My First Million - From $0 to Billionaire By Starting A Toy Factory In China - Billy Of The Week

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Episode 372: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about tips for success from the Billy of the Week, how to build an audience on YouTube and podcasts, and making millions on Gumroad. ----- Links: * Nick Mowbray Twitter * ZURU * Breaking Points * STRONGLAND publishing * Harsh Strongman * Dream Studio Course * Ghost Town Living * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (01:30) - Billy of the Week: Nick Mowbray (14:40) - Breaking Points and Independent Media (21:05) - How to build an audience — do cool stuff & be ok at talking about it (31:20) - STRONGLAND Publishing and how to make millions on gumroad (44:25) - Dream Studio Course ----- 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

So age 18, him and his brother get on a plane. They go to Hong Kong. And they're like, we are going to start our toy factory here in Hong Kong. They get there first night. He literally sleeps in a bush because they didn't have like, you know, a place to stay that night. So he sleeps on a bush. Why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk?

Too hard, bro. You know, you don't want to sleep on the ground. You want to sleep on a bush? So he sleeps on a bush outside of the airport. It's a normal. He's the bench. All right. We live.

I got something good for you. I got a crazy story. In fact, this is a billy of the week. Million dollars isn't cool. You know, it's cool. A billion dollars. You know, sometimes we get a little fast and lose with a billy of the week where it's not a real billy. This guy is a real billionaire.

Okay, so have you ever heard the name Nick Mowbray? No. Okay, so Nick Mowbray, here's my headline for this. University dropout from New Zealand becomes a billionaire with zero dollars invested. Okay. So what happens? happen. I'll click. Yeah, you clicked. All right. Here's, here's the next bit. Two brothers, when they were in, I think, middle school, they enter a science fair. And in the science fair,

they create a hot air balloon modeling kit. And they end up winning the science fair. So here's Nick, 12 years old, wins the science fair. And he decides, all right, people really likes my hot air balloon kit, my like model hot air balloon kit. I'm going to go sell these. So he goes and starts selling them door to door. And he opens up a farm, a little. It was like factory in his family's farm to like build the kits as he's going. But like he's having trouble scaling up because he's trying to do production himself. And he's doing the sales himself. And it's like, okay, this is tough.

So age 18, him and his brother get on a plane. They go to Hong Kong. And they're like, we are going to start our toy factory here in Hong Kong. They get there first night. He literally sleeps in a bush because they didn't have like, you know, a place to stay that night. So he sleeps on a bush. Why wouldn't he just do a sidewalk? too hard bro you know you don't want to sleep on the ground you know

you want to sleep on on a bush so he sleeps on a bush outside of the airport normal use the bench they end up getting a apartment that I think was eight dollars a month and that was their their apartment what they they start a factory this was now maybe uh 15 years ago ish something like that and so they're in a very small city in china and so they're not in hongong anymore. So they end up creating a factory. So here's the factory. So they create a factory. Nick ends up sleeping in the factory for eight years. And they had $13,000 to their name. That was what their parents loaned them to start this business. And so they're like, they're like, how do we make this work? And so they want to create this like kind of toy company. And so they're like, all right.

And so they start doing two things. Number one, they're like, all right, we only have this much money. and now we're living in China, we got to like make this stretch. So these guys are like doing all the like, you know, the hustle porn stories you hear for entrepreneurship. They're doing it where he's like, we used to eat only off the dollar menu at McDonald's in China.

And he's like, every day, he's like for Christmas, we would go get the Big Mac and it was like $2 and change. And that was our celebration. He's like, I would eat half my fries and then I would go back to the counter and be like,

hey, this is like, not even full. Oh, that's awesome. full container of fries. He's like, that's how we did it. And he's like, we had the $13,000 from our parents and then we had to make this work. And so they end up creating a bunch of, you know, fast forward till today.

They have basically like the like they do a billion dollars a year in sales on their toy company. This guy is personally a self-made billionaire. They've created toys, Z-U-R-U. And so they've created a bunch of toys that you've heard of like robofish. I don't know if you ever heard of that. It's like a little fake, it's a toy fish that'll swim around in a jar or like a fishbowl. They've created a bunch of balloons, which I bought this a bunch of times. It's like you put the hose in and it'll fill up a bunch of water balloons all at once.

And so they, you know, the dark blaster, they've sold 39 million of these or whatever. And so they basically built all these like hit viral toys. And so, and early on what they did, like at the beginning what they did was they were basically just knock off other good toys, like gimmick toys, and they would just make them themselves and try to like out-execute them. So they were like trying to out-manufacture them or out-distribute them. So there'd be like a light-up frisbee that was like hot. So they would like clone the light-up frisbee and then they would go and they would like to get into retail stores, they crashed the like the buyer's dinner for Dick's boarding goods. And his sister just like showed up and kind of like

schmoosed her way in and got the account. And they just did that over and over and over again. And they would get sued by the companies like, hey, you're copying our toys. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, we've got to create original toys. And so they kind of knocked it off. They brute forced their way into retail. And then they started creating their original toys like a bunch of balloons and robofish and the stuff. And so basically they would basically sell these at Walmart, wherever. And their big thing was like, how do we manufacture this with no people?

So they're like, can we do this where it's automated? and 10 times cheaper than everybody else. And so they claim, they claim that their factories that have the robots that produce these have like no humans on the line. I don't know if this is true because like even like Tesla,

which tried to do this with the factories was not able to do this, but like maybe it's true or maybe it's like pretty much true. Like there's very minimal human intervention. How did you find this guy? Someone DMed it. Remember I talked about being known well?

Somebody was like, you're going to love this. This is a perfect billy of the week. So by the way, whoever it is, I forgot your name. And it looks like him and his brother co-founded it and their sisters, the C-O. Yes. So it's all in the family.

Family owned. They own the whole thing, I think still. And it did basically, they have 8,000 employees, 26 offices around the world. Last year, they tripled sales to 1.1 billion in 2020. And, you know, they're still not as big as Hasbro or Mattel or like, you know, Procter & Gamble, which are like, Hasbro is 6 billion, Mattel's 5 billion, P&G and like, you know, 80 billion. But now they're launching new products and new brands.

So they do the toy business. They conquer that, becomes a billionaire there. And then he's like, all right, what can we do next? So they go into other products. And now they're like, all right, we're going to create, what does Parker and Gamble do? They have products in every category. We're going to do diapers.

