you've read. And I'm like, I'm going to get through 20% every night. And it's been awesome. So shout out to Kindle. You got you nailed it. Gameified your ass. Okay, so let me tell you two things that are interesting. One, the content I consumed, so I listened to this podcast by our friend David Senra.

I don't know that well. I hung out with him one time, and he's a total nut in the best way. Like, he's a thousand miles a minute, but I want to share with you, he did a pod the other day that. I thought it was really good called, I think it was called The Greatest. interview I've ever done. And it was basically some, Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviewing him. They're like,

what did you notice about a lot of, you've studied all these great men and history, right? You read these biographies and what are some common things that you see? He goes, the story of the son, the story of the son is, uh,

begins at the end of the story of the father. So basically like, uh, embedded in the story of the son is the story of the father. And he's like, this is very, very common. Whether the father was great in all these ways,

often you'll see the son. take a totally different approach. Or if the father was limiting a hard ass or really brutal in one way, the son takes that trauma and basically uses it in what they do. And I thought that was pretty cool. Second thing he said about reading

that I really liked, he goes, they go, do you reread books? And he goes, yeah, of course. I love rereading books. Read books all the time. And I think a common thing would be like, oh, isn't that kind of a waste to read what you've already read?

It's like, you've already read that book. It's the same thing. Why not read something new? And he said it really well. he goes, I read books like several years apart often. And he goes, the words are the same, but I've changed. He's like, you know, I'm a different guy than I was when I first read that book. So the second time I read it, I've had years of life experience.

I've read 100 other books. I've had all these things that I've done in my life. And now the same words mean something totally different to me or I've elevated understanding or memory or different things stands out to me. I thought that was a really great insight on rereading because I'm a big fan of rereading. I'd rather find a great thing and soak in it versus trying to just move on to the next and count the number of books I can read in a year. And I thought that point he brought up is one that I really never heard.

I also thought that he did an amazing job of almost like building his personal story. So he said it really well. Why did you start doing this? Why did you start this whole thing where you're reading all these books and you're doing this podcast? How did you even have the inspiration for that? He goes, look, man, my childhood was not the best. Like, I grew up and my parents did their best, but they weren't necessarily the best. He goes, I'm the only person of my family to ever graduate from high school.

And he's like, I wanted to be successful, but everywhere I looked around me, all I saw was the wrong answer. All I saw was what not to do. I didn't read just a hobby for fun. I read because I was looking for the answers. I wanted to know what two do. do because all I saw in my life was not to do. That's what led me to reading the biographies, the greatest people. He goes, I've spent the last, you know, whatever, 10 years of my life having one-way

conversations with the greatest people ever to live on this earth. And he goes, that's what I think about reading. He goes, I think reading is having a one-way conversation with the greatest people on earth. And he goes, and he goes, and the podcast, people are like, why'd you start a podcast? I don't know, man. I didn't even start it. He goes, this is just an obsession. I'm just studying these people.

I needed a way to put my thoughts down. he goes, this is an obsession disguised as a podcast. And I loved it. I was like, wow. Dude, he's good. These are very little one line. He's very lyrical with it. And so I'm very impressed by David Senra.

I think he's doing a great job. And yeah, it was a fun, fun thing to consume. I joked with them. I was like, you know, like, David, I got turned off on reading a lot of these books for a while because I would listen to him on Audible and I had my favorite narrators. And I would go like, oh, I love this guy's voice. What else did he read this narrate? And this guy has read like a thousand, narrated a thousand books.

And I'm like, how the fuck is this guy still a narrator? What'd you think if you read all these business books? He would be way more successful. That's kind of what I'm bringing up here. Like, I love the way he phrases things. I think it's really compelling. I actually don't agree with him that like you're not actually having one way conversations with the greatest people on earth.

It's not like you needed to do all of that to be successful. Actually, you should probably just get out there and do some things. Right. I actually could argue a bunch of the other sides, but what's the point? The fact that he believes that is going to lead him to a really great and successful place. I don't subscribe to all his thoughts, but I am a fan of his level of intensity and conviction in himself and what he's doing. In California, like I think in the 90s, they banned weightlifting in the prisons because they're like, holy shit, we're built it super criminals. These guys are getting yoked.

They're like too big. And they're like they're surrounded by other criminals. they can talk about the best way to do stuff and now they're fucking bench pressing 500 pounds. These are super criminals. We've got to get rid of them. David is like becoming a super criminal a little bit. He's like one of the guys who's like reading it and like inviting the stuff. Just cranking away.

He's plotting. David's plotting. I feel like I could be like, hey David he's sitting there reading a book. I'm like David, you like that book? He's like, I love this book. Are you joking me? And I'm like, David, in this room right over here, Heidi Kloom is standing there naked She's surrounded by all the best desserts You could ever eat

Michelin Star desserts The music, it's the greatest music You've ever heard All of the unreleased Drake albums are in here It's the best music It's the best party There's no other guys in here Just all naked supermodels

And David, the best part is When you walk in, you become a billionaire And I think he'd be like He wouldn't have even heard anything He'd just be turning the page to the next face Like this guy doesn't want to do anything else They would have licked his fingers It just looks back down.

I just turn the page. The silence, chump, I'm reading. And that's the best compliment and the best insult I can give him at the same time. Like, I think it is amazing that he is that way, that he's, he really feels like this is the best thing that anyone can possibly do. He can't believe nobody else is doing this. He doesn't, it's like, this is the peak of the peak of life experience. I'm inspired by him. Anything else that you've consumed that you like?

Not a consume, but I have a different. So in the way that I'm like, I'm, by the way that I'm like, by the way. way, I hope he doesn't take a fan of these things. But like, yeah, I'm a huge fan of David. I'm a fan of his stuff. And I think he does an amazing job. And I have no vested interest in his success except for, I think he's really cool. And I think he does a great job.

I appreciate his craft. And he's one of the few pods that I like listened to on a regular basis. It's quite good. Yeah, that was like a genuine endorsement. It's called founders, by the way. The pod is called founders. So we'll give him some love. The other thing that, so I'm, so the other interesting experience I had was I recognize I'm

drawn to people like him, people who are slightly extreme. who are obsessed, who have a independent-mindedness, they're deciding how they want to live life, and their rubric of success is different than others, right? That's what I just described about him that I like. Ben had a meeting with somebody,

and he comes back. He calls me, oh, dude, I bet this guy, he's great, he's doing this thing. And he just kept saying, he said two or three times,

he's like, really great guy. And I was like, I was like, man, why is he such a great guy? Like, you're only been there for 45 minutes.

