My First Million - Flying First Class, Grant Cardone, and How Sam Enraged Goldman Sachs

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about why billionaires should really fly first class, the power of Grant Cardone, how Sam enraged Goldman Sachs, and more. Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest. ----- Links: * StrollMag * Axios article * Flashes and Flames * ConvertKit * 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: (01:00) - Flying coach (09:45) - Grant Cardone (19:00) - Sam's new business + aligning values (30:30) - N2 Publishing/Stroll Mag (39:15) - ConvertKit (45:30) - How Sam enraged Goldman Sachs (47:55) - Life Hack: Family traditions ----- 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 was reading an article in the New York Times, and it was about these Malibu homes and how these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes. And Grant Cardone was one of the features. And they didn't feature him as Grant Cardone. They're like, another local buyer is motivational speaker and real estate entrepreneur, Grant Cardone. And he was just like a guy they were interviewing, not like this internet. And he recently bought a house in Malibu. I think it was for $60 million.

And he was like, I'm going to spend another, I forget, tens of, millions of dollars renovating it. And that's one of those things that when you see people, what they spend on their personal real estate, you know, I mean, it's hard to fake that. And I'm just thinking, who would have thought that those things that he's selling would make that much well? I have a question.

When was the last time that you have flown? I just flew last week. Oh, no, sorry, not last week. Last month. Hawaii? How about before that? Yeah, I don't know. when we went to Austin, Miami, something like that. So like once a year at this point, or once every six months?

Yeah, I'm not flying a ton right now. When you flew to Hawaii, did you fly first class or coach? Yeah, first. So I went to Idaho this weekend with Ben, podcast, Ben, and I spoke at an event, which we have to talk about Convert Kids' new thing. And I don't like to travel. You don't like to travel. And this was work-related.

So, like, they wanted me to speak at a conference. And whenever they want me to speak at a conference, I say, yeah, that's cool. I'll come and speak. But you have to pay for a first class flight for me and Sarah, my wife. I'm like, that's a fair trade. You don't pay me to come because I like you, but I do want you to pay for my flight. And it has to be first class because I don't like flying coach. Well, my flights got screwed up for some reason, both ways.

And I had to fly, like, middle seat, like, back row because, like, basically the flight got canceled. And they, like, fit me on these, like, last ones. And I was flying on this. And I started thinking, do you know that stereotype and story of this rich billionaire? And they say like, oh, yeah, you know, even though he was a billionaire, he still flew coach. And like, nothing changed. Like, I think the IKEA guys came to that. Nothing changed.

And I think that is, Amazon, all their desks were old doors. Which I tried to. Dude, I did that. I did that to be cute at our office. It costs more to do that. Is that a door? Is that a door expensive? Also, did you...

I bought the shittiest door. It was like... Yeah, I bought like the shittiest door and it was like $80. And then we bought cinder blocks and it was like a pin in the ass. I'm like, dude, this things in IKEA for $25.

This is way better. Also, doors aren't flat. Doors have always indents in them. That's a stupid story. It's like maybe like they had a door while they like folded t-shirts on that door like for a day while they waited for the real supplies to come.

This whole flying coach as a rich person thing, and I'm not talking about rich millions or tens of millions. I'm talking like, you hear billionaires or hundreds of millions of dollars people say this. I think that is total nonsense. And I tweeted that. I'm like, that is just a lie. Any rich person, I'm talking like real rich,

who says they do that, they're lying. And I want to see proof if that's true. And I had a bunch of really, really rich people holler at me and tell me they do it. And so do you know who Palmer Lucky is? So Palmer Lucky started, he created Oculus, which he sold for, in the ballpark of billions of dollars. And he has a new company worth tens of billions.

So if he's not a billion, he's like, he's like right there, basically. He tweeted back at me. He's definitely a billionaire. That guy's definitely a billionaire. Dude, he tweeted back to me and he said, I only fly coach. And then I had another, I had, yeah, and I think that's crazy. I had some other people DM me, they go in who I know, the company's public. And they're like, I'm worth hundreds of millions.

and I fly first class no matter what internationally, but I have no problem taking Southwest if it's like a short flight. And I understand that argument, if it's like an hour. But if you're going from New York to L.A. or anything above three hours, I don't believe it.

I think they're lying. I just think they're full of it. I ask Darmesh on HubSpot. I'm like, do you do this? He goes, no, that's a ridiculous thing. Of course I don't do that. And he like had this. All you say is,

if you're like us at the Buy First Million podcast, where we are cultivating that trillionaire mindset, that multi-trillioner mindset, that multi-true there, hashtag mindset, hashtag grindset. You have to, even before you have multi-trillions, you better be flying private. You better find private when you can't afford coach. Because if you can't afford your future,

can you afford your present? And that's how I feel. I just thought it was the most ridiculous thing. When I was sitting in this seat, I was just like, my back was sore, and it was just terribly uncomfortable, and it took forever to get off the flight. Just the vibe of the peasants

that you're sitting next to is awful. It sucked. And I don't have a problem doing it. I mean, I will do it. But I'm just saying if I could like, if I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars, what's the difference between $1,500 and $500 ticket? And anyone who lies and says otherwise, I think they're an idiot and they're lying. Yeah, so some people were like, oh, Bill Gates, I read that thread because it was pretty interesting. They gave you a ton of examples. They like slammed you with examples of it happening. And I think the main thing was- They just told me fake stories. Well, yeah, so that's the thing.

I think the main thing that they were saying was like, ex-person used to do this, which is either simply just their PR team being like, hey, Bill, we need you to do a coach-like flight here and like, you know, whatever. We'll keep your private jet and Epstein's jet like off the race. are, you know, just so we can kind of have this measure of austerity here. And so, you know, I'm pretty sure it, and because it works, by the way, like, the fact that so many people posted articles of billionaire flies coach, it's like, dude, that's not news, by the way, but the fact that it's newsworthy is, like, more proof that this is likely a PR stunt, because

I've done it too. I've been like, oh, you know, Bill, you know, Warren Buffett, you know, still drives an old, beat up, you know, 83, you know, Camry and, like, um, you know, as, oh, Sam Bankford-Fried, he's the newest young billionaire, and did you know that he only eats bananas and sleeps on a beanbag? And, you know, these stories work. They're like worth telling, which makes me think this is like a PR scheme. But the other interpretation was they did it so that they could like tell the company,

hey, from the top down, we're all being frugal. We're not wasteful. So like, you know, Mr. you know, senior director of business development is not like, you know, flying first, you know, to every conference every year. I understand that. But it's like, dude, you and your three kids are taking. you're a vacation to France and you're going to fly coach on Spirit Airlines. Yeah. That ain't,

that ain't that ain't that ain't that ain't that ain't that you're lying. You're lying. It's an absolute lie. Show me Ryanair receipts if you're really doing this like show me your Spirit Airlines frequent flyer miles history if you expect me to believe this like dude I've sat in spirit air and I've had the pilot come out mid flight and rearrange the seating because someone was too fat and had to like, hey, we need to do a two for one trade. You need to get to the left side of the plane and then two of y'all need to move to the right. We need better balance. Like that's, I've literally, unless you've done that, you don't have that trillion air energy.