And so they go into the diapers thing with this brand called Rascal and Friends. And I think in the first year, the Rascal and Friends is going to do $200 million. What? That's not the first year, but last year. They're going to do $200 million. Next year they're projecting it to be $400 million. And so highly profitable just prints cash.

And the toy business basically prints cash. They use it to invest in these. So how did the diaper business take off? Well, they saw that Huggies is partnered with Disney. And Procter & Gamble's partnered with Warner Brothers. That's why they could do like, you know, Disney or like Batman, like things like that. And so these guys went partner with Cocoa Mellon, which is the YouTube like kid sensation. And so Raskin Friends, sorry, last year was $100 million.

this year, $150 million, next year projecting $200 million. Then they also did this with hair care. They have a brand called Monday Hair. Then they did pet food with brand called nude. They did a collagen brand called Dose. And they're just trying to replicate this with each thing. So the hair care brand is going to do $60 million this year. And so they're stacking these on top of each other.

But then the coup de grace, the biggest one they're trying to do of all of them. Nice word. It's this thing called Zuru Tech. So what are they trying to do with Zuru Tech? They're basically trying to create a factory that can just build you houses. Robots that build houses is the big idea. And so they're trying to create the biggest factory on Earth, period, bigger than Tesla's gigafactory, bigger than all of it.

So let me give you the stats on this thing. Where is it? So they're trying to scale it up to 1.6 million square meters, two kilometers long. I can't even. Okay, so that's a. That's about a mile and a quarter long. Yeah. Two thousand K?

Yeah. Two thousand meters. They're trying to hire two thousand more people in the next 24 months, which is just insane. And so their idea with this, with this factory for the ZuroTech thing is basically like you can design a home. They basically took a gaming engine like Unreal or like Unity or whatever. And they're like, okay, if you go into a game,

game like the Sims, you can, like, create a house and you could paint the wall and you could put a couch there and then you could make a floor is different. Like in the Sims, you can basically design a house, you can design a whole neighborhood. You could design a large house, small house, whatever. So they're like, why don't we do that except it's real? Like when you're done, you click print. And then the robots basically just make that house. And so this is what they're trying to do with this thing, which honestly just sounds like, you know, frankly, bizarre. But that's what they're doing. And so that's That's the new venture that they're spinning out of this called Zuru Tech.

And it's basically a way to use robots to build homes, which is just kind of insane. That is crazy. The architecture software using a gaming engine. What do you think made him so special? This guy, like I'm looking at him and he just seemed like a, have you ever met any New Zealand guys? Yeah. Like they're like the same, like the stereotype of like an Australian guy is like fun loving, loves to get drunk, bad with money. will spend all their money because they're like,

they just want to like be care. Like a lot of Australians don't have a lot of saving because they just don't mind spending at the bar. They're fun loving. They're always a blast to be around. And that's what this guy like, if I had to like just look at him and like, oh, this guy seems like he goes all in on things. Well, I think the key to, he's a redhead. Key to success. So, you know, redheads,

they have a chip on their shoulder from day one. They got something to prove. So I think that's like a that's a big deal. I would say 80% For real though The other 20% is hard work This is a great fine This guy's cool

And he's only 35 I think Yeah so I'm going to read you Some of his tips for success Okay You can give me a thumbs up Thumbs down or me or whatever You know if it's just okay So the first one

R rethink your vocabulary I never use the word employee Because we're high performing team And we're playing different positions I'm coaching the team I'm trying to get the best players At all the positions We have team members

not employees in our business. What do you think? Cool. I do the same thing. I hate calling them employees. Sometimes I'll use the word staff, but I hate using employees. But yeah.

I thought you just say, the help. I do the same thing. I'll never, like when somebody... When they say it worked for you, I'm like, no, you work with me.

That was exactly what I was going to say. I always correct people on that. Oh, yeah. You know, I work for Sean. No, you don't work for Sean. You work with me. And I never say I work for anybody. I work with them.

And it's an arrangement. It's a partnership. I do X and I get Y. And you do X and you get Y. And that's it. You know, hold yourself to that. Okay, next one. Bullets before cannonballs.

He goes, the first thing I learned, one of the things I learned early on was to fire bullets before for cannonballs. We're always firing lots of little bullets everywhere to see if those work. If they work, then we fire a cannonball behind it. Love it. That's a good analogy. All right. Break the rules.

I went to university. I studied law and commerce, but I didn't like it. I'd like it, to be honest. And there was a big hill I had to walk up every day to get to law school. I didn't like that hill either. I did it for a year. And I thought, why not have a crack of just doing this work thing?

So I moved to China. I didn't even make it to my second year of law. I missed out, which is probably a good thing, a blessing in disguise. Okay. Yeah, I don't really get the, the jump from the world to move to China. Didn't like a hill. Yeah, different strokes for different folks, but I appreciate it. All right.

Don't be shaken by competition. So he says, in the early days, we had the early days, this tiny production lab, we spent half our money on an injection motor machine. We started to produce our hot air balloon, which didn't sell many of because it didn't meet regulations globally. So we went online and copied a couple products. One was a frisbee. We got sued after it.

We went to a toy fair and we got through day one, but the companies we copied came to our booth and yelled at us. Then we started innovating and it was our journey that took us six or seven years to get successful at product. We lived off very, very, very little. We scrapped and scraped to find something that would work. Awesome. Okay.

Yeah. Fair enough. All right. Let me skip these. Let me see if there's another good one. Okay. Don't lose sight. He says, I remember when we made our first million.

Hey, fan of the show. We did a big deal with David Beckham, where we made a David Beckham Tamagachi at Walmart. I was 21 at the time. We got a $28 million order from Walmart, but we couldn't finance it. Walmart ended up canceling the whole order. We was stuck with half of the Tomogachis. We were so excited because it was this awful amount of money at the time. We had no money, but we got a lot of money.

a little bit complacent. We were always checking how we were doing every month. And we ended up losing, I think, 200,000 that month. We lost a bunch of money. We sat down. And we thought, from this day forward, we are never ever going to have a month where we lose money. We took that approach and we never lost money again. We were always profitable. This guy's awesome. What's his name? Nick Moebray, yeah, Mobray, I think. Hey, if anyone knows Nick or can do the introduction to him, this guy, I would love to have him on the pod. This guy's awesome. Right. This guy's, this is a good fine. The Redhead Joe. Love Redhead.

