My First Million - Elon Musk, Mobile Minorities, and How to Overcome Fear

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) react to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and much more. ----- Links: * Aceable * Vitalchek * Relx * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (01:30) - Combustion engines and Tesla (08:30) - Human body is a marvel (09:50) - Vocal minority; mobile minority (10:20) - Tesla founder controversy (29:00) - How Elon deals with fear ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

I just saw, if you go to Brett Taylor, the chairman of Twitter, he just tweeted, we've agreed to a deal with Elon Musk. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I guess, I think saying it's done is fair. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. So $54 a share.

Wow. So let me tell you something really quick. This relates, this is going to sound weird, but it relates to what we're talking about. So do you know how a combustible engine works? Do I look like I know how a combustible engine works? No. So, all right, here's how a combustible engine works. So you've got this huge block.

It's called an engine block. It's this big piece of metal. Imagine like a rectangular cube. That's about two and a half feet long, a foot wide and a foot deep in depth. Understand? Okay. When you hear like a four cylinder, six cylinder, eight cylinders, 12 cylinders, that's how many cylinders they're going to drill into that block of that, that engine

in black. And so they, you know how big a cylinder is? Well, I've eaten Pringles before, so I can just sort of imagine. You're not far off. So it's around like, it's like a can of Coke almost, a little bit bigger, but like just for the sake, we'll say it's like the size of a can of Coke. Okay. And in, in those cylinders goes a piston, which is basically like, you've drilled those

holes and like you've got something like, it's almost like a size of a can of Coke going back and forth through those holes. And the way it works is you have a shaft that connects to the, you know, the pistons, which turns that up and down motion of the cylinders going up and down into motion that the engine can use. But check this out. In order to make this all work, you have this thing called a spark plug in each cylinder. And then you have this other device called a carburetor and that mixes the perfect amount of fuel and air into the cylinder. And the spark plug makes a small spark. And there's a miniature explosion in the cylinder that creates so much pressure

that that piston is moving up and down. Does that all make sense? Okay, I follow. I don't know why you're telling me about this, but I understand it now. Listen. So, it gets even crazier. You know how you're driving

and your car will say like 6,000 RPMs? Yeah, sure. That means that those pistons, so these pistons, it has to be airtight for that explosion to be in that cylinder. So these pistons, they're super tight into that cylinder.

And it's creating a lot of friction. When it says 6,000 RPMs, that's 6,000 revolutions per minute. And 6,000 means you're driving pretty fast, but not crazy fast. That means those pistons are moving up and down 100 to 150 times per second. Wow. And you have oil in your car because those pistons are rubbing against metal and it needs oil. Otherwise, if you leave it without oil, they're moving so fast, it's going to fuse together and basically weld the piston to the cylinder.

Geez, okay. Okay, the reason I'm bringing this up. Listen. I can't wait to hear it. And because I just watched a YouTube video about it and it's still fresh in my mind. That's why I had to say it. You did? No, it sounds like you just like went on a deep time.

Well, I was thinking about this and basically, and then the output of all this is like carbonax. So it's like a gas and there's fumes or there's oil and there's liquid. There's all types of fluid. and then there's a transmission, which is like totally even crazier sometimes. The fact that this was invented in the early 1900s, and it's still the technology that we have exploited and made so good, we've made this so good that these pistons can move for a million miles. Basically, they're going to go up and down like a trillion plus times.

We have pushed that so far to the edge. It's pretty phenomenal what we've done. And it's such a shitty technology. It was good for what it was. And then Elon Musk comes along. I was like, well, he wasn't the first one to do it, but he did a really good job of it. He's like, this electric engine,

actually all we're going to use is a battery and one motor. That's all it takes. And this motor is like just literally like three parts. Like there's very few parts. Whereas with a combustible engine, there's like a thousand parts. And not only is it simpler in terms of maintenance. There's basically no maintenance.

It's far better. So a really fast car. I own a car that's considered incredibly fast. And it's quite expensive. And it goes zero to 60. Yeah, well, it's considered fast. It goes zero to 60 in three seconds. A Tesla that costs 40 grand will crush that, can crush that and go.

So it's faster in every sense of the word. It doesn't break. And I kind of had one of these moments where I was like, I wasn't actually high, but it was like one of those high moments where you're like, I can't believe. You just decided to have high thoughts without stuff. Yeah, I had high thoughts.