Yeah. Dude, I've done that on pontoon boats like where you have like, where you have people in the back. You're like, hey, you guys got to switch seats. Those boats go to those boats going a little sideways, but I've never done that on the plane. I didn't even think it was real. I thought the pilot was joking and it wasn't a joke. They literally were like, we need to rebalance. I was like, Jesus Christ.

Let me tell you about one more interesting thing. Another rich guy thing. So you know who Grant Cardone is? Of course. I know, I met Grant. So I'm not going to like even comment on if I like him or not, but... I will.

I like him. Okay, that's cool. I don't entirely dislike him. I don't dislike him. I don't really like, I don't like everything he does, and I like a lot of what he does. And, but I kind of paid him as this guy that was kind of like in the internet markety world,

just selling, like, talking like cheat books and cheap courses. If you're so rich. why are you selling a course, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A question I've asked myself many times also. Speaking of, and it's new course available,

July 11th, power writing, sign up today. Go to maven.com and sign up, baby. Markets down, daddy needs a new course. I was thinking about that. I'm like, all right, if this is this course guy and he has this, like, he's wearing all these nice suits, like, is that legit? Is that real?

And I was reading an article in the New York Times. And it was about these, Malibu homes and how like these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes. And Grant Cardone was one of the features. And they didn't feature him as Grant Cardone. They're like another local buyer is motivational speaker and real estate entrepreneur, Grant Cardone. And he was just like a guy they were interviewing, not like this internet. And he recently bought a house in Malibu. I think it was for $60 million. And he was like, I'm going to spend another, I forget, tens of millions of dollars renovating it. And that's one of those things that when you see people what they spend on their personal real estate, you know, I mean, it's hard to fake that.

And I'm just thinking, who would have thought that those things that he's selling would make that much wealth? That's pretty crazy, isn't it? You know what's even crazier? So the one time I talked to Grant Cardone for an extended period of time, like we had like, I don't know, a 40-minute conversation, 20 minutes of it was on why buying a house is so stupid and why he rents everything. and he was going off, like, people were like, oh, your penthouse is rented that you're in. He's like, yeah, bro, your house is not an asset. Why would I buy a house? And he was like, I buy real estate that pays me, brother.

And he's like, you know, yeah, I rent this penthouse. I always rent, I rent everything. I want to be able to move. I want to live in the place I like. And I take my money and I put it to work. You see that over there? That's my money working. And, you know, he's like a big top showman, right?

And so, what is it? Like, dollar bills, like digging holes? I don't think what's he pointing at. He's like, he's like, hold on, brother. I can't hear you. I got something in my ear. It's a voice telling, it's asking me one question. Who's got my money?

And that's what I got to ask. Every morning I wake up and I look to the heavens and I say, who's got my money? And then I go and I get that money from them. And I was like, whoa, this is incredible. Wait, where'd you hang out with him for 45 minutes? So he used to use Blab. The same product where I met Martin Shrelly, it attracted a whole bunch of grifters. And Grant Cardone was there.

And I was like, all right, who's that? I would go into all the rooms that had a big following. I was like, okay, this guy's driving a bunch of growth and engagement. You're a power user. Who are you? And sure enough, like, you know, it was often, you know, people who are, you know, somewhat controversial. That's who people like to watch live stream.

And so Grant would go on there and he would do his 10x meetups. And he would just see people come in. I've got to keep doing my impression. It was so, if you haven't gone into this world, by the way, you need to spend three hours. And I need you to watch three things. He's got great videos.

Watch his, watch his community because you'll be like, wow, this is like the Kool-A drinker. So they would come on. They'd be like, Grant, they put up the X. They come Uncle G. Uncle G, what's up, man? What's up, brother?

And they'd be doing the 10x, 10X. All right. Thank you so much for all the content, man. I was broke and homeless. I used to eat McDonald's rappers instead of the food. And now I just had, I got a Ruth, Chris subscription membership. And I just want to say thank you and had a question for you, right? And so they would do this.

And then it would be one after another of, Grant, Grant, 10X, 10x, brother. Just want to thank you before I was thinking where the sky is the limit. And now the sky is the floor. Am I right? Amen, brother. And so they were doing this stuff. And I was like, wow, these people are. are like really like these are the converted right and so a lot of people really found value in his

thing um because this wasn't like a recorded testimonial this is a live stream where random people are calling in and it'd be very hard to like fake this and they're wearing the hat they're holding up the books they like they're like they're really liked his stuff and i'd never heard of this guy he's like in the tech world you don't you don't know who this character is right like in your if you're in real estate you know if you're in the motivational self self help thing you know but he's not even like ty like ty lopez crossed all boundaries people like all knew who he was a grant cardone's like not like that. So that's the first thing you should watch.

Second thing is he does these deal breakdowns. Very interesting to watch. So he's sitting at a table. And it's like, you know, what's that guy of Ramsey, Dave Ramsey who like you call him and you're like, Dave,

I make $80,000 a year and I got student debt. Like what should I do? And he's like, save your money. And so people do that with Grant. They're like, hey, Grant, I got $200,000. I'm looking at a property. The address is 3909, you know,

West Boise Street and Idaho, whatever. And he'll go and he basically Googles it. He's got a whiteboard behind him. And he basically's like talking to the guy. He's like, all right, so what are he putting down? All right, what terms are they giving you? And he basically like workshops the deal with them. He like kind of like sort of like a speed version of underwriting the deal live.

And I actually learned a bunch from it. Like I'm sure somebody who's like, you know, a real estate master is probably like, oh, this is all just like this is the Jim Kramer of like real estate here where he's saying things that make it sound smart, but he's actually not considering X, Y, C. but just from a like if you're a beginner in real estate, which I am, you will learn a bunch

and you'll be entertained just in the style and he does things. So I like that. The last thing. He's like, it's like the, he's got like pro wrestling vibes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why I'm doing the prestations because I'm like, why I said, I like him, I like him because he's entertaining. Like,

I like him because I've learned some stuff and I've been very entertained through the rest. Like, have you seen these videos on YouTube where he just does sales calls for an hour? I have.