Actually, my friend said something really funny. He goes, yeah, my wife, he goes, we're, I'm doing this deal. And like, we were dealing with some people that I was like, I just can't tell if this person's like all hype or they're just kind of like a charlatan or what. And I was like, for some reason, they're just not getting along with this other person. And I don't know what to make of it. And he goes, oh, he goes, I've seen this many times of business. Two charlatans can't be in a room at the same. time together. They just combust.

They can't stand it. He goes, it's like my girlfriend. She's a redhead. She can't, she told me once, I can't stand being in the room with another redhead. And I was like, it's the same thing with charlatans. And he goes, he goes, how do you know if one is a charlatan, one person's a charlatan? You put him in the room with another known charlatan.

They'll hate each other. That's so funny. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HUBSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Call, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

HubSpot, Grow Better. Our buddy, Julian, has this company called DemandCurve. He's like, hey, we speak at this like DemandCur of Conference thing. And I'm like, you know, you know the rule. The rule is, hell no, we don't do nothing for nobody, except if it's our friends that we do it for free. Right? So it's either big money or a big friend. Julian's a big friend.

So I did it for free. So we go on there and I'm like, I don't know what this is. It's a conference talk about audience building or content or something like that. You get that all the time. I know. And so you go up there and you're like, I'm going to do my spiel. But something really interesting happened. So it was me and this other guy, Sager from the show called Breaking Points.

I bet you're familiar with it. Have you heard of this? Or Ben, you have to know about breaking points. You know this thing? No, you guys don't. know about this. Okay, this is basically like a, like a TV show, like a popular show. You know, you know the young Turks that that channel on YouTube that was like they did. I know a breaking points is. So breaking points, which is like, saga and crystal. They do their own version of like a political

correspondence show or whatever, like a, I don't even know what you call it political talk show, basically. And they do it. They started off just doing it on YouTube or whatever. And, and it's kind of blown up. And so this, he was, the guy was on the panel with me. And there was a, few things he said that I was like really taking notes on. I was like, oh, that's really smart. And also this, what this guy's doing is actually pretty awesome. And I think could get huge. Like it looks on the surface sort of goofy. It looks like kids playing dress up because it's like they made it look like a talk show. So they're like at a desk. He wears a suit and tie. You know, so it's like, but it's like, you know. Is it like a liberal news? It's like a liberal, a young turks thing or is it like conservative? I don't know how they would call it.

I'm not very political, so I don't really even want to say. I don't want to misclassify it. But their schick is like they cover the things. They say the things that the mainstream media is not covering or either undercovering these stories. Or they're just like spinning it for their own agenda. And they're like, we'll just try to say the truth. Like what we think the truth is.

And like we'll just call it like we see it. Which again, everybody says, but the question is like, how close are you to actually doing that? It's like company values. Every company says integrity is our core value as they like, you know, destroy the earth. And so, and so that's what these guys do. And so they have this set and it like looks like you went to like, you know, and you go to like KFC in like China. And it's like, I don't know when I do that. You've been somewhere, right?

I don't know, Canada. Where have you gone, Sam? You know, like on Friday nights when you're like, I heard of Domino's in Tokyo? You like, you know that feeling? Sorry, I had to big dog you there with my international experience. But, but yeah, basically, they had this, like, I lived in China and they had this phrase NQR. Like, I'd be like, yeah, I'd go to McDonald's here, but I don't really like it. I don't know why.

They're like, oh, it's NQR. Well, what's NQR? Not quite right. And it's the perfect description, which is, it's almost exactly right, but it's not quite right. And all my, all my Asian friends say it's same, same, but different. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Same, same and different. Like this knockoff Nike shoe.

It's same, same, just different. Exactly. So anyways, that's like what these guys' show looks like. It looks almost like a knockoff correspondent show. That's kind of my initial judgment. Then I started watching it. And they got on Joe Rogan and I was like, wow, this is really, and Joe loves the show. Joe's like, Joe basically, he was telling me just now.

He goes, I go, how'd you get on Rogan? And he's like, Rogan was just a fan of the show. And he just reached out was like, hey, I love the show guys. And they're like, wow, we kind of didn't think we were like, you know, we had like most people like early on, you kind of feel like, am I doing the right thing? I quit my job to do this. It's not big, huge. And it's not making a ton of money. It's on YouTube.

It was on YouTube. How many views an episode? They'll have like, I don't know, they have like 800,000 subscribers or something like that. So they're doing a good job now. But this was like before that. Joe got on it. Well, Joe was like into it when it was pretty early. And he was like, they're like, wow, Joe Rogan, amazing.

If the number one podcaster in the world thinks this is like awesome, maybe we're on to something. So they just kept going. And then Joe invited them on the show. And then they've launched like a paid subscription because they're like, hey, look, like if you go to their website, it just says, help us. What is it? It's a breaking point. What does the title say? It goes, like help us beat mainstream media or stuff like that.

Like help us defeat mainstream media or like cover the stories that they don't cover. Some like it painted them as an enemy. which is great, like just a smart, smart, like marketing tactic, basically. But, but basically they, so Joe, their first show, the first page show, Joe Rogan came on. And so, you know, they, like, had this, like, amazing way to, like, kind of kick off.

But that's because they had put in a few years of, like, hard work before that. It's like four years old now. And so he said a couple things that I thought were really smart. I'm going to share them here. In fact, I actually think we should just run the whole interview we just did with him, like, as my first million episode, those guys are down to that because I thought there's a bunch of interesting things.

One thing he goes, they go, how'd you get started? Like, how'd you get your first thousand customers and or like subscribers or whatever? And we all get asked us a bunch. Rarely do you hear something that interesting? But he said a pretty interesting answer. He goes, well, here's what I did. I saw that in my niche, there were these people that were already like popular accounts. And so he's like, I just went and looked at who are the top 1% of like popular accounts already?