I was like, dude, we've been doing this combustible engine thing for like 130 years now. And then along comes a couple people who's like, no, no, we're going to do this. total opposite way. So instead of making an engine that just like is somehow has more cylinders or it's more smooth something, we're going to do something totally opposite. And it's like levels above in terms of quality. And I find that thought to be absolutely amazing. And it just turns out he just bought Twitter today. So maybe there's something crazier is going to happen there. I actually

don't think it will, but maybe. But isn't that wild to think that like we can literally, I don't know, how many people have existed since 1910? Billions and billions of billions of people. We've all been doing it one way. And then along comes a very small group of people, let's say tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who said, no, no, no, this is the way to do it. And it changes everything. And I find that to be amazing. I agree. That is amazing. A couple thoughts that came up while you were saying this. First of all, thank you for the engine lesson. Does that make that? Did I, 10% more man, because I know how to describe this. Did I explain to you? Do you understand how the engine works now? A little bit. A little bit. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like I'm at that perfect point where I

feel like I know because I don't know what I don't know. If you ever seen the Dunning Cougar effect, I'm at the perfect peak. What you should know, the takeaway here is that it's very, very, very, very crude. You've got these like metal on metals, like rubbing against each other and creating, it's just messy, it's smelly. It's crude. Well, I just did something today that what you're talking about reminds me of this, which is I went to the doctor. I went to the eye doctor. I had an eye appointment.

And not because I wanted to, I was like, just give me my goddamn contacts. And they're like, nope, you got to come in. it's that's two years old now you gotta do the whole we're gonna we're gonna do the thing where you blow puff of air on your eyeball it's like god what is that even for i don't know but i went in i decided to have a little bit of a different attitude so i got real curious when i went in this time i'm talking to the doctor i'm asking a bunch of questions she runs this other test on me where she takes a picture of my eye and then she shows it to me on a screen and i don't have you ever seen like the inside of an eye it's disgusting fucking wild dude this is crazy she's like okay so like this is the nerve in the back of your eye that's what's sending all these signals.

Your eyes just getting light from everywhere. And your brain is this nervous, the thing transmitting to your brain, all these light signals. And your brain is piecing together some kind of construction of the world. Yeah, it's amazing. These are all the blood vessels. That's like keeping your eye alive. And whenever I see how the body works, I just sort of marvel in it. I'm like, I don't have to think, but my liver knows how to like detoxify my body.

You know, I don't have to think. My heart will just keep beating, reliance. or else I'll die, but luckily it's on autopilot. And in fact, it's on so much on autopilot. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. And so it's like the way that the human body works is just like a true marvel. And so today is my birthday. And seeing that, oh, I forgot to tell you on air, happy birthday.

Thank you. I appreciate it. We talked earlier on the phone. But the thing that amazes me, it's like the best thing to do on your birthday is to go just like get a scan of your body and just be like, wow. you know the human body is like in an absolutely incredible machine that just works in like the same way I don't know how an engine works I don't know how my liver works I don't know my kidney works I don't how my lungs work I don't know how any of this shit works but it does work and just the fact that it does is kind of amazing to me and just seeing my eyeball my retina and like the nerves the blood

vessels in my eye was just a reminder of like it's like it's like a humble humbling feeling right it's like the humility of how you don't even have control over your own body let alone the world and all these other things that are going on. So I really appreciated that. That's the first thing. Second thing, I wrote this down the other day for the podcast, but I never knew how. By the way, are you wearing a mighty ducks jersey? Yeah, dude, it's my birthday.

I'm feeling like a mighty duck right now. Oh, my God, that's awesome. The older I get, the more I need to behave like a child, right? Like, that's kind of the game plan is get more childlike as I grow, not more adult-like. So I wrote this down. I wrote vocal minority, mobile minority. And I wrote this on like a month ago. And I was like, it might come up at some point in the podcast.

And what you just said about Elon, about basically a very small number of people changing the way that things work is a great example of this. And it's not like he's the guy like that. He was like, you know, we can't say that like Elon came up with this. We could just say that there's probably a lot of people came to the same conclusion. He just was right, had the strongest will. and is the is the is the person who we give a lot of credit to by the have you seen what he's been saying lately about this like origin story of tesla have we seen this controversy no so he say that

he's the founder no so he so the what what happened was Tesla started about a year before Elon invested in it and so now he's seen as the he's basically seen as the CEO the founder he is the CEO he's also kind of like the founder you don't really hear about these other guys who started his two guys that were that were starting it I think and he and he is kind of kind of the founder when you think about it. Like it's like literally the eighth largest company in the world. And at the time it was worth like $10 million. Like what's the difference?