Like, you know, what do you mean by that? Why did you, you kept saying, I really liked him. I really liked him. I really like what he's doing. I go, do you really like what he's doing? Or you really like him? I go, let me guess. Was he high energy when he talked? A nice guy, like simple. That didn't intimidate you by kind of being a hard ass about anything. And did he teach you one or two interesting things during the conversation? He goes, bingo. I know, Ben, because that's your archetype of what you really like. That's why you really like me. I'm a high energy guy. I'm a nice guy. I don't like, you know, I don't like, kind of push people into a place that they feel uncomfortable.

And I'll usually, if you talk to me for an hour, you're going to learn one or two things. That's why we get along. And I said, you know, one thing we should do as again, how do you become a great, how do you shift from operator to maybe spending more time investing is I think we got to investigate what are our bias in our blind spots. So basically, we made a little list of what's the personality archetype? I am irrationally drawn towards. For me, it's the David Sennep.

Rotypes. It's the slightly extreme, uncomfortable ambition around their thing, independent-mindedness, obsession with their craft. I am drawn to that. I will make mistakes. It's like a girl who's like, he's a six, but he's wearing a leather jacket. It's like, it just does something to me. I got to go for him. Like, that's what I'm drawn to. And I was like, on the other side, what can't I stand? Somebody who's just dry. If you have no sense of humor, if you're dry, like, you could be the smartest guy in the world sitting on a gold mine of a business. If you're boring, within five minutes, I'm like, this guy sucks. I'm

out. And, you know, I'm just like... Who's an example of that? Like a famous person. Well, dude, I'm not trying to make a... Well, a famous, like a... Or like a someone who you've read about. Let's see. A public person. I don't know off the top of my head. Do you have one? Who's just dry? I mean,

there's like a bunch of like famous investors and shit who I've read about and I'm like, this is a snooze fest. Yeah, there's like... just like some, I don't know, enterprise SaaS or these people who are like, yeah, we just make the best, we're like, you know, we just provide solid procurement services to others, right? It's like, I don't know. And they don't have a lot of hobbies. Yeah, I'm like, do you love that? Like, no, but we serve us a need. And it's like, cool. Like, what are some of the cool growth hacks you've been doing? They're like, oh, we don't really need growth hacks. We grow 17% year over year. It's like, we just, we just, I need to get out of this conversation right now. Like, I'm, I feel itchy. Like, like, I got to get out of here. Whenever I read about like hedge fund guys, I'm like, this is a snooze fest, dude.

You're just like this like when they do like a lot of like fast trading. Unless they're kind of like a criminal and kind of doing drugs, then I'm in. Well, yeah, I'm always down with like, I love a good crime story. Unless you're driving your, your successful life off a cliff, I'm out. Yeah, yeah, I need some drama. But like whenever I read about like hedge fund guys, I'm like, dude, you're just playing on Excel all day. I don't find that enjoyable to hear about. But I think, I think it is useful.

It was a useful exercise for us to do, which was what are you irrationally draw towards that you should probably like dial it down discount, be able to apply a discount after the fact when you're when you're out of heat. And then what do you have an irrational distaste for where you're going to underprice or underestimate somebody? And actually you shouldn't be.

People have been talking about like bias and like the stuff like, but like they almost came at it from like a diversity and inclusion point of view. For me, I, you know, like sure, that's fine. But I've never been like drawn to like,

you know, I've never been drawn to like, never been drawn to spending a bunch of time thinking about that. However, for this, I immediately saw for myself, oh yeah, I could see myself making mistakes being overly generous towards a certain personality type. You say the certain three key phrases and I'm all in. And I'm, I'm kind of repelled from these things, even though I really shouldn't be. It's actually, like, I don't need to be your friend. I just, like, if I'm investing in you, I don't need to think you're cool and want to hang with you. I just need to be able to understand what you're doing and invest in it.

do you feel like you have the same thing? Do you have a thing you're drawn to? Like I feel like one of yours, I'll just say it out loud, is I feel like you're drawn to people who are very meticulous and orderly in the way they operate. Like if somebody's got like a system and like they're a stickler for the details, I feel like in your like they go up 100 points in your book, whereas for me that doesn't really do it. That does it for me because I envy that because that's not my natural. You know, like my wife is. like that. I'm drawn to people who are orderly and systematic and

discipline, like people who wake up at 5 a.m. every morning. That's not me. And so, like, I'm really fascinated by people who, like, grind really hard and are systematic and are operational and things like that. I get a lot of joy being around those people because I'm not like that. Can I tell you real quick

about a cool thing? Because I feel like we did a bunch of fluffy stuff today. Okay, I got to get a rant off my chest. People are really drawn to things that are highly tactical or highly like specific versus and complex versus things that are simple but might be a little bit airy. Let me give you an example. When I was in L.A., we did a bunch of those dinners with founders.

And I think I said this in my debrief, but I'll point out again, people, the conversation when it ever go, like you have a bunch of people who have all sold their company. Everybody in the thing is successful by traditional measures. And the conversation would always gravitate towards two subjects, like health and longevity, or just like kind of like being happy, being a happier person, some sort of like life quality of life improvement. Rich guy problems. Rich guy shit. Because like, oh, I've already made it.

But yeah, I feel like I'm not as happy as I thought it would be. So then what? You know, like, and the longevity health things gives them a new, like, the carrot to chase. And they kind of feel like they neglected it while running their company. and the life quality. Everybody actually just wants a high quality of life. They just don't know how to ask the questions around it. And what you would see was two things.

Somebody would say something like that was just like simple and useful. They'd be like, yeah, you know, I just like, I'm, you know, before bed, I don't really use my phone. I just actually kind of review the day and think about like, you know, how I did and what, you know, just in general, like my interactions of the day, what I might have done differently. And like, you know, and I'm like, oh, I do that too. I have this thing called revision. And it's like, I just kind of see the day events of my day.

and I just go back and just play them out a little differently in my head. It's really useful. And people are like, the reaction to something like that, if you just kind of tell people like, hey, you know,

here's a simple thing you could do. Imagine what you want and what it would feel like to have it. Or think about how your day went to just be kind of mindful and thoughtful about like, you know, versus just always on to the next thing.

And the reaction I would get would be like, cool. And the cool is kind of like, cool, good for you. Like, I ain't doing that shit. Like,

you know, Don't tell me to be alone with my thoughts. And then somebody would be like, yeah, you know, I really, I was feeling kind of, you know, I've just been feeling like I'm in a funk. And so I started taking, you know, six milligrams of low dose, no trax alone. And then people are like, what, what is it? And they're like getting their pay, literally everyone gets a phone out. They start, what is it called?

