My First Million - Finding Profitable Business Ideas By Studying Trends, Hood Rat Stuff, and More

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about how to identify trends, whether it's possible to get ultra-wealthy from cash flow businesses, why they enjoy doing hood rat stuff, and more. ----- Links: * https://worldview.space/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ * Bullshit Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X * 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: (03:45) - Shaan's trip to Mexico (07:35) - Worldview (15:05) - Sam's goals for MFM (20:50) - The secret world of how things come to be (29:30) - Identifying trends (42:00) - How many employees does a company needs (49:10) - Why Sam and Shaan love doing hood rat stuff (53:30) - Can you make 9 figures from cash flow businesses? (55:45) - Sam's advice for Warren Buffet (01:03:00) - Being honest about why you start a company ----- 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

You're good at doing this, which is you identify these lifestyle trends. You pick up pretty quickly on like, there's a group of people that are deciding to like live under a different paradigm or different motto or creed. And actually that was like one of the best ways to build a business around that lifestyle because you can speak to that audience or you could differentiate a product super easily to that crowd. 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 old. One time I went to an amateur fight in, you've been there. It was at the, in Golden State Park or something.

Remember that? And there was like a thousand people there. And at the fight, you know how? So basically when people, before people get into a ring, the referee checks to make sure you don't have any weapons on you. It's just like a precaution. But that's like they rub your shorts to make sure you have a weapon. They check your gloves to make sure that there's not like cement in there. And then they also look at your fingers to make sure in the MAA's case, you don't have.

long nails. One time I went and they go, no, you got to cut your nails. And so they made an announcement and they go, does anyone have a nail trimmer? And someone, and we waited for like three or five minutes and someone had to run to Walgreens or something and bring a nail and he had to cut the

nail. And I was like, A, like how did you not figure this out? Like 15 minutes ago, this nail thing is not new. Like you should have checked us up before they came out. And B, it was just crazy. That's so funny. Yeah, every time they do those checks, I'm like, Has anybody ever discovered like a razor that this guy's sneaking into the cage? Like, no, they never do it. It's like just a, it's like a TSA pat down without ever, ever finding anything.

Except for that. That's the first time I've ever heard that they like actually found violation. One of the reasons they do it is in the 80s or 90s, there's this guy, it was a real, it was a real famous fight. And this guy basically put his hand in like a cast. So it was like, and they like, they cast it. Yeah, it was called a Paris a plaster or whatever that. phrases. It was like plaster and then they put his gloves on and they beat up and he beat up this guy so

bad that the guy eventually killed himself because he had so much brain damage and made him depressed and like it was like a really bad thing. And so that's one of the reasons why they're like like check your gloves so much. It's such a big deal. Wow. The plaster caster. All right. I feel like, uh, well, I'm sorry that that guy died and now I respect these checks. In fact, uh, I too got caught in TSA yesterday in a slow line and missed my flight. So you know how I'm always two minutes late for this podcast. I was two minutes late for my flight and missed my flight yesterday. Where were you going? I was going down to, I went down to Mexico actually. So yesterday I went to Mexico and back. What? Why? For e-commerce stuff? For business. Yeah, we were visiting a supplier down there and I wanted

to, you know, go check them out. And so, yeah, one day, trip, missed my flight, did the thing where I was in the good line. Other line looked a little shorter, so I was like, let me optimize us real quick. Made the switch. Took a mental note. I said, all right, that's my line buddy right there. We'll see who makes it first. He was long gone.

He made the flight. I didn't make the flight. So I ended up, and I have clear. I got all the shit to skip the lines still, still didn't make it. So that was kind of, uh, yeah, well, it's fine. You know, now it's like, you know, whatever, the situation. That's just the price you pay. exactly that's the price i pay the splinter is the cost of the wood as i say and uh and so that was

uh that was that was you know the start of my day but dude i crossed the border on foot yesterday i was like you know donald trump's enemy i i literally walked across the border from mexico back into the united states yesterday how i don't understand like i drove down i got driven down to mexico they don't check you. So they're like, oh, yeah, come on in.

It's fine. Like, you know, they don't, they don't really care. But then to get back into the United States. They're like,

hey, hey, well, you can't just walk into the United States. You got to show me some idea or whatever. And the guy who drove us down, the guy we were meeting for business, he was like,

well, I have this like fast pass. That's like the global entry thing, but it's only for me. I can't just like bring other people in my car using that. So when we get up to the thing, you're going to hop out. You're going to get in this line

with a bunch of other people trying to cross the border. And then I'll pick you up on the other side. And so that's what we did. I crossed the border on foot yesterday, which is kind of a stunning experience. And it was amazing, dude. It was like it was just so different than anything else that I've ever done. What were your peers like on the crossing trail?

Yeah, so my peers and my peers and friends online, they were, you know, a lot of like single mothers with kids. It was like, you know, not a whole lot of English going on. you know, there was an amazing rapper. So this guy was rapping. I got a video of him, but he had no call to action. Dude, he had the, like, his top of funnel was amazing.

His, like, rap was great. He had a speaker. He had a captive audience. Like, we're just stuck in line. And he's just rapping to all of us. And he's freestyling about us in Spanish. And so I'm sure he was just talking mad shit about me. But then I was like, wow, this guy's like, got all the talent in the world.

And so I was literally like, dude, I'm going to get this guy to, like make a song, like he'll do our outro for the podcast or something because this guy's so good. But he's got no Instagram handle for my illegal crossing. It was legal. You know, it was a legal crossing. And he was there and he was amazing. And but he had no sign, no name, no nothing. No, no English.

So I couldn't like, dude, that was his Kanye, Kanye moment and I was his Jay-Z. I was ready to take him to the top. But he didn't have it there. So, you know, lesson learned as always. give people a way to take you forward to give the call to action otherwise you know

you might just be a rapper at the border for the rest of your life if you don't have that with you I tried to but you know my Spanish stops at Biblioteca so I kept playing library library And he's like, what are you saying, man? I don't know how to her stay.

And so, you know, that was that was the end of that. So let me tell you about something really quick. You have more ideas than I do. So let me go first and tell you about something because, all right, so South by Southwest is going on this weekend. And I went to this dinner two nights ago that was pretty wild. So let me tell you about something not entirely related or tangentially related at first. Have you ever heard of the overview effect? Probably not, right?

The overview effect. No. Okay. The overview effect is a cognitive shift that affects how some astronauts, that affects some astronauts when they see the Earth from space. So basically, when you take a person, there's only been about six, 700, 800, something like that, people in space. And when you take someone away from Earth in space, they basically start seeing themselves

no longer as, they don't like identify with a particular nationality, a particular culture, a particular race. and they just see the world as like this like fragile thing floating around. And there's been tons of astronauts who, they go up and they're like, wow, the earth is so fragile. It's so beautiful. It's just floating around and it's protected by this thin atmosphere. And basically it makes like wars seem. Or a good thing to have the overview effect?

Well, it's more likely a good thing. But really it's nothing. It's just like it's just a different perspective where it's like, look, this idea of like nationalities and borders like that's, like, that's, fine if those exist, but that's not really important. We're all just floating on this rock, you know, trying to figure shit out. And it's just like, it changes how a lot of astronauts view the world. And they say they're like, I'm different. It's almost like an LSD trip or something like that.