Exactly. And so, but the guys who started it have like basically made it kind of like their mission. So the Elon, there's a group of people that are like anti-Elon. They're a vocal minority against Elon. And they'll say like things like Elon didn't create Tesla. He just, you know,

invested in it and like takes all the credit for it basically. And one of the original guys also really has made it his mission to keep telling people how much he, how he was the founder of Tesla, not Elon Musk. And Elon sort of like come out recently. He said something the other day in his interview. He goes, the biggest mistake, they go, what's the biggest regret you have? This is the biggest regret you have or mistake you've made. Bad decision you made. He goes, well, certainly the worst business decision I made was not deciding to just like start Tesla on my own with me and

J.B. I guess the guy he started it with. Like guy he feels like was his co-founder in it. And like basically buying the existing company and then building from there versus just doing it on his own. He's like, certainly that was the worst decision. I think because financially that guy owns shares of what's now a trillion dollar

company. And then the second thing is that that guy basically has made it his crusade to be like, F. Elon Musk, I'm the founder of Tesla. You know how much does that guy own? I don't know the exact percentage. Maybe maybe somebody, Jonathan could look at up while we're talking. But like,

but that guy basically, Martin, I think his name is. There's two guys. Yeah, Martin and somebody else. And I think that's his name. So they,

one of the things that they say is like, you know, we created Tesla. And then Elon has come out and been like, Tesla was nothing. There was no product. There was basically is like it was a shell of a company. There was no,

it was like, you know, pre-launch, pre-everything. I invested six and a half million dollars. I think he invested in the first round, knowing also that I'd have to invest way more after that, took a chairman role, and then like basically he had the guy from who designed SpaceX's logo,

designed the Tesla branding. And like, you know, he's like, I guess he created it. It was an inactive company is what he, what he had said. I think he had,

he tweeted something like this out that he was like a dormant company or something like that. And so there's like some controversy around that actual founding of it. But how is that his biggest mistake? That doesn't seem like that big. Like it worked out fine. And also one could argue, maybe it was worth it just for the name.

Yeah, exactly. Just for the name. I guess his take would sort of be like the company was just going to die if he didn't invest in. I think he was the only investor at that time. So anyways, okay, back to my vocal minority. So there's, we see this a lot on Twitter

and other places where there's a vocal minority. This is what people call cancel culture. This is what people will call like sort of the haters or the naysayers online. There's a small group of people that are sort of unhappy about anything that happens. and they'll be unhappy that Twitter's being bought by Elon Musk. They'll be unhappy that he's a billionaire.

They'll be unhappy that Tesla. They'll say that Tesla's cars, yes, they're electric, but what powers the electricity? It's coal. You know, they just always have something to say. So there's a vocal minority, and I think one of the biggest skills in today for any business person is to correctly identify, like, a vocal majority versus a vocal minority. If you just constantly let the vocal minority sway your thinking, you're letting, like, you know, the bottom one or two percent of people sway your decision making just because they're very loud

about it. But then the other, so I think you want to overlook them. But what you don't want to overlook is what's called, and I call a mobile minority. So a mobile minority is a group of people who decide to actually like take their business and walk elsewhere or they take their lifestyle and they just change it. So it's like, you know, if you're safe way. But all of a sudden, there's like a small group of like sort of hippie people that are like buying this like all natural produce.

And they're shopping at this place called Whole Foods Market in Austin. And that's only got one location, two locations, but like all of their spend now goes to this. Or you see people that are like, you know, people on Netflix or whatever, people who are subscribed to Netflix. But all of a sudden they start to instead spend all their time on TikTok and YouTube. And it's like they've actually voted with their feet. Or they're sometimes silent. I'm even a different non-business example. I was just reading about Martin Luther King and Rosa.

parks. And when the whole Rosa Parks thing happened, the black folks were like, no, we're, we're not talking that. And then originally, like, well, that only makes a certain amount of our population. It's no big deal. That it like goes on for like two weeks. You're like, all right, something's happening. And it's happening in San Francisco right now, like a mobile minority of group of people have left San Francisco, taking their business elsewhere. It's a very small group of people. Some of them were loud about it saying, oh, I'm leaving because I have this, this and this and this beef with San Francisco. Most of them were just frustrated. Like, I'm going awesome. going to Miami. I'm going elsewhere. I'm going where I will be treated better while I will be taxed less

and get more from my government. And those mobile minorities are actually ones you want to listen to. Whether you're all politician or you're an entrepreneur, it's like we talk about this a lot. Like, dude, there's a subreddit that's getting really popular. And it's like, oh yeah, it's only 50,000 people. But it's like, wow, 50,000 people have chosen this lifestyle of like, you know, either anti-work or overemployed or they're tracking their like fitness and their sleep at this like, maniacal way. It's like, yeah, that actually is something you really want to pay attention to. And it's a great place to start a business is when you notice a mobile minority. And it's also like a really important thing to notice as a leader of either a city or a company to

notice, how come all these developers are like, you know, going to this weird like web three crypto thing? Like, what's that about? So yeah, it's not everybody. But like, wow, like, you know, 10% of our smartest people all left to go do this thing. They took a pay cut to go do this thing. I think I should probably pay attention to that. And so I wanted to point this out, which is ignore the vocal minority and pay extra attention to the mobile minority. That doesn't mean there's another side of this.