How do you spell that? I'm like, are you just going to take this random drug, this person you've never met? And they'd be like, but how many milligrams? Is that five? Is five what they say? Where do you get it? Can I order right now before I leave this dinner? and I'm like, y'all motherfuckers are crazy.

Why are people so attracted to the pill? The complex thing you can't even pronounce that just might do it for you. Or they'd be like, yeah, I hired this, you know, this functional cognitive coach. And they'd be like, what's his name? Does he take more clients? Here's the money. And I'm like, bro, have you tried like fucking writing down like, you know, your thoughts for a second? Like nobody wants the simple thing.

Like, nobody wants the simple obvious thing. I just thunk it up. I just thunk in my bed and it worked. I was like, hey, here's what I do. You know, when I go into a situation, instead of just reacting like, oh, it's kind of cold out here, so I'm uncomfortable. Now I feel bad. I'm a little bit bothered by that.

I just decide before I go in, like, you know what? I want to have a, I want to have a like a playful experience. I want to have a laughing experience right now. And then I'll just like, I was like, I decide that. Then I go in and I have that. I look for those moments and I create that. experience for myself. It's pretty amazing. You could just do this. You can just decide what experience you want and then go

have it. And they're like, is it? Okay, can the next person say like a pill that I could take? Like some new, neutropic that's going to help me. They're like, all right, Sean, but can I put that in my body intravenously? Like, does it come with needles or do I buy them? I'm just like, y'all are insane. You're insane. Or this guy's like,

he's like, you know, I, um, I really want to like, what's that, you know, this equipment. Oh, I bought all this exercise equipment. I'm like, Biss, do you walk? Do you even have like 30 minutes a day? He's like, no, no, I don't exercise. I don't have time. But I'm building out this home gym.

And I'm building it out. I'm like, you know, you could just do pushups on the floor, right? You don't have to first buy $10,000 of equipment before you can work out. Like, there's no gate to pass. You can literally just do 10 things, 10 push up right now. In fact, let's do that right now. And people are not ready for simple. action that doesn't require

a magic bullet solution and it always the hell out of me. I'm like, are you guys, is everybody around me insane? That's how I feel. Well, like, when people say magic pill, I definitely automatically get interested because like, I would like that. Like, why don't want?

They say shortcuts. Like, it's a bad thing. But it's like, yeah, I mean, if I can get to my destination shorter and faster, I'm in. They're not even shortcuts. Literally, this shit that I was talking about,

this low-dose fucking whatever it's called, no drachs alone. I don't know what it was. Because guess what? I don't care. Don't need it. But I was like, so does this work?

Like, if you felt like an amazing difference? The person was like, no, you have to take it for six months first for your body to acrimate. I'm like, you're getting hosed.

Like, okay, honestly, I don't know what this drug does. Maybe it's useful. Maybe it's a specific thing. I'm kind of jokes aside. But I,

For that person who got it prescribed, maybe they needed it. For the other eight bastards at the dinner who were like immediately trying to order it, I was like, y'all don't need this. Like, you don't need that right now. That is not the answer to whatever you're, whatever hole you're trying to fill right now. Like, there is no chance that that is the correct first step you should be taking. Well, I think we talked about like the different types of procrastination. Like there's actually good types of procrastination, which is like the forgetful scientist who

like forgets to like shower or like put on the right pair of science. It's like, oh, that's all right. He's doing the big things right. That's okay. And then there's like the bad type, which is like making plans that don't need to be planned or like buying domain names or like going back and color coding it afterwards. Like, dude, it's okay. Yeah.

Or like in this case, it's like buying pills when it's like, just 10,000 steps a day will do the trick as well. But that's really funny. That's a good story. I would have liked to have seen you in that room. Yeah. I was just like, you guys are nuts. But, okay, now to satisfy this stuff.

I like this stuff, by the way. I like this stuff. Me too. I love this stuff. It interests me most because tactics change. Strategies don't. You know what I'm saying? Like, I like talking about strategy sometimes.

Dude, have you been following the presidential debates and campaign stuff that's going on? Did you watch the Republican debate? I watched the clips. The, so everyone is, it seems like the Vivek is, uh, wow. There's two ways to say his name that. One is the right one. One is the wrong one. And you just came with a third Vivek.

Holy, holy, holy wow. It's V-I-V-E-K, right? Vivek is the way you say. So some people say V-V-V-E-C, and you went, you went, I don't even know where you just went. Dude, that's like correcting me if I say it, like, Lady Gaga. Yeah. Are you a big Lady Gaga fan?

I mean, come on. So he was like the star of the debate. Because he's just looking at him. The guy is like a debate champion. I was like what this guy is trained to do. But he's still polling like, you know, I don't know, 10% or something like that. So I think it's all, I mean, I think Donald Trump's going to win. But I didn't want to tell you a funny thing that I remembered when I watched that debate.

You watched it? Oh, I love watching. I don't care about politics, but I love watching fights. I would not have thought that. I love the debates. I love the strategy of the debates. I love watching. It's content creation.

I just love watching the strategy that these guys take into. it. I couldn't care less about who gets picked. Couldn't care less about their policies because they don't care about the policies as far as I'm concerned. To me, it's a popularity contest, and I like to see who markets themselves better. I think there's a lot to learn from that. But one of the things that's, I remembered was back in the day, I was working at Monkey Inferno, and I used to work for a guy named Michael Birch. And Michael Birch is a very interesting guy. he has built and sold multiple companies. So he sold Bebo famously for $850 million.

Of which him and his wife owned it. So they got. They owned a whole thing. Yeah. So it was a huge exit for husband and wife couple. Before that, he had built another social network sold for a few, you know, single digit millions of dollars. So he kind of made one, sold it for a few million bucks.

Then as soon as a non-compete ended, he created it again. He's like, oh, now I know what I should have done the first time. And that became the $850 million. But he also created birthday alarm, which is a company that had millions of dollars in cash flow every year. So he had had multiple wins. Very interesting guy.

But ever since the big Bebo acquisition, he created this idea lab, but he kind of transitioned to a different phase of life almost. He was like, you know, I'm not like, you know, what do I care? It's sort of like, yeah, I angel invest, but like, you know, does it really matter? Like I kind of already won the money game in a way, right?