And so it's this like really fascinating thing. And this one astronaut was like, my life changed after that. Like I'm not stressed out about certain stuff. I see us floating around on this fragile ball throughout, you know, throughout space. And just these little things don't bother me because I think that a lot of those problems are just made up. So it's kind of, and he said, I think everyone should should be, I wish that everyone can be able to experience this. So because of that, because of that idea, there's this one company that hosted a dinner that I went to and it was awesome. And basically what

they make is this like pod. It's like, it's like the size of a really small room that can fit 10 people sitting down. It's like it looks like a capsule, like a circle. And you sit down on this thing and above it is basically a hot air balloon. That's the size of a football. field, a huge hot air balloon. And each person pays $50,000. And over six to eight hours, it brings you up above like 100,000 feet to the point of you kind of, you're not, I guess, technically in space, but it's the thing where you're like so high that you see like the black, you know, above you and then you see like the dark above you. And you can kind of see earth from a distance and you can start seeing different countries. And they're doing this because they want you to, like the whole

shit is like, you know, once you see this, like your life change. changes. And their first flights are going, it's called a worldview. I think if you go to worldview.space, I think that's their URL. I've got nothing to do with this company. A friend just invited me to a free dinner. And it was, I have no idea if these guys are going to be able pull it off. But it was a really good story. And this idea is crazy, fascinating to me. Their first flights, I think, are going live like next year. Kind of interesting, right? So you, I thought the dinner was in the pod. I thought you went to space. That's going to First of all, that's what I heard.

I thought it was like, you know, the Space Needle Restaurant? He's like, I go in this tower. I spun around. I saw the whole city. I thought that's what you were saying you did for dinner. No, my friend John, like does PR for this company, and he's like, hey, I got some spots. Do you want to come hang out?

And I went and I actually met a few interesting people. So would you drink? Would you do this? Adrian Greeneer was there, by the way. The guy, Entourage, Vinnie Chase. He was there. And it was just this thing. What I do it, definitely, maybe.

Not a for sure. no, not for sure, yes. I'm really afraid. I'm really claustrophobic. Definitely maybe possibly no, probably yes is where you're at. I would say yeah. Like the $50,000 thing to me, that's not a deal breaker because I think that's actually pretty like $50,000 to like change your life and see the world. Like look at these pictures that's been showing. It's kind of interesting, right? You're rich. We get it. $50,000, not a big deal to you. No, I understand that part. I just, I just, just mean like if you want to like buy like if you're going to like have to buy a car or like experience this like I don't know it's kind of like it's a compelling offer yeah yeah this is

like you described it as kind of like the go do iawaska um like change your perspective on life you know it's like seems like there's cheaper ways to change your perspective but all right that's a cool one dude i had a friend matt Kelly who used to do a pod i think he did a podcast it wasn't even that popular of a podcast but one of his listeners was this mega rich lady, this old rich lady, and she bought him and the other host two tickets on Virgin Galactic's first flight, like worth a quarter million dollars each or something like that. Why? So before, there's like multiple years before they even had the space flight, but they like,

they did the pre-sale. And this woman bought the two of, this listener bought the two of them, quarter million dollar tickets or something like that to go to space. It was kind of insane. And they did it? at that time it was like it wasn't even possible yet like Branson had just announced it now I think those flights do run or they're about to run or something like that so I don't know if you ever did it well hey worldview we're giving you guys free PR and we're giving you guys a shout out if they offered you Sean a free opportunity to do this would you do it um no I'm gonna say no I mean bro you could drive across the court across the border to Tijuana and and walk back and walking across the border will change your perspective.

That's free. So, you know, I just did this for free. I changed my worldview. Tijuana yesterday. Well, you know, that's the interesting. The cool thing about perspectives is you can have many of them.

So we can go into Tijuana and also we can go to space. This is a good hypothetical, which was, I remember one day at lunch at work, this was like the big debate. It was like, if you could go and be a part of the first kind of space colony or something like that, it's like you get to be one of the first people to actually live in outer space,

like either on the moon base or like Mars or something like that. I wouldn't even consider it. Of course. Would you do it? And I was like, hell no. And it's like, why, the risks. Like, no, the boredom. What are we going to do out there?

Like, I like my life here. I'm enjoying it so much. Like, all I would do if I went out there, to be honest with you, I would just think about how I'm going to tell. every bit about this when I get back. That would be the only cool part about going there for me is like the momentary stunningness of how it looks and then the content I'm going to get to come back to Earth and talk about it. Dude, that's why I hate vacations.

I feel like half the time it's just like I've got to take a picture instead of my parents. That's why I don't like vacations. So yeah, I don't post on Instagram. I just refuse to post on Instagram because I'm like, once I start performing here, this is just going to be another fucking place I perform. So, you know, choose wisely. I chose Twitter and my podcast and like, I don't know, my email list. Those are the only place I want to perform.

I don't want to perform on like how cool my life is. I only want to perform on how cool my ideas are. And that's the one I want to perform. Probably better off performing nowhere and never having to think about that stuff. Well, I wasn't, we don't have to talk about this, but I want us to, I have three goals for us that I need to run by you. The first goal, three million downloads in one month by the end of the year. There's nothing you need to do. You just show up.

The second one, I think we talked about this, in-person interviews, and also get, like, proper famous people, like Arnold Schwarzenegger or, you know, like a proper famous person that we could tell someone at the restaurant. So, like, when people are like, I went to the doctor yesterday and they're like, what do you do for a living? And I'm like, a host of a podcast. And they're like, anyone, oh, cool. Anyone you heard of?

I'm like, no, you don't know who any of these people are. So, like, we need, like, a proper, like, famous. person. Like, you know, okay, do you follow Steph Smith on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, you don't know what Twitter is? Oh. No, not. Never mind. Yeah. I'm unemployed. Yeah,

it doesn't work. You know who Ariel Holwani is? Do you like the UFC? It just doesn't work out. So we need like a proper famous person so I can get credit when I talk to strangers. And then finally, an in-person event.

We need to have an MFM summit. And at that summit, I think you should do a 10-1, minute comedy bit. Oh, that's great, dude. Yeah, that would be the pressure I need. And also going to be the best audience I could ever get. It's like, if I ever had a warm, a warm audience, like, it's the motherfuckers that would

pay to come see us at the summit, you know, hang out with us. Like, that's the closest I'm going to get to a laugh. Yeah. I think you can do it. I think you could pull it off. I think all in summit is, why are we not doing this at such a ranch? It's not set up for like, what I think we should. do is like three to four hundred people. And I think that we should have like maybe two days of

events where it's just like one or two times of us talking in front of everyone, but then lots of smaller sessions and people hanging out. And I think we should only charge like $500. So like just enough money to make like a profit that's interesting, but not high enough to where it prohibits people. All In Summit is $7,500 for a ticket. Yeah, that's a bit pricey. Yeah. I'm not even getting to go to space or the border. So fuck that. Yeah, you can get like one fifth of the way to space with that with the price of it all in summit. Do you know how many tacos that gets you in Tijuana?