It doesn't mean they're right. So for example, or that like what they're doing. Like I agree with you. I would also challenge myself to find examples where there is. That's a great, what's it called mobile minority?

Yeah. That's a good one. Trademarked that. We're trademarked that. That's my first million. So like there's people like, like for example, day trading amongst young people has gotten incredibly popular. I don't think the majority of people do it, but I think there are a lot of people do it. They're very loud and they're betting a lot.

And I think that's horribly stupid. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying it's always a good thing, right? It might be people vaping. And it's like, wait a minute. Like 10% of teenagers are vaping now. It's like, I'm not saying it's always healthy. But I'm saying it is almost always worth paying attention to this sort of like silent and mobile minority versus like I think it's worth paying attention to.

whereas I think the vocal minority is almost always worth ignoring. You want to talk off the top of our head a few examples of those groups of people? Well, you gave a couple. I can think of a few more. Yeah, give me a few. I'm just going to rat off a few. So things that I'm noticing based off Reddit and my interest, people who don't want to buy off Amazon because they don't want to have to worry about throwing away the packaging.

Yes. Number two, people who want to use reusable packaging. Everything. So like a Ziploc bag that you'll pay $20 for, one bag, but you can use it over and over and over and over again. Number three, people who don't want to eat out of plastic. Let's see, number four. I have another one that's related to that. So my wife's vegan.

And so anything we do has to be compatible with a vegan lifestyle. And you'd be shocked how much is not compatible. So like, okay, you think about food. I think food is where most people go. But like leather is the other huge one, right? So, like, we're about to buy a car or, like, she wants to buy, like, a fancy purse or something like that. She's like, she is ready to go to whatever, Louis Vuitton or whatever and drop five grand, six grand, whatever it is. But she won't, she won't do it because it's all leather.

And so she's like, I can't believe these luxury companies don't make one non, like, non-animal based product. Like, they don't make one bag. Like, even they would get all the vegan people who wanted by luxury. We're like, go to whichever brand makes it. Like all of the big ones, Gucci, Prada, whatever. and they just don't make it. Or if they do, they make the bag, but not the handle or the strap.

And she's like, well, that's the thing. Like, if you cared about this, you care about this. And so we see that with, like, car too. Like Tesla has all, like, vegan leather. And they're one of the few car makers that, like, just lead with that. And it's like these little things that, like,

again, it's super easy to overlook. I would, you know, I would totally understand saying, look, we're not going to change our product line for this one or two percent. But as that one or two percent gets big enough, like, I don't know how much the sort of vegan population is now in America, but like, let's say it's two or three percent.

That's of a base of 300 million people. And those are people who like, they don't just kind of care about it. They really care about it. And so they're the mobile minority and the vocal minority for sure. Yeah, exactly. They use, they do action and they talk a lot. Yeah, exactly. So like, you know, you make a chocolate and make a cheese, make a car leather, whatever.

So that's an example where I've seen a lot of like wallet share go to the one brand that just cares about it. What else is there? So I think there's also, when I read the TikTok comments, there's so many people that when they post videos of people from the early 2000s or when I was in high school, 2008, and they say, oh, wow, look, no one's on a cell phone. They must be so happy. So I think there's going to be a mobile minority of people who actually don't want smartphones. The disconnect slash digital detox population.

Yeah. There's also a group of that that's like VR, like absolute VR nerds. So they don't talk much. In fact, most of the dialogue around VR is how it's not here yet or it's, you know, not going to happen. There's a small number of people that spend an absurd amount of time in VR. They work in their VR. I don't know if I said, I think I sent you this TikTok of there's a guy who says he's spending

24-7 in VR and he literally wakes up, puts the headset on and he spends his whole day like that and he even goes to sleep in VR and then he like, you know, the headset falls off from whenever he sleeps. It's like some nut. What they look like? Close your eyes and imagine this guy. Yeah. Like the beard touches the chest hair.

There's no line. We need strong borders. There's no strong borders. He has a rack just for fedoras. His ferret is living in his room. So, but basically, like, you know, there's some people that are spending a lot of time there. You know, I don't know if that's, like, a big one yet. But, like, I'm just sort of like, brains around the top of my head, you know, people who really, really care about certain things.

things. And I think you'll see this with pet stuff. I think you see this with like, like house stuff that's going on. Like if you're in the gym business right now, you know, the mobile minority through COVID has been like home gyms. Like those people are never coming back. Once they put like thousands of dollars of gym equipment in their garage or their room, you know, bedroom in their house, like they're not coming back into the gym industry, right? So it's a mobile minority. They have voted with their feet and now they're going down a different path, a different lifestyle. Yeah, I think that that's a really good term. I'm on board with mobile minority. But what does this have to do with engines?