He wouldn't say that, but you could just tell it. It's not like his heart was in that. Is he a billionaire at this point, you think? Even that he's like, I'm not really a billionaire, but who cares? You know, like, I, you know, he's, he's at that 510, 511 range. And like, you know, those guys want to be six foot. He was like, that's pretty much six, right? With shoes. He's like, you know, he's at 800 million or 900 million or something like that. He's like, I don't know. I don't really keep track it. Doesn't really matter. It seems, seems like overkill to care about something like that. That's a nice billionaire response. He did two interesting things. One, he built a private members club in San Francisco. So he bought a, old candy factory that was 60,000 square feet that was abandoned because it needed tons of like seismic retrofitting. Nobody wanted to put in millions of dollars it would take to retrofit this place. He did it. And he built a members club. So if you go to San Francisco, you can go to this place called the Battery. And it's like Soho House, but for San Francisco built that thing into

a real juggernaut. Like it actually like totally came to fruition. This idea that seemed kind of crazy and he had no experience and it never done hospitality, never done any of that stuff. One time I went there and I saw a booth of three people and it was a ball like imagine a monk wearing like the Dalai Lama like orange outfit. Like he was baldheaded and sandals with like a black guy that looked like a rapper. Like he had like gold chains on in like six shoes and then this blonde hair lady. And they were all leading in having a conversation. And I was like this is just the funniest place I've ever been to. Yeah, that's like the start of a joke.

A monk, a rapper and Cheryl Sandberg walk into a bar. I mean, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio there, you know, tons of famous Elon Musk, a bunch of famous people go there. Anyways, so that was one thing he did. But he always had these like random ideas. And once in a while he would just be like, Sean, I'd like to have an idea for you. And he would pitch me this idea. And one of the ideas he had was around the presidential debate. He goes, you know, Trump got elected in, I think, what, 2016?

He was thinking about it for 2020. He was like, you know, I think there's. a good chance that Trump gets reelected again. And he's like, you know, if you think about why, a lot of people in Silicon Valley don't really fully, you know, they're like, they take these like, you know, strong stances on what it means, what, you know, is it because part of America feels repressed and they're reacting to the liberal neo-con, they start making up all these words. He's like, I don't know if it's that as much as it is that Donald Trump was the more charismatic candidate. And he's like, if

you go back and you look throughout time, he's like, in every debate, or sorry, every race, um, if you go back to the last like 12 elections, which is like, you know, 50 years or something like that, the more charismatic candidate tends to win. Not always, but tends to win. And they're usually like tall, not ugly people. Yeah, he was just like, the more charismatic candidate wins. So it's as simple as that, right? Like maybe you're charismatic because you're really good looking and you're, you know, maybe it's that. Maybe it's that you got the gift of gab and you're like, you know, maybe an Obama or Reagan or something like that.

You know, Clinton, you know, somebody who is just seen as very, very charming. People always felt that about Bill Clinton. So he's like, you know, the more charismatic candidate tends to win, even though, you know, there are other reasons why you might pick, you know, why pick John Kerry over George Bush. Actually, George Bush is the more charismatic candidate versus John Kerry or Al Gore or whatever it is.

And so he's like, you know, I think that given that that's the case, he's like, I don't think that should be the case, but I think it is. I don't think you can be able to change that. He goes, I feel like what the Democrats should do is they need to put forward the most charismatic candidate they can. And I would say he turned out to be wrong in that they put Joe Biden, who's one of the least charismatic candidates, and he won almost because the vote was basically Donald Trump or not Donald Trump.

So I actually think it was a bit of anomaly. I actually think he was correct. And you're seeing this right now. DeSantis has more experience, had the machine behind him, had the track record. But he's just not charismatic. He doesn't have that, that's you. He doesn't have that sauce. And so a guy like Vivek can come out and he's a better talker.

He's got more energy. He's got better one-liners, zingers. He's willing to take stands that will draw attention to him. And he's the more charismatic candidate. He's driving up. So Michael's idea was, let's create a TV show. He's like, you know, just like the way. we did American Idol and we did

The Apprentice, why don't why isn't their show called the president? And we literally just cast people who want to be the president, but we give them an avenue. He's like, because right now the candidates all come from the machine. It's like, you know, the party is going to

kind of push their favorite candidates forward and this is based on how controllable they are, how likable they are, how much time they put in into the party. He's like, I don't think that's necessarily putting the strongest candidate forward, especially if you looked at this most charismatic candidate. So he's like, why don't you create a show?

That's going to take 12 hopefuls, and it tells their story. The show works almost like a survivor or an apprentice. Every week, they go to a new city. Maybe they go to some coal mining place in wherever, West Virginia, and they're going to talk to the coal miners that they're sort of a challenge. They have to prepare a speech or talking points for what they would do to help those people. And then those people kind of vote off the weakest. candidate. And at the end, you're left with the most charismatic candidate. And he's like,

that would be a challenger to whoever the Democratic Party is naturally going to put up. And I loved this idea. I was like, this is a crazy idea. And he's like, yeah, my friend, Mark Burnett, who created Survivor, like, he could be the producer of this. And we could put this together this way. And, you know, even if it doesn't work, like, you know, I think it would just be like a worthwhile attempt in an entertaining way to do this versus like, if I really want to get involved in politics, the reason I don't is that's a sort of a very like, it's not a, you know,

it's a laborious and sort of painful endeavor. This would be almost a fun version of like a way to try to bring some influence to it. What do you think of this idea that I just remember? Did it go anywhere? Or is he just goofing around? He also, so he wrote a memo. It was

a very well-written memo. Is that the rich guy version of Biden the domain name? Yeah. Yeah, he wrote a wrote a memo, he showed it to me. And I'm like, this is great. And I think he was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, this is going to take some real kind of like social

capital to do. And I think he kind of was like, maybe not. Maybe my life is amazing as is. That's his version of like when the remote is just a little bit too far with you're laid down. And you're like, I'll sleep with the TV on. Yeah.

But I've loved this idea. And I'm saying it because, I think that more business people should apply their kind of creative and entrepreneurial talents outside of just creating yet another business. So I liked that he was taking his creative and entrepreneurial spirit to be like, oh, how could I, what if I did a TV show that would influence politics? I thought that was cool. And I think more people should do that. The second reason is, I kind of wish this idea existed. And I totally think this would work if somebody created it. So what's funny is like because you and I've I've I've I've I've complimented you with this

but this is actually a criticism at this point for this particular point. This is a compliment Sam Park special. I don't even know what that meant. Should I prepare myself for a compliment or insult? Just tell me that. The compliment was that you're worry free and like you're pretty optimistic and you always like that person, they're not trying to do anything bad. There comes the bitch slap.