$7,500? I could have literally fed the town of Tijuana yesterday with $7,500. What was I going to say? Oh, the, yeah, we should do this summit thing. Why are we doing like, here's the trick. Okay, so like if it's like a meetup, for the conference and we then it's like oh shit we got to have like i don't know speakers or like you know we have to do a good job we just need to make this like a vacation so like we just need to make this

what would already be a cool vacation plus we're there and there's stuff going on so so i think this needs to be like a cruise um and it's just a cruise ship and people can hang out for three days and we're there and other people are there there there's some talks but like fundamentally it's a cruise which is already like dude this worst case scenario it's a cruise best case scenario we are awesome on a cruise ship i'm down i i would prefer not a cruise but i get the idea and i'm down with that and like we get you and me ben uh we get like uh wilkinson step maybe rob dear diordech will war to come uh who i don't know like the best guess name other non famous guests yeah i'm like we have a podcast do you use deodorant yeah oh do you use all natural native no

No. There is one. And he was on the podcast. Yeah, it's like, oh, you, you like Tom Cruise? Yeah. We had a guy on who looked just like it. He has a keto blog, but he looks a lot like Tom Cruise. Yeah, he looks just like Tom Cruise. All right, what do you got? Can I tell you? Okay, so on this trip, to Mexico, I saw three or four things that I was like, huh, tell me more. Okay, so I'm just going to go

through them in rapid succession. And by the way, I just got back like at midnight last night. So, um, you know, I haven't had time to like research a whole bunch of these. Is that your first time in Mexico? No, but I like, um, I got shit on bad for the guy who's hosting me there. He's like, you guys are, so is this your first time to Mexico? I think because I was like, are we in Mexico right now? And he's like, yes. And I was like, is this your first time? I was like, no, no, no, I've been to, he's like, don't say like Cancun or Cabo or like Acapulco. And I was like, yeah, those are the three that I've been to. He's like, okay, this is your first time to Mexico then.

Dude, I hang out. Yeah, thank you. I've hung out for like collectively a month or so in Mexico City. Mexico City's dope. Mexico City's awesome. I would live there for sure. That's what I heard. And then so again, so first I, you know, like here's my conversation with this guy.

So first I dig myself in the hole with the Arrian Mexico. And it's a yes. then it's have you been to Mexico? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trying to build rapport with my Cancun trip. He's like, no. And then the third one is like, but I heard Mexico City is awesome. I got a couple friends who swear by it.

I say it's like one of the best cities. He goes, yeah, I don't go there. They're super dangerous. I was like, what? Everything I said, this guy like had like an extreme counterpunch to me. And I was like, all right, cool. I'm going to roll down the window and just stick my head out like a dog. Is that cool?

He's like, yeah. That's awesome. So I go there and I'm looking at like, dude, have you ever been inside factories? You probably have, but I think most people haven't. Have you been inside like any kind of factory? Why do you think that I've been in a factory? You're going to be like, I don't know, like my fucking cousin Bubba has like a bubblegum factory. And you're going to be like, I went fishing for, I went fishing recently with my father-in-law and he's like, hey, so how do I set this hook up?

What do I'm like, dude, I don't know. I'm never gone fishing. He's like, why did you just assume that I know how to do? Oh, dude, you look like a guy. You just look like a. for sure like a guy who goes fishing. I mean, I've watched documentaries on it. Like, do you or do you not have a favorite place to fish?

No, of course. I don't have a fishing hole that I go to. But no, I don't think I've been to a factory. Not really. Like, what type of factory? It doesn't matter. Any factory. Whatever factory you go into, it's fucking mind-blowing how, like, even go to a warehouse.

Like, go to, you've been inside like an Amazon warehouse or like a food warehouse? like how the food gets to restaurants. It's insane. And the same way that like going to a farm is like slightly crazy. And you're like, whoa, I eat these. These, I eat these animals. Like, oh, wow. You know, that doesn't seem right.

But like basically a factory, it is kind of stunning. Like, if you take any object on like, okay, I'm holding this microphone. This is sitting on my, this is the foam cover of a microphone. There's some like huge factory that like is turning them out. If you just go back, trace the process of how this got to my desk. So, okay, I just go on Amazon, I just microphone, I don't know, maybe this one. I click that, I buy it, right? So it goes from an Amazon warehouse onto a, like Amazon warehouse packs it into a carrier.

Carrier brings it to my house, puts the package on my doorstep. Okay, great. How did I get to the Amazon warehouse? Well, first it was in probably like another warehouse before it even got sent to Amazon. Before that warehouse, it was in a factory being made by human beings. actually before that before it got to the warehouse it was on a boat in a container

like sailing from fucking China on a boat with human beings just living on the boat as it sails for months two months to the coast and then it gets like docked and separated out of a container ship and like humans beings are there

in the factory there's human beings you know I don't know how many small children died making this foam cover but it's like the amount of work that goes into everything that's sitting in our house, just arriving there is insane to me. Like just the material. So where did the material for this foam come from?

Right? There's like a, you know, if you're cotton, right, that starts in a field somewhere. It gets plucked and it gets pulled and it gets processed. Then it gets shipped. And then it gets manufactured. Then it gets printed. Then it gets manufactured again.

It's like, that is insane. Yeah, a lot of energy. And to the point where I'm kind of like, we're kind of ruining the earth and also people's lives like, you know, like to get a $20 t-shirt. Well, I canceled my Amazon Prime membership. I was like, man, I feel guilty. I order something and it's like so much energy behind the scenes went to ship this.

Of course, I only see they ship a dongle to a computer, a small ass thing with bubble wrap in a huge box. And I'm like, oh, this is horrible. And then I have to pay money to pay a truck to come pick it up because I, it's too much, you know, boxes for my. Yeah. Yeah, then the truck, you know, burns gas and then takes it somewhere else and fucking dumps it somewhere and then it's someone else's problem, right? Like, so it's just kind of like, on one hand, I'm amazed that the system even works. Like, the fact that the package gets from the factory in Vietnam to the warehouse and then

you go to the warehouse and there's like an unbelievable number of boxes and then they get sort of picked and packed into the package and that gets shipped. And if you ever go to the post office, like if you go to the post office and you should just ask him, be like, hey, can I see what it's like? behind the door there. They'd be like, what? I'd be like,

I just never seen a post office. They'll open the door. It is like Santa's like, you know, elves factory basically. It's like the most unbelievable number of packages. And you're like, where's the system?

Like, aren't there conveyor belts? And they're like, no, we just got these like trolleys and then we just kind of keep them like, you know, the ones going over there.

They stay over in this area. Then we hope we don't lose them. It's like, wow, this is insane that this system even works. It is pretty crazy. It's like an incredible achievement. It's crazy you can mail something from California to New York for like 45 cents.

And it gets there in like four days. That's what I'm saying. Pretty reliably. So I'm like it is on one hand amazing. And on the other hand, it's horrifying the amount of like, I forget the environmental side. I'm not even that environmentally conscious. It's not like something that I think about all the time or I feel super guilty about. I actually feel more like the human energy and labor and just the amount of effort and resources it took to get this thing to me.

it makes me think like, you know, we had that guy David Freeberg come on the pod. You weren't there for that one. But the thing he's doing, which is basically like, hey, he's doing the same thing in the drink industry, which is like, instead of, you know, putting 20 liters of water to grow grapes, then crush the grapes, turn it into wine, add sugar, add alcohol, pack it up, put it to a, you know, send it to a bottling factory, then send it to a warehouse, then put it on a shelf in a store, and then drive it home and then put it on a shelf in your home. like he's like why don't you just like manufacture it in your home using this little printer that'll print a drink for you

and um and it's like oh yeah that cuts out like 90% of like the you know this like energy and like kind of resources and time and effort that goes into bringing this drink to my you know you know to be able to drink this drink so i just feel like more than ever that was like that was the big wake up call that was my going into space moment was realizing for every single product every shirt every pair of boxers every sock that that I own, how much goddamn like effort, labor, travel resources goes into it and realizing that that's not going to be the way. That's not going to be the way forever. And like this kind of like 3D printing, you know, like sort of basically like manufacturing just in time at the end point and cutting out a whole bunch of these like factories and warehouses and all that of the stuff.