And then I just decided, okay, the first content I, create is just going to be content that they love. Because if they love it, they'll share it. They'll kind of endorse it. And that'll drive a bunch of growth right away of the right audience. And so what he did was he's like, okay, they have this. They need data. They need visualizations. They need charts. Cool. So I'm just going to do, or they need transcripts, like, quick transcripts of like what Trump just said. They need to have like the edited, well-formatted transcript. So he's like, we weren't doing our own opinions and analysis. No. I would just sit there and I would live when Trump was talking, I'm transcribing it.

I clean it up, I format it. I have the first to post, Trump said this. And then those guys would retweet it. And that's how I got my first like 10,000 subscribers. He's like, after you get 10,000, there's psychologically the thing where you'll just start growing faster because people want to follow popular accounts. What was your advice, though, to these people on growing an audience?

My advice was pretty simple. I go, I don't think you should grow an audience for the sake of growing an audience. like the audience is basically a byproduct of you doing something else you really want to do. Like if you just got that itch, you want to scratch. Like, I want to create content. Like I've seen YouTubers. I think I could do it. That's actually a better reason to go do it than if I can get to a million subscribers,

then I'll upsell my merch to this percentage of them and I can make this much money. It's like, don't do the calculating way to do it. Just be like, I'm doing this because either, like in my case, it was I'm super curious about these topics. and like, how am I going to justify spending nine hours reading about this bullshit topic that, like, I have no agenda for? Well, if I had a podcast or a YouTube channel, then I could just like make the content out of that. Then it has like a kind of like a purpose to my curiosity. I have like an end point to it. I have a justification for my curiosity.

I get to be professionally curious. Or like when I originally started the pod, I literally wrote this in a doc. I've shared this before. I wrote, most likely nobody's going to listen to this. but there's a hack. Really smart and interesting, successful people are willing to go on a podcast, even if it has, they don't know how many listeners it has. And so at the very, like, my main goal is to just have an excuse to meet with 50 awesome people

that live in San Francisco. Like, I'm in the tech hub of the world, San Francisco. And I don't drink coffee. So I don't want to just invite these guys to coffee. I'll invite them on my podcast instead. That was my whole, like, number one success criteria and like, number one agenda with like, started this podcast was, oh, it's a great excuse to hang out with these people that are like, they're nearby, they're in my orbit and don't do it. And like, I don't know, it's better than saying,

let me just get lunch with you. Please, please, please. And so that was why I started the pod. Dude, I have like people asking me all the time as well, how to build an audience. And I used to have like an somewhat academic answer where I'm like, well, you just kind of like find content that like ranks well other places and you repurposes all this, this, this. And lately I've just like quit saying that and I just go, well, just like be an interesting person, live an interesting life, and just be at least kind of okay at talking about it publicly. Right. Because the thing you just said, like, if you're interesting, if you lead an interesting life,

then all you have to do is share 10% of it. And you only have to be okay at talking about it. Give people a peek into 10% of your life. Yeah. And you don't even need to be that great. And so people like overoptimized for like this, like the like, you know, it's kind of like when people talk about search. They're like, well, you need all those keywords and do this, do this.

And I'm like, or I just do dope shit and write about it. And people are just going to go straight to the website and look it up. And that's harder. And I still think you need that other stuff. But like, I still think that it's mostly a game of just be interesting, learn interesting stuff, and be kind of good at talking about it so everyone else can consume. And like there are people that do it other ways, like Trung, who used to work for you at the hustle. You kind of discovered him.

You set up, I think his Twitter account. Now he's got like, whatever, I don't know, a million. Twitter followers, something crazy. And I don't think Trung took that advice. Like, I don't think Trung lives an interesting life or has this interesting business experience that that's what he's sharing. Well, he's mining for gold. But yes, that is true.

And so he did dig that. You could make the argument. Right. You could make the argument. Yeah. But you could also make the argument that he's leaving, leading an interesting life in that he's learning and discovering cool stuff. So that's like, you could make the argument both ways.

But I remember, I'm not. I hate saying. this because I'm definitely not like a ladies man, but I've come a long way from being like a Napoleon Dynamite look like. Malesman. Yeah, more of a males man. I'm a guy's guy, but not the way that you think it's, not the way that it's usually meant. Like I'm many guys as guy. And but I've come a long way from looking like Napoleon Dynamite. And I remember like I had some like 18 year old asked me about like meeting girls and I was like shocked. I was like your your your your bar for advice is quite low here but let me give you some advice if I could give anything which was basically

I'm like you'll meet more women if you just focus on yourself and have cool badass hobbies and just invite people to come and do those hobbies with you and I was like that's the that's the coolest hack ever for a young man you just do dope shit and then you just bring along people and it's kind of like that with content yeah that's exactly right I think there are a bunch of different ways to win. You could be a, like, Ben for how to take over the world. I would say he's curious about these, you know, great men in history or like these, you know, these sort of like biographies or whatever. And then what he does, he does a service. He says, I'll save you time. So I call him a time saver because he packages it down into something concise. The Hustle's

newsletter and Milk Road's newsletter is exactly that. It's a time saver. So what do you do? You curate, you package, you deliver. Then you have like, you know, sort of like a remixer, a remixer. basically takes maybe one or two unrelated things, spins them together, puts them together, and puts that out there. You have an original contact creator. That's like a Naval or Abology. They're coming up with like independent feces about the world and opinions and analyses that really just originate from them and they put that out in the world. And then you have what I'll call like a lifestyle influencer. That's what you're talking about, which was lead an interesting life, share 10% of it. So there's all these different play

styles that you can use. It's like in a video game. It's like, in a video game, You want to play tank. You want to play DPS. You want to play healer. You can play all these different roles. And they're all winning. You just have to know which play style you're trying to play. So I see that with content.

But the one you recommend it, which is live an interesting life and then share 10% of it. I think that that is the most fun play style to play. And the most valuable. And the most valuable and the most unique. Because anybody, honestly, I don't know offense to Trump, but like many people do. And anybody can go read fucking Reddit and which. Wikipedia and like create a threat of, you know, here's the story of how whatever, the dude created Starbucks. And it's like, the guy.

The one that's repeatedly done is is the hot sauce guy. What's the hot sauce guy? The Sarasha guy. Yeah. Everyone talks about that guy. That guy is the king of the thread boys. Yeah. Every thread boy at home has like a small bottle of saracha on a shrine.