But in this case, when I hear this, I'm like, but I want like my present. to like know what they're doing and not just be able to like be a good speech giver. And so like, dude, that's what we have now. You think Joe Biden knows what he's doing? The guy's not even alive. Well, I'm not saying what I know works and what I know doesn't work. I'm just saying that like my romantic view is like, well, that would be, it would be also nice if they knew what they were talking about rather than just good at talking.

Yet your take on this is like, wouldn't it be cool if we just let the most charismatic person run away with it? Well, you know, I think you could design the challenges to actually get them, force them to think on the spot or perform in terms of figuring out solutions to real problems or like putting forth what their solutions would be in a way that's not just prepared by handlers who have talking points and they're going to avoid the issue or false promises or whatever. Like these people that would be in this, you could design the weekly challenge to bring out

whatever it is that you want. Obviously, people fall in love with the characters. That's how all reality TV works. you fall in love with the characters. However, you could fall in love with them as they're trying to do certain things. In the same way that the apprentice would test you for, can you figure out how to sell? Can you figure out how to organize a project or manage a plan? I think you could put people through a battery of weekly challenges that are not just,

are you good at kissing babies and shaking hands? But like, you know, that's part of it. But there could be other parts of it that, you know, the show decides is like, you know, what are the attributes that a president needs or the qualities or what do we wish we could see them doing to be able to assess their abilities? I think the cynical person would say, well, we should look at their track record serving in government. Yeah, cool, but that doesn't happen. It's not really what happens. It's not really what works. If that worked, you know, Trump would never have beaten Hillary. She had spent her whole life in politics. She was by far on paper the more qualified candidate.

But America didn't get to see that. They didn't get to appreciate that. All they saw was what gets put forward today, which is debates and campaigning on social media or on TV. There's this funny story about JFK when, do you remember like what the Cold War was, you know, it was in the 60s where like we thought that Soviet Union in America, we're going to like bomb each other. Yeah. There's a story where JFK, John Kennedy, goes to Soviet Union and he meets with the president or the leader of Soviet Union.

And at the end of the meeting, the leader was like, you know, you're a really nice person. You kind of reminded me of my son. I guess like we could be, we could be cool. Like, you know, you seem, you seem kind. And I read that story and I was like, oh, I guess like charisma really does matter a whole lot when it comes to like diplomatic stuff. Like just being likable and being like, hey, let's just calm down, be friends. It definitely is. Tony Robbins tells the story.

I don't know if this is real or not. But who was the, you know, who was the president during the Cold War? Is that? Well, Kennedy. Kennedy, for, Cold War was a long period. but Kennedy was like when we thought that we were literally going to bomb each other. Okay, there was, I don't, I feel like it wasn't Kennedy he was talking about, but Tony Robbins tells the story. He goes, I was, I had a chance to talk to former president, whoever, let's just pretend I know, I care about presidential history.

Sure. And he's like, the Cold War was happening and he went to go see, I think it was Cold War. People who actually know about this are going to, you have full permission to beat me up in the comments. So he goes to see Gorbachev and, um, they have a meeting and the meeting. and the meeting is not going well. The hope was we could de-escalate, but actually the meeting was sort of like tension. And neither side wanted to give,

and they were sort of getting more dug-in and more stubborn in their stance. And this would be Reagan, Ronald Reagan. Reagan. All my married man out there know when this happens. You think you're going into de-escalate, but actually both sides are what Sam Park calls, dug in.

And the tension is escalating. He doesn't know really what to do. And he goes, how did you do it? he's like something happened in that meeting that worked what was it he goes well we hit that point i said this is not going to work and i got up then i walked out of the room fast stormed out of the room and right before i got to the door i hit him with a little 360 turned back big smile on my face said let's start over smile and i shook his hand and said i'm ronald and you know i really appreciate these things about you and he like turned he just basically like you know broke the frame

for a second and used a little bit of charisma, a little bit of playfulness in order to reduce tension. And then they had a conversation. Now, I have no idea of the story is true. Tony Robbins told me this. I believed it in the moment because it's a great story and why let the truth get in the way of a good story. If it is true, that's unbelievable.

If it's partially true, that's really cool. If it's totally made up, whatever. You know, it's okay. The story still serves its purpose. It is a very useful technique to be, able to do this, to be able to use a little bit of charisma and playfulness in order to diffuse a situation or to break through any like deadlocks that exist, whether it's in business

or in personal life. So either Vibeck is just not charismatic or I'm an idiot, but let me tell you a really quick story. I have, so I've turned down two presidential candidates to either come on this pot or speak at my events. The first one was Andrew, what's his name, Yang? the math guy. So he emailed me, I think in 2015, being like, hey, I want to come speak at your event. And I don't know if the podcast existed then, but he's like, or if you guys want to write

about me in the newsletter, I'd love to do an interview. You know, I run this study test prep company that did okay. And now I'm running for president. And I was like, oh, you're insane. You're like, you're going to make me look like a fool. Just this nobody guy who run a mediocre business running for president. I can't interview you. Like that, that, hurt my my credibility. Well, turns out he was a serious candidate. At least he made it in the top 10 or whatever.

The second time this happened was Vivek. Vivek. Lady Kaga. It's not, is it now called Fagida? It's Fijitas. Fahitas. So Vivek DMed to me on Twitter

like a year ago. And he was like, hey, would you guys want me to come on the pod? And I stepped on him hard. I thought this was because he had a really, his Twitter picture was him in a suit with a nice smile. It nerd. You're not coming on the podcast. Well, and I think

I was researching Martin Scirelli and I was like, oh, and his bio said he was in bio, like, pharmaceutical industry or something like that. And I was like, oh, this guy's a charlatan. Like, he's so good looking. He's got a nice smile. This is like a crypto guy with abs and a Ferrari. Like, I can't take this guy seriously. And I just said,

what do you want to talk about? Like, and I tried to like stiff arm him to like make him prove himself. And he replied and I ignored him. Turns out, you know, a year and a half, two years, later, he's actually a threat. So this is the second presidential candidate that I've had bad judgment on of whether they're going to be serious and not asking them to come on the pod.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally with you. By the way, for high entertainment, do you subscribe to Ron DeSantis' SMS program? No. No. So if you want to learn about marketing or you want to learn how the presidential race really works, go subscribe to all the candidates' marketing emails and text messages.

morning. It's fucking annoying. Okay. So that's the first problem. If I wanted somebody to text me every day, I'd have a girlfriend. And this guy texts you all the time. And they text the dumbest stuff. So like here, I'm just going to read you the last five texts.