That needs to happen was my big wake up call. I want to ask you about then what else is there that you can do that for it. But before that, have you ever gotten into the Buy It for Life movement? Have I told you about that? No, but I think I understand it from that. What is it? It's like an eco-friendly way of like buying permanent objects. It doesn't have to be rooted in eco-friendly. It's not for me, but it's a perk. There's a subreddit that I subscribe to is called Buy It for Life. And what you do is, the idea is just how do you just consume less stuff and how do you just buy the best of something that hopefully can last forever.

So an example, do you remember as a kid? Did your mom ever have a KitchenAid mixer? Yes. Okay, so a KitchenAid mixer, KitchenAid's a brand. And the mixer, like, it's the thing with the bowl underneath it and like the arm that goes above it and spends, those are like $600. They're really expensive.

But they're famous for lasting like a lifetime. Like you can use an antique one and it works just as good. And another example is if you're going to buy like a coat, like there's like you can maybe buy a really fancy leather coat and you're willing to spend $2,000 as opposed to buying a $300 one because it could like last forever as long as you fit in it.

Or Patagonia actually does that too. They'll fix your stuff forever. Or there's like a bunch of furniture. There's a bunch of shoes. Like different types of shoes. You can buy it and instead of them, whenever they wear down, instead of throwing them away,

you can just get them fixed. And so it's the idea of like, how do you buy one thing forever and it hopefully can last forever? Or buy one thing one time and it will last forever. I feel like you do stuff like this, Ben. Do you have like, objects that you, stuff that you buy that's like meant to sort of last. I don't know why.

My hunch just tells me you do. The funny thing is my dad does this, but not out of like, like environmental justice ideas, but just like because he's crazy that way of like he drove the same car for 22 years and just like couldn't bring himself to buy a new car and always shines his shoes because he's owned the same shoes for like 40 years. And so that like kind of got ingrained in me as like a good way to live. And so I do do this a little bit. It's awesome. It's fun. And also like some of your shit as you wear it and patinas, it actually looks cooler. Right. You're good at doing this, which is you identify these like lifestyle trends. It's like, do you know there's some people that are like, you know, not eating food anymore? They're just drinking whatever

soy lint or, you know, like, you know, there's people that just microdose LSD every day. And like these are kind of famous examples now. But I feel like you've told me about. like 30 of these in the time that we've been friends. And they're like, dude, have you seen this like, you know, subreddit called, you know, Fatfire or whatever? It's like, you always have these like, you like pick up pretty quickly on like there's this weird, not even weird. It's just like, there's a group of people that are deciding to like live under a different sort of like paradigm or different motto or creed. And actually that, I think you just like it is interesting, but that also is like one of the best ways to build a business around that lifestyle because you can speak to

that audience or you could differentiate a product super easily to that crowd. And I seek that I seek those things out. So there's a bunch of things that I don't agree with or I don't I don't want to live my life that way. But I love just like seeing it. I like seeing how basically I love freaks. I like weirdos. I consider myself a weirdo and I love a good freak show. I just love I see it like, I remember the first time like three years ago, I went to my friend's house and he didn't have a microwave. I'm like, what? You know a microwave? He's like, well, it's bad for this reason. And I was like, you're a freak. Like, we all have microwaves.

Well, you're the weirdo. And then I, you start thinking about it. I'm like, well, okay, tell me, why do you think you might be right? And I'm like, okay, maybe there's a point there. Or like, my friends, a lot of my friends now refuse to use plastic Tupperware or plastic, anything that you eat with. And I'm like, well, why? I just put my thing in microwave, who cares?

And so like, there's a bunch of little things like that that I love learning about. Yeah, I remember when Justin Mears came on, you were like, let me guess. You don't have a microwave in your house. He's like, yep. And I was like, that's a fucking weird spot on question to ask somebody that I don't think you knew the answer to ahead of time. And then that got me thinking about that this exact lifestyle you're talking about. In fact, Moise, so Moise started native deodorant, which was around one of these trends,

which was people wanted an all natural, paraben-free, aluminum-free deodorant. And he saw that on Etsy, that was like a really high-selling item. but it was like in the Etsy kind of handmade artisan goods like bubble. And his bet was that people once you kind of speak to that value system of like not having X, they might be willing to pay more and become like switch deodorant brands if you like built a brand around it. He recently tweeted something out he goes, a billion dollar idea. Water that has not touched plastic.

So it's a water brand that has only been like in glass containers or like, you know, basically like from the whatever, like the mountain that this was gotten. it hasn't touched plastic until it's reached your lips. And I thought that was funny. It's like this plastic thing is real. A lot of people are anti-plastics. So that means like for every product where plastic is core, there's going to be an alt product where plastic is not used.

So whether it's Tupperware or like for me, I drink water out of, you know, we get those big five-gallon jugs or whatever delivered to the house out of a disson. Spencer. That's a plastic container. It's sitting in the whole time until I drink it. Right. So there's just a giant water bottle. And so there's like there's these trends where you can look at, okay, where is there, like if there's anti-plastic trend, where is there plastic and can I create an alternative? If there's a plant-based vegan trend, how do I make alt milks, alt meat, alt, alt, whatever, right? That becomes like a blueprint to building a great business. So there's a few companies out right now. You might know their

names. I'm going to try and look them up. But basically, there's this trend amongst products that you use daily that you run out of. So like toothpaste, laundry detergent, Advil bottles, things where the bottle isn't, is just like a way to get it to you, but it's kind of bullshit that you have to throw it away. And so they're making all these products where they send to you one package. And then they send you like whenever you need it just something to refill it like literally something you pour into it. Do you know what they're called?

Do you know what I'm talking about? But I've seen this for toothpaste and I think it's a great idea. I think this is a great business idea. And I at first I thought it was small. I think Moyes was the one who told me. I'm pretty sure he said it's like killing it. You don't know what I'm talking about? I forget what it is. No, I don't know the name. I'll have to look up what it is. But it

They're crushing it. I know there's like for cleaners. I think there's one called Blue Land. I think doesn't Blue Land do this? Is it Blue Land? Yeah, I know you're talking about. Yeah. And it's like chemical free containers and then they send you one container and then they

you order something and they, I don't know exactly how they send it to you, but you just like pour it into the thing. Right. Send you a plastic pouch that you throw in. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like less, less bad. By the way, speaking of the.

these kind of like niche crazy people, I got two for you. So one is we talked to think about anti-R-slash anti-work. Do we talk about that on the podcast? I don't know. I don't think we talked about it, but it pisses me off. So there's R-slash anti-work, which you should explain that. And then I have another one that's the counter to it. So first, explain R-slash-ant-work. I don't even entirely know how to explain it. I'll tell you the background from what, if I remember correctly. It was started eight years ago, but, like in the last three years since the pandemic is when it really got popular. It was made up of a lot of people who were waiters and waitresses and they were pissed off at how they were being treated.

And it started out as like a labor movement thing. Like we need higher wages. We need this. Now it's like got 8 million, 10 million subscribers on the subreddit. And it's people complaining about like, you know, my manager said that like they fired me because I told them I was busy when I needed to come in. and they just basically shit on anything where it's like demanding of, of workers. And so I think so here's their, here's, I think their stated thing. Ben, you tell me if I'm being too harsh on it, if you find a more generous explanation. But here's what it says. It is a subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work and want to get the most out of a work-free life. The subreddit has cracked over 1.4 million members by the end of 2019,

which has got to be a lot more than that by now. It's 8 million now. And it went, sorry, 1.8. Oh, my God. Sorry, I think 1.8. It went viral after a warehouse worker posted a screenshot of a text that they sent their boss. And then that basically made other workers, the other workers like kind of like saw that were inspired, did the same. And it was part of this like, you know, the great resignation that people were talking about.