Well, no, it's about like the few people that go and actually like they do something different, right? So like you were saying like Elon and the sort of the electric car movement. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's a small number of people who just like took a sharp left turn and decided, nope, we're going to like, we're going to get off the oil and gas system. We're going to like not have a combustible as a car. We're not going to buy from any of these brands. Like we're just going to go fully electric. Do you think, but here's the thing I've been that I think about when I think about him and people like,

him is I think, okay, so obviously he's right. So this Tesla thing, like, it's right. But it didn't seem that way all the time. It seemed like the total opposite. And there's moments in my life where I'm like, I firmly believe that this is the future. Like, I firmly believe that many homes are going to be bought online. Like, that's an example. But along the way, I have so many doubts where I'm like, ah, screw it. And so what I would like to know is I wonder how he, because he doesn't give off that appearance like he ever has doubt. He's like, no, no, no, like, surely this makes sense. But then he does say all the time, he's like, I think we're going to go bankrupt. But that doesn't mean he thinks that his idea is wrong. He just thinks that maybe like they're just going

to run out of money because they didn't have enough runway. And so do you think that someone like him or a lot of these other people like that, that there is self-doubt or what? You move straight to the end. Now, if you listen to talk, he actually says three things. So he says, they're like, how did you decide to do this? No car company had ever. No, American car company had been made since Jeep like 90 years ago or something like that. Nobody had ever made an electric car. That was popular, you know, a fully electric car. Nobody had ever, you know, started a rocket company, a private rocket company, all this stuff.

And he basically just said, they're like, so how did you decide to do it? And he's like, well, I agreed. Like the probability of success was low, but it was worth doing. So I just did it. You know, he's basically like, I thought it was worth doing. humanity needs this, so it's worth doing, certainly. Probability of success is low, certainly. And then he said one other thing, which was like, you know,

did you ever think about giving up? And he said in that extreme interview, it is not in my nature. And like, I think it's so if you take those three things, it's like he doesn't decide to do it because he thinks it's going to work. In fact, he decides to do it because he thinks is worth doing. He agreed that the probability of success was low, but not impossible. and he just decided that he's not going to give up that's not in his nature. So you combine those three things.

Well, doubt has very little place, right? It's like, no, I've taken into account the low probability of success. And then I'm not going to quit. So I already decided it's worth doing. So in that, you know, doubt can't live in that home. That's a two-bedroom home and doubt doesn't have a room in that in that house. So I think that's how, that's the psychology I've seen, not knowing the guy just from his interviews. But I'm not sure if that's the entire reality, even though he said that.

And here's why. Did you ever pay attention to boxing in the 90s with Mike Tyson? Sure, yeah. All right. So Mike Tyson came on the boxing scene when he was 19, and he was like the man until he was like in his early-ish 30s. And when he walked out in the stadium up to the ring, he was famous because he wore black shorts.

He wore black socks and black shoes. And he would come out with no shirt on with his gloves, already tighten everything and he was just as if he's just ready to roll. Typically, that's not how they do it. And he was already sweating. And he didn't have a noise or sorry, he didn't have a sound, a song that he came out to. He came out to a noise. It was just, mm, that was the noise.

And it was just all, his whole thing was about being frightening. He's like, I'm a tiger. I'm a beast. I am here to kill. And he would say things like that. Like, I'm going to take out your heart and eat it. Yeah. And he'd be like, you know, what was the greatest?

interview where he's like, he goes, I'm gonna, his impregnable. My, my, my, my will is unstoppable. Praise be to Allah. He goes, he goes, I'm gonna eat his heart. I'm gonna eat his children. I'm gonna be Allah. Like, this is this great. He goes, I'm Alexander the Great. He ain't no Alexander the Great. I'm Alexander to the Great. Yeah. Like this scariest stuff. Total bravado. Yeah. A scary guy. And when he would look at you in the eye, you're like,

this guy's gonna, this guy's gonna murder him. He's not just gonna beat him up. He's out to kill him. And I would watch interviews. with him now that he's older and he doesn't have to act that way anymore. He goes, he goes, people thought I was so deadly. He goes, I was deadly, but I was so afraid. The reason I acted like that was because my, the reality was my fear was the total opposite end. And I had to act that way because he was, I was so afraid.