If you think this guy's like some super serious politician who's really making it a substance of race about the issues, here's what he's saying. And was it like five in one day? Text yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Yesterday. 421 p.m. New shirts, shirt emoji, new coosies, new cups, new buttons, new stickers, new hats. If you haven't seen our storefront, go get the hottest limited edition campaign merch here.

Okay, let's say yesterday. Okay, cool. Let's go back. Friend, it's Ron DeSantis. This is now the day before. 208 p.m. Friend, it's Ron DeSantis. I want you to know that as president, I will not let the government weaponize federal agencies

against Americans who dare to disagree. I'm disgusted by the FBI's disgraceful act labeling Catholics as extremists. It's time to fire the FBI director and defend liberty, religious liberty for all. Can I have a donation to have your support? Okay, so that's the next one. Here we go again. Let me find it particularly. He just texted me at 7.19 a.m.

It's too early for a text, Ron. Enough with the talk. Americans need action. And that's what Ron DeSantis is all about. I'm the leader you need. The time to act is now. This can't wait. Rush your support in.

link to his donation campaign, link to his donation. Then another one. Hey, like this credential and he puts a picture of a, like a credit card that just says DeSantis on it. He goes, you can have your own, all caps, donation with 47 or more to join my investor team. If you're an investor in this campaign, you'll have everything you need to show it off. Grab your membership card today. It just continues every single day.

Hey, enter this giveaway to come to the next debate. you just have to donate and you can win a VIP experience. It just keeps going. And it'll just be like, hey friend, I'm out here draining the swamp right now. And it's like, dude,

just stop. Like, what are you talking about? Well, they're building like a billion dollar company in like 18 months. They're like a moving company. You ever notice how like moving companies like, they don't get a fuck about the service because like you're only going to use it

once. And they're like, let me just get you aboard. Gotcha, and then there's like, throw your shit there. they're like, dude, we don't give it like renewal is art of thing here. I don't care.

You know what I mean? I hired this service that was like, it was called like muscle head movers or something like that. And all of the imagery, all of the imagery was just a huge, like buff guys. It was like, hey, we make it easy. We'll move that couch. We'll move that fridge.

No problem. Just another day at the gym for us. I'm like, oh, hell yeah. Hired muscle head movers. Three times. many Vietnamese guys showed up. And I was like, and the trucks had muscle head movers. I was like,

I got them. I'm looking at them and I'm just, are you going to say anything? Are you going to address this friend? And they didn't, and I didn't, because I was like, what am I supposed to say here?

And I was like, I wanted a bunch of greased-up honks. And they did the job. Like, they could move everything because they just used dollies. And I was like, oh, if I wanted dolly movers,

I would have, you know, like, it's different. It's a different experience that I signed up for at catfish. That's so stupid. There is one cool thing I wanted to tell you about. All right.

What is it? There's a guy named Seth Bannon who tweeted this out. He goes, two million scientific papers are published each year. That's over $5,000 a day. Even if you're working 10 hours a day, no breaks. You'd have to read one paper every seven seconds just to keep up. So we built paper scraper to basically programmatically read every paper that comes out. but not just every single paper.

We prioritize and wait any paper that's being shared by top scientists on social media. So basically built a thing that makes it easier to keep up with science. And he's the second person I've seen do this. And I'm actually pretty convinced it's actually just a good product idea. So what's the, what's the URL? Do you know? Because it's so new, it doesn't show up in Google. There's not a website for it yet.

He's like, oh, like, we built this for ourselves. But like, I'll let some people in beta if you fill out this type form. I'm like that sort of thing like soft launch. I would love to see that. Our buddy, Leor, who does Alpha Signal. So this guy built like a,

you know, like an AI newsletter thing. But his AI Newsletter has one key difference, which is instead of just telling Jabroni's like what the new chat GPT feature is, it's basically a AI newsletter that's for technical people. So if you're a researcher, you're a machine learning engineer, you're a PhD type person.

Alpha Signal is a newsletter for those people, which I actually think is a very small. aren't way to approach his business because that's a very high value reader and customer. And for them, he provides a very simple service. So he also built a thing like this internally. So what he did was he goes, all right, every paper has, you know, a list of scientists that are like the researchers that were involved. And actually there's a, there's a naming convention, just like in movies, the credits,

like the stars go first and the people at the back were like in the end credits. In research papers is kind of the same thing. The people at the top did all the work. The last person is like the name person who reviewed it or, or, edited at the end or stamped, you know, their seal of approval on it or the lab they're associated with. So he kind of first created a page rank of researchers and scientists. That's awesome.

Then he's like, cool. Now when a paper comes out that has one of them in the name or those people on social media share a paper, I immediately know this is probably an interesting paper. So that first creates a hit list. He gets alerted, like alert, top scientists have shared paper. Page rank is what Google invented. It's how they know what to show up on the top of Google. PageRink is categorized.

There's a bunch of different measurements. The biggest measurement, or they don't even tell people, but it's theorized. Or maybe they even said this, though, which is how many people link back to your website. How many other reputable websites link to yours? So every website has authority. So let's say New York Times has a high authority compared to shanprerey.com. Right. And so if New York Times links to some other website, that tells Google that that other website might be, and also a high authority. So it increases its authority. If Sean links to it, it increases it a teeny, tiny, tiny amount. And so that's how Google basically figured out what's the right, you know, what's the right webpage to show when you search a question, who has the most authority to give you the answer? So this guy for Alpha Signal, Leor did this for scientific papers. So he's like, who are the top scientists? What are they sharing? What are they linking to? If they're linking to something, that's an important paper or an interesting paper.

They take the interesting paper, feed it through his LLM, and it gets summarized down into four bullet points. Like, what was the finding? What was the methodology? Who are the scientists? And what's the kind of like key takeaways from this? An alpha signal is only for like AI topics? Correct. But I'm like, got it.

This is a generalized product that's actually just really interesting. Like you're, I was like, your method to create this newsletter is more interesting to me. than the newsletter itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And paper scraper is the same idea, just from a different guy, approaching it from a slightly different angle, which was same thing.

Like, basically trying to figure out what are the important papers that are coming out. So of the two million papers, or of the 5,000 that are published every day, which three should I care about, which five should I care about? And then of the five that I care about,

what did they actually mean? And what are they saying? Yeah, they're really hard to read. They're so dense. So I think this is a really, really cool product idea. And then he also built like a thing called spinout GPT, which was basically like you can,

it's like chat GPD, you can ask it questions about things that might like, you know, could we commercialize this and or like, would this work in cell culture or tissue? And then it'll go look in the paper and find, did they do it in cell culture or tissue? And it'll answer to you that way.