And there was like this funny clip where they put, they took a mod from R slash anti work and they went on Fox News. I don't know. Have you seen this? Yeah. And the person got destroyed. It was embarrassing. It's like anti-war person gets destroyed by

Fox anchors like the video Which I didn't like I didn't like I hate when they do that This person clearly like is not that smart I think and like it's very easy to set them up to look silly in that in those cases The subreddit also didn't like it

because they were like dude horrible representation of us on TV did not articulate our points and you know why did you go on there like this movement is not about you getting your personal fame to like do this.

We kind of, I think they had some rules around like, we're not going to do appearances or speak to the media unless we kind of agree on what the message is. And so this person went rogue, I guess and did that. But they basically embarrassed themselves where they were like, yeah,

I just don't want to work. And then guys like, okay, cool. So like, you know, you don't want to work at all or like, no, like I want to be able to do what I want to do.

It's like, I want to teach people. I want to be, I want to be a teacher. And he's like, you want to be a teacher? Like, you know,

should we let you teach basically? was kind of like the end point that they were kind of making. But anyway, so there's anti-work, which went viral. Then there's, have you seen R-slashed overworked? No, what's that? It's the exact opposite. It's people who are using the pandemic, the kind of remote work lifestyle, to be like, they call it having the multiple jobs at once.

So, like, their lingo is like, oh, yeah, my J-1, which is like my job one. It's like J-1 has great benefits. And so I'm just picking up my J-2. And J-2, I'm just going to do 10 hours a week, with this, this and this, and this, and I'm going to use that to invest in these things, right? So it's people scheming together about how to work multiple jobs at once as remote workers. Oftentimes, it seems like, without the employers knowing that there are other jobs, so they're like being simultaneously employed without being super overt about it.

I think that's the message. I could be wrong on that. And it's people who are trying to get to financial freedom faster by saying, like, yeah, like, actually, I have the capacity to do like multiple jobs, you know, instead of sort of spending 40 hours a week on one job, it's like, I can actually do a good job in 20 hours a week on two jobs and get paid.

But that's not, that's the optimistic way to look at it. The probably realistic way, like I'm looking at the top title and it says, my J3 job forgot about me today. And they say, I started my J3 yesterday. If I started,

I mean I was giving an orientation on Zoom and no one showed up. So now I'm just, sitting here on the payroll. Right. Yeah, yeah. There's other people who are like, yeah, let's beat the system. And so there's like a counter movement. But that kind of always happens.

There's like a, there's like the movement and then there's the counter movement that comes shortly after. And like it kind of polarizes. And then there's mainstream, which just does things the way they've been doing them. And they don't really pay too much attention to this stuff. And so, you know, that that's kind of common for, for many, many, many of these movements. I think subredits are a great place to look for that.

that's so interesting. So there's this book that I've been meaning to read. It's on my to read list and it's called bullshit jobs. And so it's this premise that like I think it was a professor or some guy from school in economics of London or something like that. And his whole like I again, this for memory. I didn't research this much. His whole idea here is that most jobs out there in the world like at least in white color world like it's just kind of unnecessary. Like and And to summarize it, is like, take a company like HubSpot, Amazon, Twitter, like, what would happen if you, like, laid off two-thirds of the people? Like, would anything, do we think anything would change other than the company would just make more profit? And this guy says,

in most cases, yeah, it would actually, it would run just fine. And most of the jobs that you have are just worthless. And I, I kind of agree with him. I, I kind of agree. I don't have knowledge of it other than just personal experience, but I don't, it does sound like it. And it's hard because there's no counterfactuals, so you don't get to run the test and actually, you know, you can't split test and run both versions and see which one ends up better. But I've had this inkling for a while.

When we were getting acquired, and we were getting acquired by Twitch and as part of it, they're like, hey, you got to like, you know, basically like, your whole team is going to come in for a day of interviews, and that's going to decide kind of like if we take your whole team or not. And I had to do my interview as well. And so I'm going in there and they're like, you know, the classic job interview question, job interview structure is like, I ask you a bunch of questions for 95% of it. And then the last 5% of it, I'm like, so do you have any questions for

us? And then you're supposed to say something that's also just you showing off to like, you know, show some other strength of yours, you know, in a different way. And, um, and I had one genuine question. I asked it to every single person. And they were kind of like taken a back slash they thought I was kind of a jerk. Some people thought they reacted kind of well, like, oh, that's refreshing. I don't know. You know, I hadn't really thought about it. But I could tell other people were slightly offended by my question.

And my question was, I would say, how many people work at Twitch? And they would be like, I think we're at 1,800 or 2,000 people now. I said, and how many people do you think, I forgot how I phrased it, but it was something like, how many people do you think Twitch needs to hit its goals? And I was like, how many people do you think should work here? All right, that's how many people do you think should work here? And people were like, so I asked the CEO of this question too. And he was, he, I give him credit because he's someone who like prioritizes the truth over being right.

Like getting it right is way better than being right. But he's also like a kind of a fierce debater. So he's not just going to like lay down and be like, oh, you know, yeah, you're right. I changed my opinion about things. So he like, he took the question. He didn't like, I would say nine out of 10 CEOs would get quite offended by this question because it basically implies you've mismanaged the company by bloating it's a great question i would not be offended he was not offended either and he was like he was like that's a good question

he's like i think like 2 200 so he's like i think we're a little short of what we need to hit his goal and he's like he's and then he his take was basically like you know i'm not saying we have all the right people or the most talented people or that like there's not people who are underutilized or just kind of you know the fat that wasn't really his point it was like i think we can be this much this ambitious and to do that we would need you know like 2,200 awesome people like working in unison I still think he was wrong

I think we I think you know the company could have operated a third of the people. I would have followed up with a few questions. The first one would be okay but do you think that you need to hire 2200 people because you know that only 10% of them are going to be actually value ad and you just have to hire the rest in order to find that 10%.

And then I would say and also So is it possible that you only, that you think you need $2,200 because you really only need like 20% effort from all those people. And that's what your expectation is. And then finally, how much does redundancy come into play here? How much do people are you just paying them and you just don't want to mention to them, but you're paying them to sit on the bench. And when the person next to them quits, they just are ready to roll. Right. Yeah. I didn't follow up that hardcore about it. But I think those are, you know, very valid points. And also, you know, one thing I kind of learned from him was like, let's take that redundancy one, right? It sounds bad, right?

It sounds like, oh, man, you're paying a bunch of people to kind of do nothing, just sit around. No, it's insurance. And he's like, that was exactly his take, which was like, I think it was on speed. I was complaining how slow we were going. And he's like, speed, he's like going slow sometimes a feature, not a bug here. And he's like, or like innovation. I was like, oh, man, we're not really innovating everybody else is. He didn't say this outright, but I, you know, I gathered this through our conversations, which is like,

there are some things we're going to innovate on. But actually the optimal strategy here is to let a bunch of startups go out and try to innovate. And then if anything works, either buy them or clone them. Like that is actually the best way for us to innovate. It's like it's free. We get way more experiments done by super caliber, you know, super hungry, motivated people like startup founders and their teams who are laser focused on just that one thing. And they'll try radical experiments that we would never otherwise do. And we don't have to fund it.