I think they're so good I think they're fake. Yeah, it might be fake because he'll be like he's always pulling a rabbit out of a hat and you're like oh dude it's like a pickup artist it's like you watch their video you're like oh my god you know she was

she was like literally just she was running she was getting into her cab but he said this one thing and then she got out of the cab and started talking to him this guy's amazing and you're like wait a minute maybe he's just like edited like three really good ones out of 500 failures into this video that's kind of what it feels like But he's doing an hour of continuous sales calls.

And so it might be scripted where the guy on the other line is like, yeah, I'll say yes. Just call me. Yeah, we'll roll play here. It's like the TV show pawn stars. You're telling me like, holy shit. And one day you had a guy come in with like a civil war gun, a guy who had Napoleon's hat and another guy that owns a Picasso all in Las Vegas coming into a pawn shop. That's crazy. Yeah, it's like, dude, the Undertaker was dead.

And then he came back to life and won the match. It's like, yeah. You're falling for a scripted drama, right? Like, so it might be that. But nonetheless, these sales calls are very entertaining to listen to. And like, they're, it's obviously like very Wolf of Wall Street style like macho sales. But I like to see it because I've never seen anything like that. Like, first of all, I don't do phone sales.

That's not like, it's not even like in my life. Secondly, I don't know people who are as ridiculous as Grand Cardone and are willing to say things as ridiculous as Grant Cardone. And third, like. This is not a style of communication or salesmanship. I think you can read or study or into it. And so it's just nice to like see it. So anyway, I've gone down these rabbit holes of Grant Cardone. And I've come out the other side being like, yeah, he is definitely self-promoting.

And he's making most of his money, it seems like, on the like the brand and not the like meat and bones of his business. But, you know, respect. He hustles really hard. He's a good self-promoter. And he is smart. And, like, you know, he does well. So, you know, I don't think that, you know, you're not learning from somebody who's a hack. Like, he's somebody who actually, you know, I don't think he's a hack.

I don't think he's a hack at all. I think maybe I. Well, I think maybe I just don't always agree in his values. But I don't think he's lying. Right. I think the criticism would not be this guy's dumb or lazy or anything like that. The criticism would be, um, he's just selling you, you know, a bag of dreams, basically. And like, you know, he makes his money on people.

who want to be him and want to be like him, and they're not really going to be like him. And he's sort of like, you know, promoting that dream. I would say that that's probably true. But I think that's true of a lot of things in life. Like, that's true of Nike also. Like, when I go buy Nike sneakers, you know, because Michael Jordan wore them. Do I really think Michael Jordan's a scumbag for, you know, I'm not, he's not tricking me into thinking I can, I can be like Mike. But yeah, that is actually what the commercial literally says.

Dude, I'm, I'm working on this new thing. And I want to tell you two things about it. I'm working on this new business. and I'm like, I'm still like MVPing it out and making sure it's legit. And I, I've got six figures in revenue now, six figures of cash in the bank. And it was all from phones. I'm calling, calling constantly. No website, a type form and calling them and then setting a stripe link.

So what's if, what are you doing that's effective on the call? Give me the, give me the strategy of the call without sharing whatever you don't want to share. I'm not really selling. So basically the thing that I'm making like a community for a particular type of niche. I'm not here to sell you anything. Well, because here's the thing.

That's no offense, but of sales. So the place where the business is at right now, which is like I only want like, let's say 50 people to join right now. I don't want a lot of people to join because I want to make sure that it's like legit and good. And also because it's an exclusive like private paid community,

I need to make sure that like each person actually. actually can provide value for one another. So I can't just let anyone in. I can only let in the type of person who like truly fits. Makes the next person feel, yeah, feel more value. Right. They came in. So in a way, I'm like, no, like I'm, I really like, I don't know if I have space for you.

I don't know if we can make this work. But we may be. And that's why I'm here to interview to see if this will be a good fit for you. And that's basically what I'm doing. It's like I also. You're using the bullshit line, but this time it's not actually bullshit. It's real this time. I yeah I guess that's true but like I don't know how to explain it it it is true like we we only have a certain I can only make it truly work for a few amount of people otherwise it sucks and so remember how we interviewed the chief folks she said that they had 60,000 people apply it but they only have like 10 or 15,000 members so I kind of believe it but anyway I'm working on it and I went to this I'm starting it with my friend Joe and we did something interesting the other day and we did something interesting the other day and we

When I had started companies in the past, I did, I partnered with the wrong people, not every time, but sometimes. And the mistake that I'm trying to not make this time is basically making sure I partner with the right folks. By the way, you're saying partner like business partner, not like an external partnership. You're talking about like your co-founder type of thing. Business partner, like someone who you give a substantial amount of equity to, which is very similar to a marriage. And I actually did this in my marriage, but I've never done this in a business partner. but we basically said like, hey, like separately, write down three things.

Write down what, like, what does success look like to you in 10 years? What are you willing to give up in order to achieve that? And like, just your day to day, like, what do you value and how do you want to get there? And so we each wrote that down and we came together and we're like, all right, here's all the things that are important to me. Let's look at what's important to you.

Oh, wow, they actually align really nicely. This thing doesn't align. Is that a game breaker for you? And then there was another thing that we, we went through scenarios. We're like, let's say you're Lance Armstrong. It's 1999. You know that everyone's cheating.

And you have to cheat if you want to win. What are you going to do? Right. Like, how do you want to play? What do you want to play? And there's no right or wrong answer, but it's just like, let's just see how our values align in different scenarios. And so anyway, we've been doing this thing where we're like trying to figure out,

why won't this partnership work? Let's get all that out of the way at first. And it has been awesome. more people should do this. Have you ever done this? I have actually done that, which is so funny you say this. We did something so similar. We sort of stumbled upon it organically in our first business because the first business I ever created was that sushi business.

And the idea was to create like a Chipotle like restaurant chain for sushi. And so we're going about it. We've been at this point, we've been doing it for, I don't know, six to nine months, something like that. So we're not like, it's not like day one. We've already already committed. We already have the equity splits. And we're all best friends.

We've known each other for four years. So, like, surely we know everything about each other, right? And a smarter business person, kind of like a mentor type dude was like, at this time, we were really big on mentors. And he was like, oh, he was like, you know, how aligned are you guys? He's like, so it was the guy we wanted to partner with the chef. He was like, he flew each of us out one by one to L.A. and hung out with us. And he told us, he was like, yeah, I feel like all of you guys say the same words, but they mean different things.