And I've heard a bunch of UFC fighters that I like, like Donald Seroni and Chal Sun and they'll go every, and Michael Bisping, and they say, every single time I'm backstage. And I think to myself, why did I do this? Why didn't I quit? I don't want to do this. I'm afraid. I am so scared to do this. In reality, this guy who I'm talking about Michael Bisping,

he's got the biggest mouth of everyone. He talks the most trash. And when I heard these fighters start saying this stuff, I was like, oh, they're like, you're, you are the toughest guy on earth right now, but even the toughest guy on earth is scared. And so that's crazy. They go into a cage fight with another guy

who's trying to kill them in their underwear in front of millions of people. Like, and after talking mad shit, right? So it is one of the like, you know, most vulnerable positions you could put yourself into. that's why it's great to kind of like learn from them and hear their, hear their, you know,

their thought process. I think that's true. Somebody had said this about Elon. They, I think it was, uh, maybe Jerviston, like one of the,

there's an investor who invested in Tesla and SpaceX. Um, and I believe has never sold a share and never said he never plans to sell a share of any of those companies. And so, you know, this guy's got the best returns ever because all his bets were just bet on Elon. And,

um, he said like, he said something like, you know, Elon is just, he goes, he's a normal. guy, but the fear gene got removed. And like, you know, in his DNA, the fear gene got removed.

And I actually think that it's not that. Like, nobody's that. Everybody has, you know, fears. And, you know, the extent to which you are fearless is the extent to which you learn how to dance with your own fears, right? So like those UFC fighters, they feel the fear, but they learn how to cope with it. And for Mike, it was getting into this, like, you know, primal state of mind saying certain things and just walking to the, to the thing. to that sound and like that's how he was able to like dance with that fear and so i'm sure that somebody like in elin musk even though they have fears of you know failure humiliation you know three rockets blow up for SpaceX you know just like explode and now you're you basically put all your money in and

you have enough for one more launch and that's it you had to rush and do one more launch yeah i i don't think he was sitting there you know with a resting heart rate of 46 you know i think he was feeling something at that time you could see it in the videos the relief when it happens, but he learned to dance. He learned to deal with it. So I think, you know, that's the difference between people who seem, you know, totally brave and fearless is like they have just learned to deal with fear better than the person who lets the fear slow them down or stop them.

Are any of your closest successful friends autistic or have Asperger's? Sure do seem like it sometimes. Not close as friends, to be honest, because, yeah, I like to get along. I end up getting along with people who are a little more outgoing, extroverted, and easier to get along with. But I've got a couple. I've got a couple. And you're friends with them as well. And I've got a couple.

And what I've noticed, I've got one in particular, who I think you know how I'm talking about. Yeah. And very, very, very successful. And he just doesn't, he approaches things far more logically. And I'm like, well, name, this will never, well, Brad, I'm making up. Well, Brad, this will never work. He's like, well, why not? Why won't it work?

Like, you know, you see on this Excel spreadsheet, this math adds up to where it does work. Like, well, but like, Who's going to believe you? Who's going to have faith in you? How are you going to do it? Well, why wouldn't they? You know what I mean? Sometimes I wonder, is that just a couple of my friends who are like that?

Or if there is something in Elon has studied as Asperger's. Is there something in there where they like, where it's like, you know, it's supposed to be kind of like a handicap in reality. It's the exact opposite. It's like a superpower. Well, I played poker for a long time. And you see this with poker players, too. Some of the best poker players are some of the sort of like, you know, Asperger,

type of mannerisms. You don't, they're extremely intelligent, but they have an emotional coolness, which allows them to be rational under pressure, not get as easily tilted as an emotional player would be. They can play with huge sums of money and not change the way they play. It's all just chips to them.

It's a game to them. And they also have the ability to focus for very, very long periods of time, longer than, you know, I would say the average person. And so, you know, there's some definite superpowers if you have that, you know, that brain wiring, which is, I don't know what I'm just using these terms. I don't actually have any idea with the clinical, like, you know, definition of these terms is. But I'm just, I'm sort of reverse defining it as a person who has those traits, the ability to have maniacal focus, the ability

to stay calm and sort of emotionally cool despite what's going on, you know, highly, highly intelligent, especially with math, probability, and statistics. And so they, you know, they're winners, dude. I've seen it just so many times. That is a, whenever I sit down against that opponent, that is the person I'm trying to stay out of Pots with. I'm not trying to compete against them when I go play poker. All right.

Let me tell you something interesting that happened to me. You said you went to the doctor. I had to get some, like, I bought a vehicle and I had to get it like registered. You know, like you got to get your registered and title and all that stuff. Yeah, DMV stuff. Dude, it sucks. All right. So this is like, some people listening here, like,

This is so obvious. Do you know that there's third parties that will do this for you? I've heard about this. Actually, some guy told me he's like, yeah, as like DMV sucks, he's like,

oh, dude, my buddy and I opened up like a, like an alt, like an alternative DMV in like, you know, in the DC area. It's amazing. We do like $3 million here.

I was like, what? Dude, open your own DMV? Like, I never looked into it. What is the rules? All right.