And they're like, I'll always remember the day I can tell people that saracha started in Thailand. Or the peppers were so bad that the neighbors of the factory hated him. And they don't even advertise. And it's the same bottle since day one. The Costco hot dog is still a dollar in 50 cents. Yeah, like this is like, you know, classic. But the one you said was the most, I think, the most rewarding play style. And my trainer had a great phrase for this because I was like, I was asking about his business.

I was like, I was trying to help him with his business. And he ended up dropping like, like, I thought I'm, I'm the. business guy, I'm going to share with him this great knowledge. And I was like, you got to think about your niche, your audience. Who's your, you know, who's your customer persona? And I was like, just looking back, you know, just cringe city about like trying to help him with these things. And he just said, I was like, you don't have a website, you don't have a business car, blah, blah, blah. And he just go, I was like, so who's your, you know, you got to know who's your customer? He goes, my customers are people that love what I do. And I was like, okay, that sounds like some

smooth ass R&B lyric, but what does that mean? What are you going to do with that? He's like, And I didn't understand at that time, but he's like, that's it. He's like, my customers are going to be the people that love what I do. And he's like, okay, well, what do you do? He's like, I'll train you on your fitness. And during that, during that session, I'll train your mind as much as your body, right? It's mindset. And because the mindset's totally aligned with this stuff.

And that's what I'm into. And I'll just share with you stuff that I'm doing with my own training, with my own mindset training or my personal training. I'll work out with you together sometimes and I'll come to your house and we'll just kick it for hours. I don't, I don't watch the clock, right? Like, that's how I want to live. And people, my customers are going to be people who want.

want that. And I'm not going to try to go backwards and say, what does the market want? I'm going to conform myself to it. And so there was this real artist streak to it. I thought, all right, well, that sounds cool, but like, best shit done work in the real world. Sure enough, how did it work? I was his only client, I think, at the time. And he, and we work out like in my garage, but we just leave the garage open. And then people walk by and they walk by. And he never, he never, he just super friendly with him, but never says like, hey, by the way, you know, if you ever interested in my services here's my card never like they would walk by he would joke around with them sort of like just a flirt with people and then he would just like you know go back and keep doing our thing

he's just a happy guy by like the seventh day people are like man it looks like y'all are having fun the music looks fun the home gym they saw us like setting it up each day would get better they saw us joking around they would see my you know i'm breaking a sweat they would see how we're using like we'd use our tree and we'd use all this stuff that was just around us because i didn't have all this equipment and it just looked like two people having a lot of fun and And so my neighbor signs. Just a bunch of sweaty, shirtless guys hugging.

You know what I mean? Hanging off of trees and just, you know, touch each other's body. And so guess what? People wanted some of that. And so my neighbor signs up. Then her husband signs up.

Then the other neighbor signs up. Then my sister's visiting. She doesn't work out. She signs up. My mom signs up. My brother-in-law signs up. They're niece, my niece and nephew sign up.

Everybody starts signing up. This guy now is a full roster. Still never had a website. Never had a business card. Never went and knocked on a door or try to do a sales pitch. All these people are conformed their schedules to him. He's not even a trainer.

He's just a guy who just comes down and hangs out talk. The best part is he's me. There's no trainer. He's just a prostitute who won't have sex with you. I don't even know what to call. He'll just hang out with you. I got a guy. You need a guy to come hang out with you.

I got a guy. Long story short, this phrase of who are my customers, the people that love what I do, that is like playing, in my opinion, business at the highest level because it is the most freeing. Imagine if that was true, that's the most freeing thing you could do. Same thing with content creation. Who am I going to

get subscribers? How am I going to grow my audience? I'm just going to do the most interesting things. I'm going to share it as I go. And the people who follow are going to be the people who love what I do. And like that is just, I think, a much better way to go than like this, frankly, a sort of desperate approach that I think most people take to building a business, getting customers, getting subscribers, all that stuff. Dude, let me show you an example of of I think might be the exact opposite of what we're talking about. So I've been researching, and I think someone's DM'd be on this on Twitter, but I found this thing called Strongland, like the word strong and then the word land,

Strongland, publishing. His main thing is called life math money. All right, check this out. So this guy, he owns maybe half a dozen to a dozen. I've found like four or five so far, different Twitter handles. One is called the 48 laws. of power bot or quote bot, I believe. Another one is called the book of P-O-O-O-K.

And the 48 laws of power bot quote, or quote-bought. It's just like he's got a ton of quotes loaded into this. And it has maybe two or three hundred thousand followers. Another one is called the book of P-O-O-K. I think that's how you pronounce P-O-K. And he's just like quoting like this pickup artist from the early 2000 that no longer writes. And then he owns a handful of more of these. like just Twitter handles that are just like generic. And they're all basically focused for men.

And it's about getting laid, meeting girls, making money, getting fit. And he owns like six or 12 of these handles, which is obviously like not the hardest thing to grow because it's like these cool taboo topics. So like it's one of those things where you don't talk about your friends, but everyone wants to be better at all those things. So you follow these these guys. And he like has like a circular thing where he like retweets each one. And each one. And each. handle links off to a gum road page that sells a document related to that. So like the 48 laws of power one. It's like here's how you get more powerful and power. Here's how you get more power and influence at your job, which like who doesn't want to learn that? And he sells it for $89.

And then it's another one. It's like here's a bunch of lines to pick up girls. Here's like a workout plan to get abs in eight weeks. Or here's like the perfect way to eat healthy and feel good. And if I had to guess, I would say that he's doing between $500 and a million a year in sales just off these gum road things. So you can see the sales. So basically, not the sales, the reviews, I think. No, no, it's a sale. So like, for example, live intentionally 90 days self-improvement program. It's, I think it costs $89 and it says $9,500.

And it says, $9,500,000. That's half a million. That's half a million bucks. I don't know how long, right? So maybe this has been out for years. I think he's only been doing it for two years. And then there's like, you know, his crypto one. There's his like, you know, build your Twitter audience.

How much is that? How many? How many did that sell? That has 5,400 sales. So on how much dollars? Let's see. Like 100 bucks. How much is it?

$179. So. Golly. So his Twitter one has generated a million dollars. His next one has generated $500,000. So I think pretty safe to say he's doing at least half a million in a year, probably closer to a million. Isn't that funny?