And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, like, you all be like, you know, oh, man, this, what really matters is that we do this like, the right way. He's like, but I think you all have a different definition of the right way. Or like, we all want this to be a success. I think if I asked you what do you mean by success, like put a number, put a time frame around it. Like, I bet you it's all different. And so we came on. He told he gave us that feedback.

And we did it. We did the same exercise. We go, I created a list of questions. And we all went, sat in our corner of the room silently. And we wrote our answers. And then we came and we compared. And Jesus, they were so different. Me and one guy were like pretty lined.

And the third guy, and we all thought we were all totally aligned. The third guy, his was like way different. And the biggest differences were like time scale. Like how long do you, how long do you expect to work on this before we see any like any like tangible success? What are your expectations on that? And then what would be a win for you? And it was like, one guy was like, oh man, like if I could be making six figures and like, you know, and I'll do this forever. And then I was like, oh, dude, I want to like, I want to make $10 million in, you know, three years.

And the other guy was like somewhere in the middle. And then we were like, oh, wow. Like we all have a, like, you would be happy with one path and I would be completely unhappy if that same thing. We both are. And if we didn't talk about it, our definition of success would have been very different. And the same thing with values of like, for one, for two of us, it was super important. Like, look, I don't know if this business is going to work or not. But I want to do it our way.

Like, the thing that makes this fun for me, like, there's a lot of shitty components to doing this business. business, the part that makes me, like, want to wake up and do it every day is that I feel like we're putting our own stamp on this. And for the other guy, he's like, yeah, that's cool, but like, I don't really care about that. And we're like, oh, shoot, it's important to know how important it is. So did it work? We're going to spend a bunch of energy doing it. Yeah, well, it was clarifying. Like, we were sort of at the point of no return. The partner, well, that's what I'm saying. You got to do this early on, because it's, in a way, a business partnership is actually more of a commitment than a marriage.

because with the marriage, you can just, like, end it and be over with a business, screwing up your cap table and someone owning a portion of your business. I mean, that could be, it's just a, it's just kind of an irreversible decision. And the only way that you reverse it is by spending a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money. Yeah, like, what we did, what was lucky for us was that we were all 21 years old. So we were all like a blank slate. It's like, dude, I don't know.

This is just my first thought. I'm not like married to this belief system, you know, like something. It was very few things that we were like, no, I am certain and I'm stubborn on that point. Now in my life, if I said something, if I may, if I answered 10 questions, eight out of the 10 would be things I'm like, no, I stand by that. Like, that's really, that is what I've thought this through and that's what I believe. Back then it was like, I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it.

But if you had, now you're asking me to articulate it. So I'll just say these things. So what happened in our thing was we kind of, we would all hear each other's answers. And then we would be like, oh, I like that. That's right. Let's all agree to align on that. And we were like, yeah, yeah, like, sure, that sounds better. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.

That wasn't, I'm not married to that. And so it worked for us because it got us to, like, get to a right answer versus who's right. You know what I mean? Yeah, this exercise that I've been doing with Joe, it's wonderful. We should, like, publish this, by the way, because, you know, I think we talked about this one time was like some New York Times article that was like 17 questions you should ask your future spouse or something like that. Like, before you get married. It was like, it was like 27 questions to ask on the. first date, like, as a single guy who just wanted to, like, meet girls, I was like,

oh, I'm just going to ask, it was like 20 specific questions to, like, make someone fall in love with you or something like that. And it was like for like relationships. And I was like, oh, I'm asking every woman out in this, like, this is the first day question. This is the first hour first day question. I don't remember doing it like three times. I'm like, those fuckers at them New York Times. They didn't know what the hell they're talking about. None of these people like me. Okay, yeah, maybe I misremembered. But I do think it would be useful. Whatever you and Joe just did? Because I did this, like, I don't know. 10, 12 years ago now.

I think you did it just like last month. So you should definitely like compile these so that more people can can do this. Because it'll save, it'll straight up save people years of pain in their life if they like can identify some of these things up front versus just rushing into the co-founding. Yeah. I mean, I like, it was like, all right. So here's what I want just in my personal life.

And then I put like a net worth. I said I want I want to have a seat at the big boys table and I want people to think that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to business. I want freedom. I want to be able to live. live in different cities with my family. I want to be present in my children's lives. I want to own a bunch of real estate. I want to have fun and adventure. And I want to work like really hard for three or four weeks or for six or seven months.

And then I want to chill for like three months. And then it was like, all right, in ways I want to get there is I want to build this particular business. I don't want a boss. I don't want to have any meetings. I want to have few, if any, employees reporting to me. And then it was the ways in which I'm going to approach this particular business. I want to be incredibly aggressive about it. I want to treat it like a job, so we're working 40 hours a week on it. I want to have close to no standing meetings, few employees, and basically that's it. Yeah, oh, and a revenue target of $100 million in five years. I don't care if we actually hit that, but I want that to be the target.

And then he, like, answered similarly on a lot of those. It's like, all right, there's like some alignment here. Nice, nice. Okay, I like that. And, yeah, okay, I think you should, I think you should publish some of those things. also the Lance Armstrong things. I think those are, if nothing else,

like, it doesn't really matter, but it's like, at least knowing how the other person is wired and being like, am I okay with this? Am I okay with the weird psychology of this person? I think it's not so much

that do all of our answers match, just like in a marriage? It's not, do we think the same way about everything? It's like, do we think the same way about the really important things? All right, so what did you say?

Would you, if you're in the land situation, what do you do? I for sure cheat. You basically have two options. You either exit the sport or you cheat, right? Like it's not even cheating at that point. When everybody is doing it, it's just the new normal, right?

Like there's not a, it'd be one thing if it's like, is if one person's cheating and they're winning and everybody else is clean, would you cheat to try to win or would you stay clean? It is like my belief is that all these Olympic sports, plus pretty much all professional sports are full of PDs. And like, you know, it's just a, it's just a naivness test. whether you believe that people are clean or not. It's like in the same way, it's like, oh, my, yeah,

what percentage of NBA players do you think cheat on their wife? It's like, like, you know, I don't know, but yeah, the answer is yes, not a number. And so, like, there might be one outlier and like, cool, you know, credit to that person for being the, you know, the outlier, the AC green of this, but I think the same thing with cheating. So, yeah, that one's an easy one for. me.