So like, I went to the DMV and like, I didn't know you had to have an appointment to go. and the woman working there was like, hey, just go to this thing called FryTidal or something like that. And so I just looked it up on Yelp and it was like 20 minutes away. And I went out there and there was a line out the door. But I got in and out. And so basically it's a crappy building in a strip mall exactly like you'd think.

And like next to like a Marshalls or something like that. And you can go there to get license plates. You can get their title transfer, specialty plates, temporary permits. You can register your car there. and it basically has like a lot of the stuff that you would mostly do at a DMV. You can't do some things, but mostly everything that you do. And the way that you get it is you do a partnership with the motor vehicle department of every single state. And you've got to go through this like application process that I don't think is that hard.

Because when I was there, I was talking to the owner. And he was like a young, he was like a 24 year old. Like it was like an unsophisticated smart but unsophisticated guy. And he was like, yeah, I just applied. And I was like, do you guys always have a line? Because there's signs everywhere that says we know, we line. No new line people at four because we close at five. So basically, like, I was like, are you guys this busy all the time?

He goes constantly. I'm like, are you kidding me? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, well, how do you guys make money? He's like, well, we're going to charge you like $50 to $100 right here for this fee. And I was like, oh, no brainer. Like, because the DMV here in Austin, I've got to wait four months or something for an appointment, something crazy. And it was a crazy service.

And I started looking into it. And there's a few companies that are in the space. You know DMV.org? No. You never heard of DMV.org. It's like if you Google like what paperwork do I need in order to, in order to get a license in Delaware. Like it'll tell you like what to bring.

So that that's out there. But there's basically all of these places that I've seen do this. They're just like mom and pop like hole in the wall stores. And they are constantly packed. It was crazy fascinating. I did hear something which was like, that guy that was saying about something did end up happening or they like crack down or like they lost their thing or like once I don't know what happened but something did something bad did happen

this was years ago so I don't remember but let me tell you about two other businesses that are very similar have you heard of aceable what's aceable aceable it's in Texas it's you're gonna love this business so just go to like acable.com you sound like George Zimmerman like you're gonna like the way you look I guarantee you you're gonna like this business yeah you're gonna like this book I guarantee it Men's Bro House here. Yeah. So it's basically driver's ed online.

And they also do, like, if you get a ticket, you had to go to like corrective driving school or whatever. Oh my God. They said kill it. So they're like an officially licensed, like, vendor for this driver's ed at these like courses or whatever. They absolutely crush. They bootstrap for a while, I think.

Now they've raised like $100 million. These guys are absolutely crushing it. I've seen their revenue once before back way back. when I looked into this. And they started with like, you know, like a 32-hour driver's head course or whatever. And they could do, I think they could do it in like 36 states out of the total or whatever. And so they said they have 13 million like people have gone through it. And they also do realtors licenses, which is like one of people trying to get their brokers license.

And so that's like another like this is such a, this is an amazing business. This is like a like 10 out of 10 under the radar. business that just crushes it and they crush it due to like kind of like regulatory lock-in and that they're one of like kind of the only officially approved people that could do this. They just crushed it with Google ads because people would search for, you know, driver's ed free, driver's ed online, get my broker's license, blah, blah, blah. And there wasn't a ton of competition, I don't think, early on. And they just made a ton of money.

And so this is, I'm pretty sure a billion dollar company at this point. Oh, for sure. Just doing this. This guy's name is Blake who started another Blake, Blake. Lake Mioski, the guy who started Tom's shoes, his first business was an online driver's ed business. And he said he crushed it. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's interesting. When I read his biography, like giveaway shoes or I don't know, it was one of those. It was like, buy a pair, give a pair. Yeah. And anyway, this business kills it. What's the other one?

So the other one. So I was about to take a trip with my family. And I was like, oh, we don't have like passports for the kids. So I was like, oh, let me get like, we don't even have the bird certificates because if you just like when a baby's born they don't give you a certificate it's like oh you want a birth certificate like you know they roll out like a candy crush map it's like do these six steps and like jump over all these hurdles to like get your kids birth certificate so it's like you got to like do this thing and you go to the city whatever so i was like oh geez i don't want to do all that and so i just search like get birth certificate online fast and the san francisco or whatever like like the Bay Area, you know, whatever, like, you know, the Walnut Creek, like,

official birth certificate thing. I was like, yeah, you can like either mail in this stuff or go to our partner, Vital Check. If Vital Check, we'll do it. And I was like, oh, here's another one. And sure enough. I see it. Vital Check.

If you go to Vitalcheck.com. There's so many copycats. There's your Vitalcheck.com and check is spelled C-H-E-K. That's how you know these businesses crush, the number of copycats that pop up. So it's an official California birth certificate that you can get online. You know, it's government endorsed. So hundreds of government agencies nationwide exclusively trust vital checks. So they've got they basically cut deals with those vendors.