Is this hilarious? This little guy, and his name is harsh strongman, I believe his name is. So it's like an anonymous name. And his blog is called lifemathmoney.com. And if you go and look up, who is harsh strongman? And he says, I'm a certified financial planner in India. And I guess he just has this blog and he talks about this stuff. And I think it's cool.

I think this anonymous blogger who only uses some type of like free-ish looking website builder and gumroad is just killing it. And I think it's awesome. That's amazing. That is, this is hilarious. It's awesome, right? When I think about a harsh strong man, a man who just embodies life, math, and money, I think about a mid-20s independent Indian certified financial planner. No Like

The A and alpha Like this is my cousin Vickram. Like, you know, this is my cousin Vikram. I just found out what Vickram does for a living. There's a reason Alpha and accountant both start with A.

This guy's, those guys as alpha as they can get. The alpha accountant is going to be his new thing. He's going to have a Twitter handle on like Excel courses. Make taxes your bitch. Yeah. That's hilarious. The Andrew Tate of Excel.

All right. Dude, on air, I need you to help me make a decision. All right. So I am in the process of, I'm, I stopped in St. Louis. So I'm recording this from St. Louis, but I'm driving from New York to Austin. I always stop in St. Louis for five days to see family. I'm going to drive back to Austin. I miss New York.

I miss Brooklyn already. I absolutely. You miss the energy? there's something about the city. The city. You have to go romantic when you're talking about New York for some reason. That's why I refuse to go there. I love it.

I love it. I'm in grind mode. I love being there. But there's one thing that I'm currently doing. That is it is something that I told myself I'm not going to do it. And that is bitch about taxes and let taxes decide where I live. I'm 100% doing that. right now. So I want to tell you some numbers. So I currently live in Texas, which has no state

income. I think the federal, what's the federal tax rate for the highest income? It's, what's at 36% or 37? I think it's a little above a 36%. So hypothetically, on a million dollars of income, I'm spending $370,000 a year on taxes or around 31,000. Yeah, federal. because Texas doesn't have income. So $31,000 a month in tax, sorry, $31,000 a month, yeah, which adds up to about $370 a year. In New York, if I move there, I would basically be giving away 51 to 52% of my income because the city of New York has like a 3.8% tax rate. And then the state of New York has a 9.7% tax rate. And so that means I would have to be spending an additional $11,500 a month in income taxes.

Plus, if I were to live there. That's just your New York rent. That's the New York state rent. That's not even the actual rent of your place. Yeah. Yes. Plus, to rent of a place, my current mortgage right now in Austin is around $4,000 to $5,000 a month.

I would not want to purchase a place in Brooklyn. I would want to rent a place. And my budget to renting to have a family there would be around $9,000 to $14,000 a month in rent, probably 13, probably 11 to 12. I could probably get a place that I would want. And that's what I would spend. So I'd be spending just, and then let's say my income, this is all hypothetical. I'm not saying what I do or don't make. If my income is $2 million, I'm going to be spending around $280,000 a year in extra income taxes plus an additional $150,000 a year in rent, meaning my costs are going to be like $400 to $500,000 a year

and additional costs just to live there. Not including the fact that like I'm in St. Louis right now, I just went out to eat for three people is $51. If I'm in New York for three people for breakfast, it's going to be, you know, like a hundred bucks, two times the cost. So how would you justify making the move or not move? Well, I kind of did myself, right? Because I live in California and California has the same problems.

New York has high cost of living, high state tax, that sort of deal. And now, you know, I work remote. I can live anywhere at this point. And so, you know, it is very tempting, especially when you hear like, you meet people who live in Texas, then you meet people who live in Puerto Rico. They're like, you pay federal 37 percent. I pay 4 percent. I pay zero percent on capital gains.

It's like, wow. All right. I guess that's also an option. So there's sort of like no end to it. I used to live in Indonesia. And, you know, for two grand a month or three grand a month, like, you know, you're living large out there. So, like, you know, you could have a, I had a cook and a maid that lived in my house.

I had a driver that drove me everywhere and, like, you know, didn't have to think about anything. So there really is no end to this idea of, like, optimizing cost of living versus, you know, like what you want to do. There is no end to it, but maybe there are thresholds. Yeah. There's more rungs to the ladder than even what you presented. is I guess what I'm trying to say.

You can take it even further. I think that I've always thought, as it sort of like goes back to that, what advice would my 18 year old self give me? My 18 year old self, which was like a more simple-minded version of myself, would say this. Doesn't mean they're right,

but they would say this. Wait, I thought you're rich. Like, oh, wait, you're, wait, so you're moving to where you don't want to live to save money? That sounds not very rich, right? So if it's all the same, if it's all the same,

If it's all the same in terms of where you enjoy living, cool, then obviously pick the difference. If you enjoy one more, I would go to it. Now, the hard part is how do you price that enjoyment? How do you price that energy of New York? How do you put a dollar number on it? We're going to put a dollar on it. We're going to price it. We're going to say it's around $400,000 or $500,000.

But dude, for the same price, I can live in Texas six months and in New York six months and fly private back and forth twice actually like two round trips and it'd still be cheaper but that's yeah but it would also add hassle to your life right so there's there's some situations where the variety adds what you want right it's like a win win it's like oh yeah I don't want to be in one place all year anyways or I like the weather this time of year in one place and this time in another place so I'm just going to move around the weather and that happens to coincide well with my tax situation but basically my thought my simple thought process is this. If you're rich, you can do tax optimizations, but make sure it's not driving the car, right? So it gets to be in the car, but it doesn't drive the car. So I would do some things that are no

sweat that are going to save you tax money. Great, I would do that. I would not move, which is like one of the biggest things that changes your like day-to-day quality of life. I would not move to a different place just based on taxes as the primary reason. I would have to have another primary reason. So, for example, my reason for being in California is that me and my wife's family is all here. And I just want to see them more often and have that be like, I prefer that lifestyle. I don't know how many years we all have left. We're all healthy. Or my kids are little and they get to have this experience with the grandparents around. But that matters more to me than anything on the tax side. So that's my decisive reason. I made that one reason the priority. And then I'll live with the rest. So I think that's what you should do. You should come up with your one decisive reason about where you're going to live.