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess. But HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better. Dude, you want to, you've got some, you want to, like, quickly go through some of your

topics, or do you want to talk about a company that I had listed that, what do you want to do? Let's do one of yours, and then we'll be one of mine. We'll finish up. All right. Have you heard of this company called End. Publishing? No.

What do they do? The reason I like this story is because they're succeeding wonderfully in a place that everyone thought that it was impossible to succeed. So it's called N2 Publishing. They just rebranded it like last week to stroll. And it's basically neighborhood magazines. So magazines and like upscale neighborhoods. And I'm almost positive they have like 800 of these or 650 of them.

But they're all print. So it's like in your, in like Danville, in like the nice suburb. I don't even know what the, like, the very specific neighborhood you're in, what it would be called. I don't live there, but Black Hawk is an example.

Are you in Black? No, no, but Blackhawks is an example of a nice neighborhood in Danville. So what they do is, they send you a magazine, like once a month, and it's just a magazine.

It's like a bulletin. It's like a newsletter. I don't know what you want to call it, but it's literally physically a magazine. And the company has like 250 employees. Most all the employees are ad salespeople, and they hire someone, and not exactly hire.

It's a franchise. So someone who lives in Black Hawk pays like five or ten grand and become the official publisher of that area and that person has to gather a couple stories every single month but like the stories really are like they're not that good but it's just like people

there's this old like idea with local publishing where like dude people don't care about the writing they literally just want to see people they know and their friends and places they know in a newspaper and you can just list all their names and they would like that. And that's kind of what they do and it's just like a magazine

every month and it says, here's what's going on. Like, you know, the local high school had their graduation and like eight people went to Stanford. Like this new restaurant opened and the guy's a Greek immigrant and he's bringing some of his Greek like taste to the area and like the Fed is amazing. And like that it just like goes from thing to thing. So anyway, it's a bootstrap business that's been around for like 18 years and they announced that they're doing like $150 million a year in revenue and they've been

profitable every single year. And they don't have a website. So like, or the HQ has a website. But each individual magazine, there's no website. It's 100% done through, through paper. And everything that they're doing is something that you would say, like, it can't be done. And it's kind of killing it. It's kind of a major business.

Isn't that so? So how did you get these numbers? Did they, is it something public that, like, do they have all their numbers? Yeah. So if you Google Stroll Axios, they just. did a big announcement on Axios last week where the founder and the CEO

kind of gave their revenue. So we do $130 million in revenue. We have $18,000 plus advertisers. Wow. We've been profitable every single year. We expect revenue to double every four years. That was, I believe, an exact quote. And we're just expanding to all these cities.

And we changed our name from N2 to stroll. It's kind of a really fascinating story. guess if it's doubling every five years, that means it's growing what, like 10 or 15% a year. So it's not like killing it, but it's doing pretty good. Yeah, 14% a year. Wow, this is, I mean, you've done it again, a Sampar special. Like, how do you find these businesses? This is amazing.

It's pretty wild. No, literally. That's a real question. How did you find this business? I just read, like, there's this blog I read called Flash and Flames. there's this blog I read called Flash and Flames. So if you Google Flash and Flames, it's just some guy named Colin in England

who just writes about cool B2B media companies. And I read like loads of trade publications. So like trade publications that has like literally 500 website visits a day. Like just the most niche stuff I read it. And if you Google, if you dude, Google it, it's hard to even find their website. The only way you find it is you type the CEO's name is Dwayne Hickson. And so you have to type in like,

like N2, because there's like 10 or 20 companies called N2, N2, and then Dwayne Hickson, and that's how I found it. And when I did a little research on him, I think it's heavily rooted in Christian stuff because their mission is like to bring, like to create jobs and value people and to bring glory to God. And we're just so happened to be doing it through like creating this like newspaper thing. That's our podcast mission or that's theirs? Both. So anyway, like it. It's just kind of an interesting guy outside of our world. Really fascinating.

This is great. I wonder how many more of these there are. Like, I could imagine somebody doing, freaking doctor's office daily or doctor's office monthly or whatever, doctor's office magazine. And you just go to every doctor's office and you're like, hey,

here's, you know, this awesome magazine for whatever, for doctors who run their practices. And you just, if you eat the cost of the print, then you're like, you could basically go to advertisers and,

you know, pharmaceutical companies and be like, like, hey, yeah, we have 15,000 doctor's offices that read and subscribe to our thing. And, you know, you should advertise. But here's the thing. Like, selling local ads. So they're selling, like, the advertisers are like local dentists, local realtors. Selling ads to those types of people is really hard because you're selling like $500 ads.

That's a hard business. You just have to be like smile and dial. You know, you got to do it constantly. So like maybe they threw that whole God stick in there because they're like, but you're doing it for the will of God. Therefore, you have to be, like, that's the only way that you can motivate someone in order to, like, be on the phone all day selling a $500 ad to Kathy and Scottsdale, Arizona about coming to her open house. That's a hard sell. That's a grind.

That's a grind. Ben did it for two years. He probably wouldn't want to do it for three or four more years. It's a hard job. But what I'm saying is if you did this for other, just say, other, like, subgroups, right? So, like, doctors office, you wouldn't then need to advertise. locally because you could advertise like to all the companies that sell to medical professionals. Or like if I created, you know, Ecom, you know, Shopify mag, right? And I sell, I send this to every

Shopify owner's home. And I'm just putting out like awesome case studies about ecommerce and it just cool like stories of brands or whatever. And in it, I just go tell Clavio and PostScript and like every e-commerce company, every company that sells to Ecom stores, like every Shopify app. I'm like, yeah, you should advertise in this thing. We have like, you know, pretty like, pretty like hyper-targeted distribution. Basically, the question is, is this better than a newsletter? Like, you know, you know both spaces. We know Andrew's doing this local news thing but for not neighborhoods,

but it's for like local cities. And he's doing it through newsletter, right? His company, Overstory. What's better, this magazine idea or newsletters in your opinion? So I actually think that's the wrong question. because what's quite interesting is that they're selling a franchise, which is very weird for a media company. That is actually the more interesting thing.

Do I think that this is an awesome business? Do I think it's better than a newsletter? No, I would probably do the newsletter, but I would consider doing it this way, where you're like, hey, we have 10,000 people already pre-signed up for this small neighborhood in Arizona. Do you want to buy this list from us as a publisher? It's a $10,000 buy-in.

and we'll monetize it for you and you get 15% of all the revenue that we sell, but you got to make sure that you put it out all the time. That is, that's kind of an intriguing, that's an intriguing business model. Do I think that it's better because it's in print? I definitely think it's potentially more interesting. I think the ad rates could potentially be higher because I think that like it is actually quite cool to hold and see something.