But we can sit back and watch it. And then when we're ready, we can either go try to acquire them, partner with them. Or if they don't want to do either of those, we can build our own and just use our distribution and our brand, which, you know, if we have, you know, X millions of users, then we should be able to outcompete them from there. And my issue with, I think, is the optimal strategy. I agree with Emmett, I think, on most things. I imagine I would totally. By the way, I should say, I'm not putting words in the mouth. This is like what I gathered from a bunch of, bunch of different conversations.

I'm sure he would disagree with like, you know. know, 40 or 50% of what I just said, some are paraphrasing him poorly. Yeah. And it's just like your opinion on your takeaway. My take of his takes. And I think I would agree with, I bet I would agree with a lot of what he thinks. My issue is when you're like a small company, like under 50 people, you're all in it. A lot of times you're in it for a mission.

You're in it to achieve something. I think that you can get away with just being in it because people just like being in the of it with their friends. Like, they just like the action. When you get a little bit bigger, I think it's less mission-oriented and it's just a job, but you still have to put on this face like this to inspire people. And it kind of sucks because the truth is, is like, well, you know, I know that a lot of you are only working 40%.

And that's okay with that. I bake that into this. I know that a lot of you aren't working at all, but you're really just here in case the guy next you quits. And then hopefully you're going to train the next person. And I know that a lot of you want to innovate and try this new. things, but that's not really what we're going to do. We're going to keep doing the same shit, just a little bit better. And then maybe every once in a while I'm going to have a team

that makes something totally new. And I know all of this, but just tough. And figuring out how to navigate and but have that like to say what I just said, but in a really inspiring way or unfortunately just lie. You got to lie. Not saying it is actually the best way. Yeah, just act. You got to just act and pretend and be a politician a little bit. I find that to be incredibly challenging, but I think it's incredibly necessary. Yes. You're spot on. You're spot on with that. You are spot on with what you just said. Do you think you could do it? You know, I think the thing you said, have you ever heard of Dunbar's number? Yeah. What's it mean again? So Dunbar's number is basically it's 150. That's the number. And it's meant to represent the number of different, like how many people

know people you can know. Like how many people you are familiar, you like know their name, their face. How many people can one person know actually? Right? Like somebody who's like, I got 6,000 friends. Like, no, well, you don't really know 6,000 people. And so Dunbar's number was, was used to be 150. It's like in a tribe, you could know 100, up to 150. You could know everybody in the tribe. Past 150. You don't know everybody in the tribe. And then tools like social media and stuff came out that kind of like, it's like a tool for the human body to like do more. So like you might be able to know and keep up with more. than 150 people now because Facebook makes it easy with the news feed and photos and their name is listed there and whatever you get to see it all the time. I think what you're saying is like

your version of Dunbar's number, which is 50 and it's like below, this is Dunpar's number. I'll call it. It's below 50, below 50, the people who are there are like, you know, down for the cause. Like the larger prior, obviously they care about themselves, but like, a bigger like one of the top factors either number one or two can be like the cause and then like or even just like just like you know like that kid who said he wants to do hood red stuff with his friends like that that could be the cause like i just there was a viral video uh like uh years ago and they interviewed this like nine year old who um stole his grandmother's car and crashed it and the guy was like why did you why did you steal her car that's that was really bad of you. And he goes, he goes, I try to be good, but sometimes I just like doing hood rat stuff

with my friends, like smoking cigarettes and driving cars. Play the video, play the video bed. You got to play that really quick. Can you play it? Along the way, he ran over two mailboxes, hit two parked cars in a Costco parking lot and struck two moving cars near Walmart. I want to do it because it's fun. It's fun to do bad things to drive into a car. But did you know that you could perhaps kill somebody? Yes, but I wanted to do hill rest stuff for my friend. that's how I feel about startups. The YouTube feature for this podcast

just took us to a whole new level already. First one is great. Second, we need to pull the clip of sometimes I want to do hood dredged shit with our friends. That needs to be a sound clip, Ben, that you can just play when Meared Sam was talking about something dumb that we're doing.

So just go ahead and cut that one out. That's the best part about startups. Like, I don't care if it's ad tech. I don't care if I'm sewn clothing. I don't care. Like, it feels like, when you're like pulling shit off and you're like kind of fib into people and like yeah you know we've been we you know we're really care about our customers our team is it's like just the review and you know it's like you're just

like trying to pretend that you're a big deal like that's hood rat shit and I love doing that with my friends but I wanted to do her stuff for my friend by the way have you struggled to do that at another try a big enterprise you know SaaS company that's like worth billions of dollars and hood rat shit is now frowned upon and you're like I just yanked it I yanked it I yanked You can't, and they're like, you just yanked it, Sam? Why did you do that? We have a process for that. Because I definitely could think of like two or three examples where I was bragging about

something I did that was like the startup scrappy thing. Like what? Well, I would just be like, yeah, like, you know, like, for example, there was like a competitor. And I like went, I talked to the founder and I was like, yeah, like, you know, I basically found out a bunch of their numbers. And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, they're growing this fast. this is how they're doing blah blah blah and they're like well how do you know that and i was like well i talked to me i told him i was interested and blah blah blah and they're like oh uh i was like

well you know we just usually we don't we don't do hoodwred shit shot basically it's like the the reward i thought i was creating was like well we're going to need to talk to legal and also corp dev is going to have to you know we have a guy whose job is to have those conversations and we typically sign a lot of engagement before. You know, like, whatever. It was like not the exact example, but like things that in the startup, when I was doing my startup, I would be so proud of my hack about like whatever.

Or like, I remember once I was negotiating a partnership deal. And like basically I was like really negotiating for like every like every inch, which as a startup, I used to love winning a deal. Like doing it, getting a good deal for ourselves. And they were just like, you know, they're like, you know what? Like we'd rather just use our standard deal. And it's more favorable for him, so he'll be happy.

And we don't have to, like, you know, let you, like, negotiate deal by deal on these things. And, like, you know, in general, you don't really want you negotiating directly with the person. We have, like, partners with people who do that. And I was like, yeah, but they were not negotiating. You're like the big Lobowski guy. It's like, dude, you need a toe. I'll get you a toe. I'll get you a toe if you need a toe.

Can I, let me ask you a quick question before we wrap up. Do you think, okay, this question isn't a good question because it is, in fact, possible. And I have many examples. But getting wealthy, like we're talking nine figures, liquid net worth wealth. Getting wealthy, do you think it is, I want to say impossible, but it's not. So I have to change my question, but I'm going to say it with the possible anyway. Is it really hard to do it just from cash flow? or do you think you have to sell something,

sell a business, sell real estate, sell something, capital gains versus income? You're saying liquid, so not paper, not your paper net worth. Liquid, which includes things that could be traded in 30 days. Very hard. Very hard to do just off cash flow, I believe. I think, you know, it's just much slower, right?