So it's almost like being able to talk to research papers or talk to a very smart person that read all of the research papers. And it's like, Oh, I see where this is going. Like, you know, the hustle, milk road. These were like the horse carriages, right? Yeah, yeah. We have random humans trying to keep up with what's going on.

Maybe they set up some Google Alert. So they check Reddit and Twitter. And every day they make a list and we talk about it. And then they read and summarize and they summarize it as good as they can. And then, like, you know, the pitch was like, it's like your smart friend explaining what happened in crypto that day. Or yours was it's like your smart friend explaining what happened in business news. that day. And this is like, this is like your fucking genius friend that read every scientific

paper ever. And you can ask it any question and any variation. And it will answer. You're like, oh, that seems pretty powerful. Huh. It's like, you know, if we're on our horseback and just like a car just flew by. Whoa, what the hell is that? But what about my friend Greg? No, I, by the way, I'm happy. I would not want to be in the newsletter business right now. Which is so funny because everybody's following us into the newsletter. This is now. Like, now it's like peak hype on newsletters.

And also the way that people are acquiring users, like I just subscribe to Seth Ban and Substack. And like right after I subscribed, it said, do you want to subscribe to these 18 other newsletters? And it's auto checked and I almost accidentally clicked like yes. It's like, and they're all like,

whoa, look at my newsletter growth. It's insane. And it's like, dude, anyone on Substack that's talking about your newsletter growth, you're full of shit is my, my answer to you.

Like, you are absolutely full of shit. It's like, people think they're filling out of CAPTCHA and they're actually subscribing to 19 newsletters at a time, it's insane. That's why, you know what I like, Beehive has a good feature.

They did a feature like that. That's actually legit, which is their thing was, you have to manually be like, who do I want to endorse? But also they have this thing, what's called like Sparks or some shit like that. But it's like,

you can pay to acquire newslet or subscribers. Like, all of us know, the best newsletter subscriber you can get is somebody who already subscribes to other newsletters that are similar. But that's really hard to get historically because you have to advertise

in like a hundred different newsletters. So they create a little mini ad network inside, inside Beehive of all the Beehive newsletters. But what's cool about it was you only pay for somebody who's a retained reader. And I was like, oh, okay, that's actually legit. So instead of just like this like auto check vanity metric where it's like, yeah, I got more subscribers, but it's like, are they actually an engaged reader? You have no idea.

But you're excited about that anyways. What I like the Beehive did was you only pay, it's like, you know, CPA versus or CPC. It's like CPA is like you only pay. for a reader you actually acquired, who's still reading from you. And so it enforces quality because that's the only way

you get rewarded in that network. So I was like, that's smart. First of all, this Seth Bannon thing is awesome. The tweet that Sean's referring to is from June 12th. So if you Google Seth Bannon and go to his thing,

it was on June 12th, that's awesome. He filmed the video in like an amazing place. Like, it looks like a TED Talk almost, but like with like an IMAX style screen explaining his concept. I don't know if that would be a good business. I'm nervous about people building businesses right now on top of Open AI

because I'm like they're just going to crush everyone and just do it themselves. But this is awesome. And second, yeah, to reiterate, I'm happy I'm not doing a newsletter as my main thing right now. It seems really, really hard. And like I remember at The Hustle, we had one daily newsletter.

And then Morning Brew's strategy was to launch more. But my thing was like, fuck, but if we have more, our main thing was going to go down. Like, they're not going to open two. They're not going to open three. Now people, if the numbers are true, are subscribing to dozens. And I want to know is the engagement even remotely the same? It seems really, really, really hard.

It seems way harder. Yeah, I think it's a lot like podcasts. Like, how many podcasts do you actually have in a regular rotation at any given time? Yeah, it seems hard. I mean, with newsletters, it's easier because it only takes three minutes to skim it. but it seems really hard to get people's attention with the newsletter right now. It's just so funny. So I got the idea for a newsletter because I had my friend, Neville Medora,

my other friend Noah Kagan. They were like, they had one foot into the startup world, one foot into like the internet marketing world. And I was like, oh, this internet marketing world, they love email and they use it in sometimes shady ways. But let's just see if we can do it a legit way. And people are like laughing at that. Now it's so cool, but also that people take it seriously,

but I'm so happy I'm not doing it. It seems way more challenging at the moment. I, it seems really hard. Yeah, I think the best will still win because, you know, the best tends to win and everything. Like, you know, so I say it's not that the door is actually closed. But it's definitely much harder than when you started. When did you start, 2015, 2016? Yeah.

I got the idea of doing a newsletter and I started it in 2014, but it became what it was on May 19th, 2016. A great day in history. Well, I always remember that because it's the day before 420. So it was always easy to remember. But yeah, and it was like, I remember like for, I originally started it as a conference. And if I had five, if I had 2,000 subscribers to my conference newsletter, I think I made $50,000 in conference ticket sales. And then when I had 10,000, I think we did 150,000 in ticket sales, something like, that and like the engagement was quite high. And then I remember people back then saying,

I think Gary Vaynerchuk, I talked to him at one time. He was like, dude, my newsletter, we had a 99% open rate because no one else was doing newsletters. Yours is only 40%. It's so much harder. And I was like, oh man, I wish it was easier. Now I don't know what those numbers would be like, but I think it would be hard to make that amount of money with as few subscribers today as it was. It was easier then. You know, the other thing that's funny is, or I guess the other thing that that kind of reminds you of is you're, I wish people would see kind of your early blog post. Or you should,

we should do kind of like a trip down memory lane of some of our projects. Um, because you're incredibly good at creating content and writing. Um, we like when I see what you did versus what I see a lot of people doing now, I'm like, oh, there are like many rungs on the ladder above is where, where you were with creating content. back then. I remember your early blog post

that were just regularly going viral getting millions of hits to the site because they were that good. Like which ones? Like when you were doing the guy, first you had the right concept. So you were kind of like a YouTuber before YouTube.

Actually, you really should have been a YouTuber. Like that would have been your calling. I believe we got asked to do it. We were thinking about doing it, but I was like, I was saying, Sampar as a YouTuber would have been,

I believe, like you would have been one of the most successful YouTubers on the platform. Let me give you an example. Well, that's awesome. You're like, for example, I remember some of your early hustle blog posts, surviving 30 days on Soilent only. Guess what that sounds like?

Every Ryan Trehan video, every Mr. Bees video, like this is the current meta of YouTube. You were doing this eight years ago, you know, like it was, you were wet. You did microdosing LSD. You did an interview with an anonymous entrepreneur who, who, who has. He's, his books. Yeah, you did the thing

where you were like, Amazon bestsellers are bullshit. I'm going to prove it by making an Amazon bestseller spending only like $1,000. Guess what? That's a YouTube video. These are YouTube videos.