I think it's a very fascinating business model. I think you could also do this with a lot of different things. What is the, do they say anything about the cost of actually the print? and the delivery, like you have to print in mail magazines, right? Which is kind of cost you something. So that's like the biggest difference from, like a newsletter you get the tracked clicks and you have no hard costs for the printing and the printing of the magazine.

Do you know at all what that costs? No, I don't. So they didn't reveal too much. But they basically said that their national team has editorial oversight on what's published to ensure editorial, editorial standards are nonpartisan and community folks. focus news. They keep a cut of all ad revenue. They have local operators. So the people who run the local papers, the local magazine used strolls national printing, copy editing, and operational resources. And the company distributes the magazine for free in readers mail.

Right. It's pretty, it's pretty fascinating. It's an interesting business. You know what else is kind of interesting? Did you hear what ConvertKit? So Convert Kit is like a mail chip competitor. I went to the conference this weekend. It's an email platform. I think you use them, right? Yeah, I use them. Do you see the thing, Loki announced something that's kind of amazing.

And the reason, this is actually quite fascinating. They launched this thing where they now hired an ad sales team and they're going to go out and sell ads and they're going to give you, Sean, the user, 85% of the revenue that they go and sell. Yeah, this is smart.

I was always wondering why the, like, email platforms don't do this because once you start your newsletter, you're like, all right, cool. You get people being like, hey, can I sponsor it? And you're like, yeah. And then you de facto become ad sales. And guess what? You're like not great at it because you're not doing it full time.

It sucks. And you would happily pay somebody a 15% commission for filling your ad spots and doing it well. And I was always thinking like, you know, a sort of a mailchamp, a beehive convert kit. Like, why aren't they just making this their business model like in addition to their SaaS revenue of like paying for the email stuff. Like couldn't they, you know, convert it at pretty significant scale. Like I wonder how big this is going to be for them. Dude, listen to this.

The hustle, there was a period of time where Trung was on fire and he was our only writer. He basically, we had like people that would kind of fill in when he was sick. But basically he wrote the email by himself every day for like eight months. And we were doing over a million dollars a month in revenue. Right. And there was one Trug. and there was like 20 ad sales people. That's ridiculous.

That is crazy. It was pretty crazy. And then we had like Adams. So we had like four like growth marketers. So like that business could have been trung and like four growth marketers. And it could have been making over a million dollars a month. And but it had we had like eight or 10 or fifth. I don't even remember exactly ad salespeople.

And then each like four ad salesperson needs. an operations person. And then like editors to edit the ad. It was like, like Morning Brew, I think has 250 people. I don't know for a fact. I would bet you that Morning Brew has 30 editorial people and 220 ad sales or ad sales related people.

Well, there's some management overhead. But like, so with your ad sales team? Yeah, managing the sellers. When you, when you had your ad team, you probably had like some commission structure. or whatever, right? Like, hey, yeah, four percent.

Yeah. So how did you compensate them? And basically what, so what was your comp model? And then what is, what was like the overhead? So the fact that you employed them versus them just being, let's say, like with convert kit,

for example, if I write a newsletter, I'm not paying for the overhead. I'm only paying for the placement. I pay this 15% placement fee once they, once they get me an ad. That's their commission. Well, did you convert it? More or less than that in overall ad sales for the hustle,

do you think? So we basically, when we kind of were getting going, we had two salaries, like the entry level people, so the people who were like two or three years of experience. And then we had the higher people, which for us was like five or six years experience. So still not a lot of experience, but I was only 24 when I started. So it was basically like a 22 year old and like a 27 year old. Like those are like the experience. Do you get my jokes or do you not get my jokes? That's how you decide your copy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the, the, the, The earlier ones, the younger guys, it was like around, it ranged from like $50,000 to $70,000 a year in base salary.

And then the upper guys got like $100 to like $120,000 a year in base salary. And the upper guys, it was expected that they would sell, I forget exactly, but between one to $1.5 million a year in ad revenue. And they would get either four or four and a half percent of that. The younger guys, their expectations was that they were going to sell between $500 and like $9.9. We had some sellers, like this woman, Katie, who would sell, I believe the year we sold, she was going into the year with like 2.5 million booked. Wow. 2.5 million.

And so, but, so basically, but then they had to get 75% of their quota. So if their quota was $1 million, if they hit only $600,000, they only got their base salary. If they hit 75% of their quota, that's when the 4% started kicking in. And then if they got 101%, then the kickers would go up and they would start making a lot of money. So the highest paid person at our company oftentimes was an ad seller. And do you remember, like, did you just look at, like, what is our percent of revenue that were paying out in commissions? Like, did you have like, because let's just say the easy apples to apples math is, let's say

ConvertKit launches this thing. It's 15%. That's your cost of ad sales, basically, if they placed all your ads. Do you remember what you're putting out of that? Well, you could oversimplify it. Yeah, you could oversimplify it by saying, 4% of total ad revenue and then just assume $100,000 ahead. So let's say that you've got 10 sellers doing 10 million.

So that's 100,000 per salary for 10 people. That's $1 million. And then the commissions would be 4% of 10 million. So $400,000. So $1.4 million for 10 ad salespeople for 10 million in revenue. But then, of course, there was like some account executives who would help with that. than like operations people. But yeah, that's basically it.

Bro, you just did a shitload of public math. And I forgive you because you're my friend. You know, we don't do public math. But that's easy. So for you to just do that, it's just not who we are. It's not what we do. Did you follow? I tried to follow, but it's like you're speaking in another language.

You did it right. Listen, 10 million in revenue. You did it right too. 10 million in revenue, which is about the same as theirs. Right. So for all that headache of employing all those people, you saved like 1%, let's say, of like the commission rate. Now, maybe you'd feel higher or maybe you'd do a better job than like the centralized service would.

Probably, I would guess. But here's why it's also a better model. One time we had like Goldman Sachs or something as an advertiser. And we had a story on fuck Jerry and how fuck Jerry, fuck Jerry is like this meme Instagram account that says like funny stuff. They like launched like Fuck Jerry News or something like. that. And I was like, oh, well, let's, for this email, by the way, every single sentence, let's use the word fucking it. And then like another time, we talked about Donald Trump and we're like,

this entire email, let's write it in the voice of Donald Trump. So like, if you read it to yourself, it sounds like Donald Trump. And Goldman Sachs got really mad at us. And they're like, you said fuck, like literally 84 times in this email. Like, we're not sponsoring you anymore. And I was like, well, good, fuck off. Like, I don't care about you. Like, you know, screw you. Fuck you. but Katie sold the ad and her commission was going to get lost. So I was like, okay, I don't want to hurt you. So I'm willing to like not say certain stuff just because I don't want you to experience the pain.