Because you can, I mean, just look at the base. right. Like when you sell something, you're going to sell it for some multiple of the free cash flow that it's going to generate for you. Right. And so, so just by definition, right? 10 or 20 years. Sometimes it's 5x. Sometimes it's 10x. Sometimes it's 20x. Sometimes it's 3x. Whatever. There's different multiples for different industries. But like, fundamentally, it's a multiple, which is a multiplier on how fast you're going to get the money, the value out. So let's say to get to 100 million, whatever number of years that would take, you then have to divide

that by five and that's like how fast at minimum you could have got there just selling the asset and getting it and taking the 5x multiple right so so you know of course you can get there but do I know ways you can get there with the same speed I don't think so because even those are like I take the cash flow I invested in the thing and then that thing grows faster and like I can sell my stake in that so you know because it's like you have a choice so you could spend your time you know you could spend your time building a service or some type of business where you can make significant cash flow to $3 million a year, not work that much. But it's not necessarily an asset that could be sold. So there's a few businesses like this. Or it could just be like the way

this podcast gets paid. Like it's not like particularly, maybe, but maybe the podcast is not a good example, but it's not, you know what I mean? Not necessarily an asset. Like your Maven course. Your Maven course is not an asset that could be sold. But it could potentially make many millions of dollars a year versus you just say, you know what, screw it. I'm not doing that because I have to build a business that could sell. So do you prefer, do you think cash flow or an entity, an asset that is independent of you and can be sold? I don't know. I don't think do I prefer is really the right way to think about it. It's like you need both, right? Like, for example, you need both for two reasons. One is maybe you're going to use the cash flow to invest.

invest, right? Maybe what you're going to do is you're going to buy great assets and let them compound over time. Well, where are you going to get the cash flow to begin with? Right? When we had Andrew on last week, he's like, I took the cash flow from the design agency of Meta Lab and I used it to buy majority stakes and all these other businesses and then let those compound over 10 years and like, boom, you know, so he reached, you know, that goal and more doing that. And so, you know, maybe you need the cash flow to make those investments, right? Like if you have no cash flow, how are you going to invest in anything. And secondly, I like to live a good lifestyle. So sometimes cash-led businesses are great because it's like, yeah, sure, compounding is awesome, but so is, you know,

like, fucking, I don't know, Gucci shoes or whatever. Like, choose your, choose your thing you're into. Like, yeah, Gucci shoes, like, sometimes those are better than like this 20-year buy-old asset. Whenever I hear Buffett talk about the long-term and like patience, I'm like, bitch, you're like 95. like there is no long term. You don't have pay. You shouldn't have patience anymore. You should have like you should immediately spend whatever you want to spend. There is no such thing as a long term view for you.

Sampar. Let's see like that way headline. Sam far colon to Warren Buffett. Bitch, you're 95. There is no long term. You're right. That's what I think about. He needs to pivot his strategy.

Well, I'm just like, you know, like if you want to do it because it makes you have to be fine. But like, And Bezos talks about those too. He's like a long time. I'm like, I mean, you don't really, who cares? Like, you know, just live life how you want to live. You got it. And so I've always, it's like, why are you delaying?

It always pissed me off. I'm like, why are you delaying to have the best time of your life when you're like old and don't even want to do shit? Right. Like, you don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, some people are happy along the way.

That's fine. But like, yeah, I feel like you had it. I feel like you asked me. me this question because you had an opinion or a story. So let's just skip to that part because I think you have a good opinion or story on this. I don't have a, no, I don't have an opinion yet, but I'm like with my life now, it's like I can, I think that in, I think in six to, I think in a matter of six months, I could probably create a business from scratch that does a million dollars a year in profit. It would be based off of like my image. I'm not saying I have that.

I'm just saying like I'm sure I could do that. Plus with like a couple other side projects, I think I could very realistically have two or three million dollars a year in cash flow. Easily. But yeah, easy. And maybe I do already have that. I don't even want to say I do or do not. But I, but like. If you did, that would have been a weird way to say it.

It would have been a weird hypothetical. But okay, let's continue on. I got some cool shit going on, I'll say. But, and I'm thinking about where I spend my time. And I'm like, is it actually worth it? Like, or should you just not care about cash? to build something that's like much bigger that you could sell. I don't know.

I'm just trying to figure out like, where do you actually spend time? The real answer is what gives you most joy. Yeah, exactly. And like whether you don't work backwards from do I want cash flow or do I want long term, you know, capital gains. That's not like the starting point of a decision. You kind of just need to make sure you're winning in one way or the other. Don't be weak in either area or like don't be weak in both, basically, is like the way to do it.

Like, for example, you could buy a home in San Francisco. you're going to have terrible income from that property. It's not a good income property because in most places San Francisco, your rent, the rent you can charge somebody is not going to outpay the mortgage plus tax insurance. Yeah, it's going to make a 3% cap cap. But you can go buy some home in whatever, you know, Houston or something like that. It can cash flow $1,000, $2,000 a month.

And it's good income property, but it's, you know, going to appreciate super fucking slow. Whereas the San Francisco home, you know, in 10 years is going to have, you know, whatever more than doubled in value. And so, you know, there's appreciation properties and income properties. Same thing. Like, I think you just do whatever gives you the kind of whatever, whatever gives you juice today and you think might give you juice going forward. And then you got to say, all right, before I do this, I got to make sure it's going to be

strong in either one of these. Either it's got to be awesome for cash flow or it's got to be awesome for appreciation. And if it's awesome for cash flow, basically I'm just going to use the cash flow to buy assets that are going to appreciate with somebody else doing the work instead of me doing the work. You kind of end up at the same point either way. Yeah. I don't know. I've just been thinking about how to spend time. You know who's killing it and has done a really good job of like putting off making cash is our friend Nick Huber. I am an investor and so I get to see some of the numbers of his storage deals. And I don't think he crushed it like in terms of personal cash flow for

a long time. But like the way that things have compounded, I'm like, oh, holy moly, if you just eat shit for like six, seven years that picked the right asset. Things look really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's done great. And also, I think he is like a, I think he personally has great terms with his investors, meaning like, I think it's quite favorable to him. Yeah. Incredibly. Bad way, but like he makes sure he gets to eat. Right. Whereas at the beginning, if you have no capital, you're like, you know, you sort of make a deal with the devil in a way where you're like, all right, I'm going to take no management fees, no acquisition fees and a low carry. I think now he's like, look, I'm good and I know it. So I'm going to take a higher fee.

higher acquisition fee and I'm going to take my healthy carry. So, you know, good on him. I think a lot of people in real estate are able to do that pretty well. I know somebody's crushing it in real estate and they do just that. They have like a, you know, 50% carry on the deal or something, something crazy. And they're like, yeah, because my deals are awesome. I make hits. And I win.

So like, it doesn't make sense for me to do this at any less than that. And I'm like, well, there's this. That's like next level winning. there's this awesome you know who foo fighters are you know Dave girl Dave girl's the lead singing of foo fighters yeah and they've been writing hits forever

and before that he was the drummer in Nirvana so he's like just wrote hit after hit for a long time and someone asked him about he's like you know you write hits and what's your process and like a fan was asking about old music and he stopped me goes wait a minute let me cut you off here

he goes I don't write deep cuts I write hits and he was just like He's like everything I write, I write it to be a hit. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But it's all meant to be. And that's like your real estate friends. He's like, I write hits.

That's why he gets that 50% carry. Exactly, exactly. And respect. I respect somebody who's like, I'm playing the game. And I play to win the game. You know, I'm not playing something else. I'm not going to tell you I'm not playing the game. I am playing the game and I'm playing to win.

It's actually like, I really respect. people who just clearly play the game and they're like open about it and like yeah I play the game I'm playing to win and here's you know like good if you if you dislike the game or dislike me that is your your choice and I actually dislike people that are the like uh virtue signal types where it's like they are playing the game but they'll do anything in their power to like make it look like they're not playing the game and there's a lot of that like in silicon valley there's a lot of that here's how that plays out that I see there's person starts the company bullshits about like why they're doing the company or why this problem is the problem they decided

to spend their life on. It's like, no, bitch, you're, you know, you're doing this because it's good business, not because you really wanted to help, you know, small to medium size enterprise businesses, save money on whatever, right? Like, that wasn't your actual intention. You probably like that you have happy customers and that they're good, you know, you're helping them. But like, let's be real.