These videos would still work. But the thing is, you have to do them with style. You actually did the thing with style. Now, your problem was you were locked into this blog world because those are the people you admired at the time.

But the reality was... Well, and I knew how to write. You know, like writing was my thing. I wasn't, I don't know if I could have. Maybe I could have translated the video. You had the visual aesthetic too.

Like you're good on camera. You like lived in a freaking, you like lived on a motorcycle or something. I don't know. You were sleeping on a motorcycle. You're doing some crazy shit. It's like you had the dog and you had the look and you had the humor on camera and you were willing to you liked jackass and those sorts of things.

And I feel like you would have kind of tortures yourself for people's entertainment. As soon as you got that hit of feedback, you would have gone all the way in. Yeah. And I just wish you had kind of gone down that route. In fact, I still think you should go down that route. Like, for example, I think I can be successful. In fact, I'm going to be successful on short form video.

But it's not going to be the way you could have been because you're kind of like those, like, you know, whoever, Danny Duncan and Ryan Trahan and, you know, Mr. Beas, you're a lot like them in the way that you are as a character. And what you're willing to do and what you were willing to do and how long you were kind of like, I'm single and don't give a fuck. And like, I don't need comfort. And like, you know, oh, like, this. firecracker is going to go in my ass. All right.

Let's roll. Like, you know, lights action, right? Like, I think that you had all of that. And so, anyways, I don't know what my point is here. I don't wish I would have gone that route,

by the way. I don't, I think, I think I probably could have done it. I think that that's a hard life. I think it's hard. Like, I like Danny Duncan a lot,

but I'm like, can you do that at 40? I guess it just has to change. It has to evolve. Or like, Mr. Bees, what's he going to do at 40? He's going to be so wealthy. It doesn't really matter.

Yeah, I think you'd have done the same. Yeah, but yeah, like our early blog posts were good. And there was a period where I was writing like five a day. I would write so many of them. Not all of them were bangers, but like we would write a ton. And that's how we grew.

And that's why I tell people, I say to blog. I don't actually mean blog, but I meant create bangers. Text-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content enough to subscribe. TBB, baby, text-based bangers. That's been our strategy, right?

Like, how did you, like for me, when we wanted to grow on Twitter, it was like, all the advice was you got to be consistent. Well, guess what? I'm like the least consistent human being on earth. Like, if you weren't super consistent and a real hard ass about like, we're going to record this every Monday, every Wednesday, 9 a.m. Every single week without fail, no matter what, there's no way I would keep up the schedule, right? Like, I only do that because you're my friend. I don't want to let you down. When I'm on my own, I'm inconsistent.

And when I wanted to grow on Twitter, I was like, Like, look, all the conventional wisdom, you got to tweet every day, multiple times a day, find the right time of the day, be consistent, be on brand, have a single message, do a call to action. I'm like, dude, I ain't trying to do all that. That sounds like hard. Sounds like the lame version of success. And I agree.

It's probably right, but like I didn't want to do it that way. And my way was text-based bangers. It's like, I basically had like six viral tweets that grew me to like almost 400,000 followers. It was literally just six tweets basically. Isn't that crazy? The bulk of the gross. Like the clubhouse one, the metaphor. first one, this one about Elon Musk, this other one. It's just like, that's all it was that

got me like kind of all the growth. And then there's like several weeks in between posts. I'm completely inconsistent. Well, what I told people was like my team and like myself when I was starting the hospital. I was like, you know, everyone says it's a marathon, not a sprint, but you're kind of just telling me that you just don't want to work that hard. And if you look at the world class marathoners, that's going to feel like a sprint to most people. So that's just kind of like how we're going to live our life, which is like it is a marathon. and it's run so fast that it's going to feel like a sprint to most people.

It's a marathon, not a sprint, but we're Kenyan. And so we're going on five-mile. My last, my last minute mile. Yeah, your last name is Kipchogi. You know, you're going to be a Kenyan. Yeah, you can be Bekelly.

You're an Ethiopian, but, you know, like, we're East Africans here, baby. We're going to run fast. And, uh, yeah, I think, but I actually, I prefer. I think that it's more fun to be in a quiet zone late at night and just bang it out. And it feels a little bit more artful.

It felt like I was in my zone of genius a little bit. Whereas with the video, it feels like sometimes you have to perform. And I felt that writing was a different type of performance that is more enjoyable to create for me. Yeah, sure. Surprise, surprise. Man likes his choices and defends them. By the way, look at my shirt. That what they did was the correct thing.

Shocker. I did live life. Look at me when I was fat and selling hot dogs, man. I was about that YouTube life. It's just, you know. Without the camera. I was telling Sarah, I was like, I'm nervous about going to Westport or like Connecticut or like if we're going to move to the suburbs.

And she's like, why? I was like, well, one of my favorite things to do is like, so every day I like to go to this gas station near my house and get a diet, Dr. Pepper and loiter. Like, I just like this. Yeah, I get a slip jib and a diet dexter pepper and I'll like dab it up with like the clerk. And then I'll just sit and see the regulars. Like, what's up, man? Right now, what's good?

How are you? Like I just like to loiter. He's like to do hood rat shit, man. Yeah. And I was like, Connecticut doesn't have like hood rats or gas stations. They have like people that pumped your gas. Yeah. What am I going to do?

Like where like I want to watch people buy lottery tickets and scratchoffs and like like smoke like a mile. It's like, where am I going to hang out with? Like I need that smell of like. like the woods they call it, you know, like the blunts. And where am I going to do that? You know, like, that's how you get like good ideas and you like see interesting people. So yeah. Dude, think about how many incredible podcasters there are that just don't podcast, but they just

chop it up sitting on steps like all day. Or a milk crate. Like, can you imagine how good those people would be if we just put a mic in front of them? They just don't know. Like they're just like, you know, it's like those like kids who are like incredible basketball players somewhere in Africa that we just don't know. we haven't found them yet. Like, just imagine the dudes that just stood on the steps all day,

just shooting the shit. That, like, Joe Rogan is lucky those guys don't have a microphone. And they just, like, sit outside of a gas station, like, reading newspapers. I always be funny. I always thought it would be funny if you, like, walk up and you overhear their conversation. And they're like, dog, you better diversify your bonds, man. Like, the dials down. Like, I mean, like, the most academic conversations ever because they read newspapers all day.

All right. All right. I think we've crossed, cross the threshold. The slam happy phase is initiated. 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 my days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.