But I don't give a shit about that brand. If they want to like, you know, muzzle us, screw them. So now with this new, with this new setup, it actually could be a lot more advantageous for the creator. Yeah. Katie's amazing, by the way. We work with her too. She's really good. So what are the, do we want to do another one or are we going to wrap it?

We can do one more maybe? Let's do Okay, let me just do a You want an idea or a life hack? A life hack. All right. So Ben, business partner, Ben, not podcast Ben.

Ben, I might just refer to you as God's Ben and the other band I'm going to have to say is not God's Ben. So not God's Ben was in town. Yawai. He's got to come. Yahweh and Jesus.

So he's visiting and I was like, and so, you know, it's always interesting, right? Like in one way, you know, he came, you know, basically stays in my house. We hang out for the week and we get a bunch of stuff done. So he gets to see a bunch of stuff in my world about how I live life. And I'm sure that's, you know, somewhat interesting to him where he sees some things.

He's like, oh, wow, thank God I don't do them that way. And other things are probably like, oh, that's cool. Like maybe I should be more like that. And the same thing happened for me because Ben, on the last day, I see Ben and he's like, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, you're just packing up. What are you doing? What are you writing down? Because he's like hunched over his table. He's like got a pen out.

He's writing something by hand, which is not like, you know, we do everything on our computer. So I was like, what are you writing out? And I noticed he's not holding a pen. He's holding a marker. And he's drawing. And I was like, what are you doing, man? What are you drawing? And he's drawing like a birthday card, basically on a giant piece of paper.

And he's got six of them. And he's drawn all these cards. And I'm like, what is this? It's like, my daughter's birthday? What are you doing? He's like, no, it's my dad's birthday. And he's like, ah, it's a family tradition we have. he goes, every time it's someone in our family's birthday,

we all get out a, get out like paper and markers and we draw them like birthday cards. And it'll be like, you know, inside jokes or like, ah, dad, you're the man for this reason. You know, we always say that you got the best, whatever. You got the best calves. And so he draws a picture of him with like huge calves or whatever, right? You love the sons.

Here's a picture of Chris Paul holding a birthday cake for you, singing new happy birthday, like this player on the sons. And so it's just like, whatever, it's just goofy. and I saw it and I was like, this is amazing. And like everything he's told me about his dad, by the way, his dad listens pod.

So shout out to, shout out to Andy. His dad's amazing. And like, I'll tell you one thing is amazing about his dad is he's like, so his dad's a huge Phoenix Suns fan. So was Ben. I'm like,

oh, did you get it from your dad? Like your dad, you know, growing up was a huge fan. So that's why you are. He's like, no, it's the opposite.

Growing up, my dad didn't really care about basketball or the sons. And I got super into it. And he's like, my dad just does this thing where like, whatever each of his kids is into, he like, he's like, all right, I'm into it too. And like, not just like in a small, that's a great dad move. The great dad move, right?

And so I was like, holy shit, I didn't even think. I'm a dad now. So I'm like, I didn't even think about that. He's like, he's not just supportive. Because I think that's normal. The common would be, you're supportive. Oh, you like this. Great.

You know, go on. Do your thing. I'll show up at your game and I'll kind of be, you know, doing the crossword on my, in my lap because I'm bored. It's not my thing. His dad's the opposite. He's like, oh, we like the, you like the son? sons? No, we like the sons. And we love everything about the sons now. And we eat,

live and breathe the sons. And so for his other kid, his other son does real estate. He's like, oh, you do real estate? No, no, no. We do real estate. And so he works for his son for free, just helping him sell real estate 40 hours a week because he's like, oh yeah, we got to sell some real estate. I'm in. And so he's like a free employee who's like hitting up LinkedIn. He doesn't pay him? Like he loves this podcast because he'll hear growth ideas. he'll be like, oh, so I'm going to do that for my son's real estate business. Wait, that's an amazing dad and a horrible son. Pay your dad, dog.

No, he doesn't want the buddy. He's that creative of dad. And then the other son, like, he does this like comedy thing. And he's like, oh, comedy? All right. I'm in the comedy scene now. And he does that. And I was like, wow, I'm going to do this.

So on the dad side, I was like, holy, like, Ben, Ben works with me. And he basically works with me too. He's like, he listens to every episode of the podcast. He responds to every. email like we put out. He'll like, he's not trying to get special treatment. He replies like a fan. Like he's like, oh, yeah, I do my five treat Tuesday. He's like, I love number three. Or he's like the podcast. Oh, I love the way you and Sam did this. And I'm like, dude, how sick is that to have your dad become your wingman for your favorite hobby or your passion? Like, I'm going to do that.

So that was the first learning. The second was this birthday thing. He's like, yeah, my mom, like, she came up with us early on. Like, you know, love's not about the gifts. And like, this is just a fun thing we do for each other. And we always do it. I do it. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we did it. You did what? This birthday posters. So when you wake up, is this like a white person thing

I just don't know about? I don't know, but I mean, in my house, when you wake up on your birthday, my mom would put posters all over the house that all the other kids

like, and threw out. Wow, okay. I don't know, man. What did you put? Did you do this too? We don't. Where did you get this?

No, this is new to me as well. No, no, no, no. Yeah, we had it as well. And honestly, it made my day. I would, like, I would be so eager to walk upstairs. It's kind of like, when you walk upstairs and you see, like, stuff around the Christmas tree, it was like, I felt that same joy. I walk up around the stairs and I see my signs all over the place.