And whatever, you go on here, you pay and I don't know, it's like whatever, $99 or something per birth certificate. You follow this form and it's done. And it's like you kind of have to do this. Like it's like a mandatory thing. It's like a DMV thing. It's like customers aren't just like choosing to go get certified. They have to get certified.

And so that's why I love Aceable. That's why I love your DMV one. That's why I love this vital check thing. Because customers have to do it to comply. And you can build these kind of like third party things. And I sent this to Xavier and Siva, our buddies with Enduring Ventures. I was like, dude, this is a beautiful business to buy. Right.

Like, because they're going and trying to buy these businesses that are like just cash flowing, profitable businesses that have defensibility and can be maybe improved by like rolling up multiple or like centralizing the back office and digital operations. And the other, the other. the other like red flag, not red, whatever the opposite of a red flag is, a positive flag, a green flag. That my like red flag of like,

this is a killer company is going off because. Ugly website. It's an ugly website with a lot of traffic and it doesn't say who the founder is on the about page. It says, we've been a business since 1992 and we do this, this and this. And like, I can't find like a guy on Twitter talking about it. I'm like, okay, so you just.

So Siva got back to me, he goes. It looks, he's like I dug in. It looks like it's owned by a UK public company conglom, conglom. the Lexus Nexus? Relix, I think. Relics, which owns Lexx Nestle. It's like a multi-billion dollar. It's like the most, I believe Relic is the most profitable company in the world in terms of margins.

So they own another. The big thing they own is, do you know how scientific journaling, like publishing works? Basically, like these like doctors and stuff come up with these amazing insights. And scientific journals are like, yeah, we'll give you $500 for your article. And like, that's all they get paid. And every university, like, it has paid money to get access to these journals. And so they make, like, $4 billion in revenue and, like, $3 billion in profit or something like that.

Wow. Yeah, it looks like it's a $50 billion, a little more than a $50 billion company. What's the, can you see what the profit, like what the income is? They probably have done it. 33,000 employees, I can pull up. I mean, I can pull up. It's like, though, I think it's one of the, how do you spell it? RELX.

Yeah, I think it's, uh, dude, how? How do you know about this? This is another Sampar special right here. Just knowing of some random British public company that owns scientific journaling companies and is the most profitable company in the world. How the hell did you know that? I confirm that if it's not the most, it's one of the most. And I knew about it because, A, I had friends in the journal who were like getting their PhDs and they were telling me how it works. So I'm like, oh, that's a racket. Like you don't understand. But you're lucky to, like, it's like, you know, dentists and stuff, publishing stuff on, like, teeth. Like, they don't understand, like, how margin works. And I'm like, they're paying you $500 for that. You don't understand shit. So they're just getting ripped off.

So I knew right away. And second, when we were launching the hustle, I love database businesses. And I researched database businesses like crazy. And I came across this company because they own, it's more like. They own LexisNexis, which is like a total conglomerate. legal records and documents. They own patent site, which is,

it has a patent asset index of 135 million patent documents. Law 360. Lex Machina, which is like 88 million, whatever thing. There's just a ton of database businesses in the legal. Law 360 is like, it's kind of like the hustle,

but for lawyers. I mean, of course they were first. So we were like them for not lawyers, but it was basically a daily newsletter for lawyers. Right. Yeah, Elon's like me for billionaires. Yeah. You know, the problem that I have about Elon is he just rips off my style. Like, I was using Twitter way before.

Like, I was popular on Twitter first. Yeah, I do memes. He does memes. He's kind of like the... When I am to podcast, he is to money. Money, business, and innovation. Yeah. Dating celebrities.

Doesn't have a podcast, though. Got him. I was thinking of Jake Paul. We had Jake Paul on the podcast. And I was thinking about it. I was like, if I got into an argument with that guy, he could just be like, where I'm richer than you. And I'd be like, well, I can kick your ass.

He's like, no, I can kick your ass. I'd be like, oh, yeah, you can't. He's like, well, I'd be like, well, and I'd be like, well, I'm famous. And he would be like, well, I'm more famous. So I'm like, oh, you're like everything better. Like whatever Like I think of these people Like I'm like

Oh like you are everything I do You are that but better I have nothing I can say to you It's like you're just gonna win this argument Every single time I'm screwed And so sometimes I ask myself What can I possibly say? And so like that's sometimes I think about

Elon. No that's when you have to swerve into the virtue signaling And be like Well I'm just not I don't chase money And fame Yeah So yeah you're way more famous and rich Than me like

Well I wouldn't trade lies with you You must be miserable. I have one thing you'll never have enough. That's the moral high ground. You can always take on somebody better than you. Elon's like the Sam par of, but just have money. Good episode. See you later.