It's like, if I took the way the money, you'd stop. cloud. Have you ever seen on Silicon Valley? They go, we're saving the world one cloud processor at a time or some bullshit. Exactly. And then they're like, they're like at the, they're like, uh, someone who calls them out. They're like, dude, this is all rich guy. Like, Kid Rock just was the singer for the, for the, uh, for the show and he's the poorest guy here. Yeah, exactly. And so, so I think it's Silicon Valley, you see that a lot. You'll also see that with the origin story about like, you know, why they decided to do this. you're like, oh, are you sure you decided to do this because, you know, your cousin got diagnosed with this, you know, rare thing and that's why? Or, or was it that you ran paid ads at five different products and this was the one with the highest click-through rate? Because I'm pretty sure when I was talking to it was, this one's the highest click-through rate. I'm cool, that's my company, right? Like, there's a lot of that.

So the guy who started Dollar Shave Club, I saw an interview with him. And some of the times he's like, I started Dollar Shave Club because I was just sick of going to Walgreens. And I had to ask them to like open up the razors. And then another interview who was like, he's like, man, my father-in-law is like crazy. And he likes just to buy random stuff. And one time he bought a shipping container full of cheap razors. And we just had to figure out a way how to sell them all. Yeah, exactly.

And that's why we did it. Exactly. And, you know, I'm in the 2% of the. population, I think you are too, where we're like, oh, sweet, respect for trying to flip the storage container and then realizing there's a business there versus like, you know, the kind of like the shark tank version of the story, which was like, we were just so fed up with our options, right? And like, again, I get it. I've done that.

I might do that again, but am I a little bit disgusted by it? Yes. Same thing with, same thing with, I'll do that. We usually when I have business partners, not when it's my own business. Like when I'm the only, when I get to just be a cowboy on my own, I'll just do what I want. Be like, yeah, I don't care if this is bad for the business. It's fine. The other day, I ate an entire jar in one sitting of peanut butter. It was the Jiffy cheap shit.

And I just felt so bad about myself, but I didn't regret it. And that's kind of like how you feel. But I wanted to do hill rest stuff for my friend. Mission statements are like a pint of Ben of Jerry's. Like, it feels good doing it. And you may not regret it, but you feel guilty about yourself. the other version of this is like people who on Twitter are like, they call this stuff like shit posters or they're like, you know,

they basically try to signal like, you know, I'm not going to just, I'm not one of those investors who blogs about content and tries to. Yeah, I'm a cool mom. I'll tell you the real deal and I'll make jokes and blah, blah, blah. It's like they're the ones trying to carefully curate their brand more than anyone. If you actually meet these people, they're like so conscious about their brand.

and like, you know, how many followers they're getting and, like, how viral their stuff is going. And, like, they are, you know, like, they are so meticulous about that stuff while trying to give off the appearance. It's like bedhead, right? It's like, oh, no, I just woke up like this. It's like, oh, are you sure you don't use a product called bedhead

that, like, you know, like makes it look slightly messy, but, like, you know, you're actually carrying where every strand of hair goes. And so, you know, I have more respect for, like, people who are like, yeah, like, you know, like Pomp or Sahel or they're like, yeah, like, people really like to hear about Bitcoin. So I just tweet Bitcoin shit all the time. It's great. Like, I like Bitcoin and they like

Bitcoin. So I'll just tweet like, I'll just set up a calendar. I'll be like, yeah, I'm going to tweet Bitcoin stuff. Because I figured if I get a big Bitcoin following, that'll be really good for me. And or like, you know, Sawhal was like, yeah, I put it, I put out these threads about these like finance topics because I think I'm good at it and they go viral and then it gives me all these dope connections. Versus like, you know, I just want, like,

I feel that knowledge is, knowledge needs to be accessible for all and free. And that's why I need democratize knowledge. Yeah, I want to democratize financial knowledge. I used to work on Wall Street and the insiders know things that the rest of us don't. So I quit my job and started writing Twitter threads about finance to democratize finance. It's like, no, no, no, no, you didn't do any of that. You wanted followers.

And so you did what it took to get followers. Have you noticed how the word democratize is the new disrupt? democratize is like you know what is democratized it's the new democratize is the new like no offense but that's a democratize

democratize like about to fool you this is good for me and not good for you but I'm going to fool you by saying I'm democratizing something for you by my service by my product yeah by the way I do all this myself again I know it I spot it because I got it I've done all this before

with my e-commerce brand, I've done the origin story thing. With my fund, I do this too. My fund is called the All Access Fund because I wanted to give access to all to be able to invest in the deals I do. Do I feel good that other people get access to good Silicon Valley deals? Yeah, sure. Is that why I did the fund? Fuck, no, that's not why I did the fund, right? I did the fund because I was writing checks and I wanted to write bigger checks and more checks into more companies and that was more than my personal bank girl would allow.

So I raised money from other people to do that. and so now I get to write more checks into more awesome companies. That's why I raise the fund, not because I wanted to democratize access to angel investing for like, you know, a middle school teacher in Tennessee.

I can't stand democratize it. We're going to democratize this by only charging you $50,000 for this piece of clothing instead of them like, I've seen people like, we're democratized knowledge and it's like a $5,000 course. I'm like, oh, not really, dude. You can democratize these nuts

And it's like, oh, I'm ratchet What do you think, Ben? Was today, were we with it or what? I thought today was a hit. I thought today was a huge hit. This is, yeah, other than like the Steph Smith episodes or Rob Deer Dick, this is A-plus territory. Did I not say at the beginning

that this was going to be a fire episode and I had the juice? You did say, although actually the beginning was a little bit slower. but it was once you guys started getting into those trends and you were just hitting people there was like if you capitalize on one of those trends you guys like they're like 20 30 good businesses you could start with ideas that were thrown out today great are we going to have to cut out my democratized dees nuts oh no no no don't take to us yeah and then so we have to plan the mfm summit so uh i agree that making it destination is cool I have a thing that I, you're going to have to bleep out what I'm about to say, but I know the thing.

I know the thing. Yeah. Yeah, I got the guy. I got a really like famous house. That person might be interested in hosting us. I don't know if that's just going to be a dinner, right? Like, that's going to be like no, no, no, no, no. We might be able to do a proper thing there. But I don't know if the logistics are going to work out. So I think, but I think that we could do like something outrageous. You know, we have to think about what outrageous means. But I do think we can have something outrageous. I think a cruise ship, I, like, it, that's, that's not a bad idea. a cruise ship or like some type of famous venue or fuck we could just go to hawai just do like in the

beach in hawai we can figure something out but we do need to do like a summit fly out like if people are going to have to travel for it i think to get the value again the the easiest hack is first make it a couple days where people get to hang and meet each other so do make it like a two-day thing and then and then secondly um just make it already fun if it was just a vacation if there was no content on top But it's like, then you combine some content, getting to meet us and getting to meet other people in the community, plus already it was a good like kind of vacation type experience. Then that's cool. Right. And like, I don't know.

Let's do like bring a fitness component. Bring a like, let's bring all the components of the stuff we talk about where there's like, you know, experiences beyond sitting down and listening to people to talk. It's like, why not do a group workout or like, let's get an MMA guide to like, you know, take us through a set like take people through a session or something. I don't know, like something like that. Down. All right. Let's schedule it. Do you like that $500 price mark, price point? This, I mean, we should do this as an NFT. No doubt. We should make this an NFT and then only the NFT holders can attend.

And then they could flip their NFT to somebody else if they want to. But make it a limited number of NFTs for this. Down. All right. That's it. All right. That's the episode. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.