And I would guess if you're rich, that reason should not be taxes. I got to do it unfortunately, but golly, it sucks. In the back of my head, it's that famous Michael Jordan quote. You know what I mean? The great quote from Jordan is Republicans buy shoes too. That is a my first million worthy quote. But also, you know, you also got to factor in how much more are you going to make? How much more is maybe the connections you'll make in New York, one investment you

make, you know, you can make more. It's easier to make more for a guy like, you guys like us than it is to adjust your lifestyle to try to save more. I find it, I would rather work harder to make more money than change my lifestyle in a way that I feel like I'm making some compromise in order to save money. Well, I think I'm going to do it. If I could do this again, for some reason, I think Miami is just like hell on earth. It's not for some reason. I could name about 50 reasons why I think that. I think Miami's horrible. But at the same time, if I could do it again, I almost wish I would have done. So right now I live in Austin, Texas. It's because I got a bunch of friends there. My best friends are there. And we had an office there. If I could have done it

again, I would have done Florida, though, and New York, because Texas doesn't have nice enough weather that I'm just going just for the weather during wintertime. Whereas Florida, like, you know, I feel like I'm in the Caribbean sometimes in certain parts of it. I wish I would have done Florida and New York. If I can do it again, that's what I wish I would have done. I'm surprised the best friends being an Austin thing is not a bigger pull for you. I feel like that's huge. It is. And that's why I'm, I don't actually mean if I could do it again. I wish the stars would have aligned. So that could have happened is kind of what I mean. What a slap in the face. I'm just glad I'm not your friend. I'm not Neville who lives right next door to you in Austin.

He's like, oh, the energy in New York. That's what's going to get to you. You're going to move away from me for the, the energy. Come on, bro. Dude, New York's happening, man. It is quite fun. It is fun. Whenever I walk around there, I get pumped. I do get pumped. But I also like also, I also want to kill. Like, I want to kill someone half the time. Dude, like, every time I'm in line at Whole Foods or some grocery store, I see a fight. It's just, there's always a commotions. It's always something's always happening. It always raises my blood pressure. And I want to like, I get in like protector mode. That's hilarious. All right. What else we got? Want to do some more? Yeah. I have one thing. So I think we've talked about this, and we've just, you and I have hired this guy, but go to dreamstudio course.com. His name's Kevin Shen, and I went and looked at his landing page.

This guy's landing page for a course, A, is awesome. And B, he's selling a course that I never in a million years would have thought would work, but then I look at it and I think 100% you've nailed it, and I understand how you could potentially make a million dollars a year. So it's called Dream Studio course, and it's a $1,500 course. I don't know why he didn't just go $2,000, but it's a $1,500 course all on setting up your Zoom set up, basically, because I don't even think it's for a podcaster. But crazy, cool looking landing page. And whenever I saw his landing page, I thought, wow, I really want this.

But how sick is that landing page? It's a great landing page for a bunch of different reasons. Like first to start with headline. So headline is not a course about setting up your Zoom. It says, make your home video setup look like Hollywood, right? Dream outcome. So sells the dream outcome right away. Then there's a picture of him that shows a really awesome video setup.

So show, don't tell. And then he basically says, build your studio with expert help. It's a six-week course. That'll do whatever. Okay, enroll here. So good call to action. And then he's got a bunch of before and afters, right? Here's Tiago Forte.

Look, he looked like shit before. Now he looks great, right? You know, look, here's this person. Now they look great. And he just keeps showing, you know, basically success stories of transformations. Because fundamentally, when people buy a course, they're buying transformation of some kind. They want to walk in one way and walk out another. And most courses, I've struggled with this myself, most courses struggle to even understand

that you're selling change. You're selling a transformation, not content, not information. And secondly, they don't have to. know how to show that I can actually provide this for you. And with something that like the visual like this, you're going to get a before and after, which is like before and after is my favorite sales pitch of all time. I think a before and after is the most compelling sales pitch. Do you have like a file or something that has all, you're saying this as if you have like like categories of headlines. Of headlines or of. Well, you're like, you're like, oh, he's doing the before and after style

headline. I love that style. Yeah. I have the, so in my course, I teach these. I'm like, here's a bunch of frames you can use to like sell your product. If you can do you send that to me. If it's visual like this, yeah, yeah, well, if it's visual like this, you use before and after. If it's not visual, there's another one I call stop the struggle. So stop the struggle. You sent me this landing page actually. Abstract ops used to have this landing page. I think you invest in those guys. It was like a stick figure running away from a tornado. And it just said, stop putting off your back office tasks or like stop running away from your your your your to do list or whatever and that's what I call a stop the struggle pitch which is basically saying instead of saying what we do for you

we'll say we can put you out of your pain is that pain hurting you I can stop the pain for you I can stop the struggle that you're having right he could do the same thing so he does dream outcome before and after right like make your home video set up look like Hollywood he could also have a stop the struggle, which is like, you know, basically a stop showing up to work looking like this. And it's like the up-the-nose camera shot, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, instead, you could look like this after. And so, you know, so basically I have these different frames that I'm like, this is a way that you can present your product, your information. And so I have one of my sessions in my course is a landing page one.

And so that's where I'm like, this is where you need to use this is on your landing page. because your landing page is your 24-7 salesman that will always deliver the pitch exactly as they were trained to do 24-7, anywhere in the world, never have a sick day and take no commission on sales. And so, like, a landing page is the greatest salesman ever. And so I think you should train your salesman

to, like, be able to sell your product effectively, essentially. I'm writing a new landing page now for my thing, and it is daunting. Like, no matter how many landing pages I've written, It is always hard. Well, because your bar keeps going up. Because you're like, oh, I know what great looks like. I know I want it to be great.

And so what would have otherwise been sufficient five years ago? Now you look at that. You're like, now, I'm sure it can be better. I know it can be better. Right? Because you're already really good. If I was going to get somebody in the Maryland page, I would hire you. And so you're already very good at it.

So the fact that you're feeling daunted is like, I don't know, like a musician going back into the studio to record their new album. And it's like, they know that they're good, but it's like, I got to do it again. I got to make magic again. I got to make a hit again. That's exactly how I feel. I'm staring at the signing page. And I'm like, no, this is lame.

This isn't up to my standard. This sucks. This sucks. And I'm just like looking for, you know what I usually do is what I like to do is find the way that I've been getting inspiration now is I find competitors that exist now or that used to offer a similar service. And I go to newspapers.com and I find old articles written about them. and I see how reporters used to explain this.