And I know that, like, I get the breakfast that I want that day. Yeah, it's pretty cool. This, so, so I basically, like, I don't even care about my birthday anymore because it's always, like, the same thing. And I hate the same, I hate the sameness of life. There's so many things that are just the same all the time. Like when Facebook came out with it, you can write happy,

it'll remind you of happy birthday. And then your wall becomes a thousand people who don't really care about you writing happy birthday. I hate that because then I feel guilty. Like I got to reply. Yeah, I never reply. And like,

you know, but it's just the same thing, right? Or what other people do is, oh, let me throw money at the problem, which becomes a different kind of burden. It's like,

I got to get you a gift. I got to think of something. Or let's say I go buy you a nice card. It's like, dude, the birthday poster is so much better than a Hallmark card because it's like, A, it's like actually thoughtful. B is like kind of goofy and funny. It's like more entertaining. And it's a kind of personal touch, right? And so,

so I love this idea. When we came home from that farming conference, my daughter had drawn a poster that says, welcome home, dada. And it's still the first post, like in my bathroom. It's a poster on the wall. Every day I go to the bathroom, I see welcome home data. Like the bathroom is my home, which is, you know, a little bit true. And so I'm like, this personal poster thing is a great life hack and it got me thinking, I'm going to start stealing everybody's favorite family tradition. And so that's my new question for people is like, yo, what are these family traditions you got? Like, what are the things that y'all do? And like, people don't even know, they're so like baked into their operating. They don't even know them. And then you kind of

keep digging and you'll find them. And if it's like, if it's a family tradition that's lasted like, you know, 20 years of your life, it's probably awesome. And like I should steal that for my own family. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's good. I'm trying to think of what if I even have, like my family, we're all atheists, but we still pray before every time we eat dinner. Like you don't eat until you pray, even though like no one believes in God. That's like an interesting tradition.

We do do birthday posters. I don't think we have any other traditions like that. I'd wonder, I bet Ben has a ton. A bunch, but the one that we started, I think I talked about this. So we started doing our end of year reviews, where we like do product reviews and and preview the year to come. That's our newest tradition. I like that one a lot.

Yeah, but that's some new age shit, though. That's some new age. Like actual product reviews? Like, I love this microphone? Or what do you mean? No, no, no. Just like, just reviewing like the year.

What was Ben's 2021 or whatever? And then previewing. Yeah, yeah. But no, the other, like, we have a bunch of traditions. We do have a bunch of traditions. Like one of the simple ones. sweet waffles like every Sunday morning.

And I just like a thing I know I can look forward to every week. My wife makes really good waffles with like strawberry. It's like goes all out. Yeah. It's just one over the top. It's one meal a week that I know I can always look forward to. And I love it. You don't have any, Sean?

No, I do. I have some. And now I'm like, and I give credit to my dad. My dad was really the one who was bringing the like the fun factor with some of these whereas my mom's more like practical. Whereas my dad would be like once a week. He would do the same like the, whatever, like the Monday night dinner as I. dad's making dinner. Oh, sweet. It's not because he's a better cook, but he would like,

he would just add some showmanship to it. So he would like, get this tray. And so everybody had their own circular tray with like four dishes in it. And then he would add a quarter. And we were always like, yeah, the coins there. Like, I got a quarter. And like, it was like an equivalent of a McDonald's happy meal, but like with a quarter. And like, and there would be just like some flourish. There was always something that was like a little extra that he would do. And, and like, or like these little things, he would come home. And he, put his wallet down, but the game was, I would always steal the wallet, and I'd have to, he'd run and chase me and I'd have to hide it. And like, the game was like, can he get his wallet back?

And it was like, how do you turn that like two minutes of coming home from like, oh, hey, how's it going on? Like autopilot into like something that's actually like fun and breaks everybody's kind of like mood for a second. So he used to do things like that's a great question to ask someone. What family, what's a really good family tradition? Yeah, I'm going to steal them to. Like I got a buddy actually that just came to mine. I don't even, I don't think I want to steal this because I don't think I could convince my family to do it. But his family. family did it. And I remember because he started dating this girl. And I was like, how's it going? You know, date Mike or whatever. And she was, I think maybe the other way around.

I was like, how's he going dating, dating this girl? She's like, they got the, she's like, they got this weird tradition. They kiss on the lips. Yeah, basically. It was basically that. He was like, yeah, they go to. He's like, I went on the, they're like annual, like, annual family, like vacation to Tahoe or whatever. They went to a cabin. And I'm expecting skiing and all this other stuff. And there was. But at night. they did this thing. I'm like, oh, shit. What did they do?

It's like blood cult. Like, what's going on? And he's like, yeah, they all read Harry Potter, but like, they read it aloud and they read it like in the voices. And he's like, oh my God. That's a bit much. So I'm sitting there in the circle. Yeah, exactly.

But I was like, but to them, it was like their thing. And I was like, I, you know what? Like, as, as cringe as I would feel doing that. And I love Harry Potter, by the way. But as cringest, I would feel like doing, you know, Dumbledore's voice as I read the book, that would be a lot for me and definitely a lot for me if I'm the visiting boyfriend

into that family that was like a lot but like you know respect to have a family that's like willing to be a little silly even as everybody gets old like I really respect that

and like if that's your thing that's your thing all right whatever like you know let me go ahead and read you know Order of the Phoenix like in the voice like let's do this

you know like I say like cornrows and tattoos or cornrows and sleeve tattoos I respect that others do it but that ain't for me not for me my new line I tweeted this out yesterday

just bother people but I called I was like product managers are the bottled water of tech and it's just a funny backhanded slap

like nobody knows what to make of it it's a compliment but it's clearly kind of an insult like I like bottled water but I guess bottled water is my wasteboard useless

and then somebody won up to it and I'm like oh that's my new shit he goes he goes they're more like the throw pillows and I was like do throat pillows

there's such a good disc because it's like You know, girls love them. They look good, but they're completely fucking useless and annoying. And, like, annoying when you actually need to go to sleep. And so calling something the throw pillow of X is just an awesome slam that I'm, like, saving up in my back pocket to use. I met people at this conference that I went to and there was like a lot of listeners there. And someone came up to me and goes, so, like, when did you guys decide to make the switch to go from talking about business to just being like 12 year olds?

and are you yeah that's what he said and he goes are you happy with that switch and I was like ah A I don't remember and B

yeah I think so but I was like yeah there definitely was like a decision uh yes I'm sorry thank you and fuck this is my reaction

But he's like, do you, he's like, was there? But he wasn't trying to like roast me. He was like, it was Steph's, uh, fiance. And he goes, he's like, I love the pod. Um, but like, when was that switch made where you were going to like go for like talking about actual business to being 12? When I was 12, we had a question like this, which was, um, I was like, what was it? You probably know it.

It's like, um, when did you tell your dad? you're gay. And it was like, it was like the viral question that went through our middle school, like COVID. It was like, instantly someone said this and people realize like, oh my God,

it's a hilarious trap question. There's no good answer to this question. Literally everybody in every school in the school district of Texas was saying this question for like three months and then it went away. That's what that question is. Like, oh, when did you guys decide

to like switch the podcast up to being like 12 year old idiot? It's like, Yeah. He just totally, like, alphaed me. And I was like, oh, I don't remember Calvin. It was pretty good. And on that, no, we're out. All right, we're out to you.