And if I see a catchy sentence, I go, boom, got it. I'm still in that angle. And so that's what I, that's how I've been using, that's how I've been getting inspiration is I just use newspapers. com to find old, just articles in New York Times written about a certain company that's in the same space. There was this guy we hired once. And I actually don't think it was a smart hire.

I've made a bunch of mistakes now that I think about it, looking back at my business career, I'm like, man, we hired a firm to do that. yeah, we hired this person to do this. We paid this. Like, I remember out of the Indy 500s, like, was doing their race or whatever. And it was like, hey, there's free billboard space. We can give it to you for your app. And then I was like, oh, wow, that's cool.

Indy 500. I've heard of that. They're giving us free space. And we spent the next 48 hours, like, filming this fucking video that was going to go on this billboard, this, like, video billboard. And I was like, looking back, I'm like, oh, my God, how cheap was my attention that I let this random cold email, divert me and my marketing teams like focus for 48 hours to do what? Like, did we really think this billboard was going to like, at Indy 500?

What was the product? He was going to drive downloads. It was a beer app. So yeah, it was on point. But like, they're just not trying to download apps in that moment. And like, there was no way to track it. It was awful. And so like, and that's happened to me a thousand times.

I've made a thousand dumb decisions like that. I'm like, wow, we really like spent time and energy doing that. That's like kind of embarrassing now that I know. what I know now. So similarly, we had hired a naming agency. Like, I hired an agency. I don't think that's a horrible idea. I don't think that's the worst idea.

I think it was 15 or 25 grand. It was a lot of money. And it took like six weeks, which was also more expensive. It was like, if we just had the name, we would have just moved faster. What was the name that they came up with? I don't even remember. It was like a dating app that we were building. Is that?

They just came back with like Jersey Shore characters. Your app is called The Situation. So we were thinking what sophisticated but also fun? Party in the front. Yeah. So basically. Polly D. Say it with me.

Polly D. The latest and greatest date. It was like, it wasn't even that they did a bad job. They actually did a good job with their thing. But it was just unnecessary. It was an unnecessary thing to do. But I do respect the craft because I remember, I went to the meeting room.

He's got Eli was sitting there. I think Eli Altman is his name, I think. And he was like, okay, so tell me about it. And I was like, so here's the screenshot. And he's like, no, no, no, just like, tell me about it. I'm like, so it's an app that lets you do this. It has these features. He's like, no, no, no.

Like, why did you make the app? And it's like, oh, because I'm at the time I was single. I'm single. I've used dating apps. And he's like, I was like, they just, they all sucked. And so that's why we wanted to make this great one. And I was kept rushing into the, here's my answer. Here's my solution.

He's like, but like you said it sucked. What sucked? Like, what sucked about him? I was like, well, they're just like too hard to use. Again, generic. And he's like, so like what did you like, do you remember just getting really frustrated about it one time? And so he's asking me these good questions to like actually unfold, the unpack

the customer stories, the words, the phrases that actually means something. He got beyond the jargon. And then I was like, okay, so what happens now? Now you guys, you know, have this crazy brainstorming exercise. where you come up with the name. He's like, no, just like,

give me some time. And he just took a whiteboard marker. And he just sat down cross-legged, like, you know, like Indian style in front of a whiteboard on the floor. And I was like, a child at play.

Yeah. He was literally like a child at play. And he like, he just like put his phone at silent and put it outside. And I was like, whoa. This guy, me,

there's no bigger sign of seriousness than somebody who turns their phone off. Like, leaves it outside of the room. And he's like, he just started writing. And he started writing long form. Like not, I was like,

he's got some names and I went there to get look for names. He's no. He was like, you know, dating is like hard. Actually, it's not hard. It's just kind of, it's frustrating. The thing that's frustrating about it is like, I know that I'm a good catch, but I'm sitting here trying to perform.

And he's just like writing out like the feelings that go through the mind of the person that's the way the story needs to edit is it's the most like weirdest horrible thing. Like he's this thoughtful thing and he comes up with like dick butt. Like, basically. That's basically it. So he did this long process. And I actually think that there's a, there's some military phrase,

which is like slow is smooth and smooth as fast. Yeah. And I've always tried to go fast when it comes to business stuff. How do I go faster? How do we speed this up? And I paid the price many times for like, if I had just slowed down on the appropriate step, the whole thing would have gone faster,

even though that step would have gone slower. For example, figuring out what is the actual problem I'm solving? What are the, what is the pain that the person is feeling here? What are the words that they would use to describe it, that they would resonate with them and get them to nod their head and be like,

yeah, I've had that. And then how would I explain it in a way that's simple to them? Like, that's what he was ultimately trying to do. He was trying to figure out, what's the problem? What are the words that somebody would actually use that would resonate with them where they'd nod and be like, you know, amen, preach.

Like I feel that. Wow, you just, you put it in words better than I even could, how I was feeling about this situation. And then, oh, you describe the solution, but instead of describing in terms of like the features and the widgets and the gadgets around it, like, you tell me kind of like how my life's going to be different because I'm using this and this works this different way. And it kind of makes sense that it would work that way, right? Because, you know, let's use an analogy. Imagine you ran a lemonade sand and blah, blah, blah. And so that's what he did. And I remember just walking out of that being like, wow, that was a.

like an impressive thing this guy did, and it looked so unimpressive. He asked me some questions. He kept slowing me down, didn't want to jump to an answer. Then he just sat with a marker, alone in a room and wrote for a long time on this whiteboard,

like paragraphs of stuff. And then through that, he came out with like, you know, a better understanding about my product than I had to begin with. And I think that, like,

there's something cool about that process. And like, yeah, you have a new thing going. When you go make this landing page, it's like, that's the thing you actually want to do because slow and smooth

and smooth. fast. Well, did you, did I show you that I hired a branding agency? I saw that. Yeah, you sent me the so I think I spent 15 grand on it and they're based, they're in Hong Kong. So like I think there was a, like I think normally this would cost 30 grand in America. And I was actually happy with the work. And this is normally something I would never do. And it took them 30 days. And it's like, you just get this deck that like outlines. And like I never would have done that. And I think it was totally worth it. This is not something I ever would have done. And I think it was totally, because whenever you build shit and you make a website, you slowly iterate. And then like you hire new people and

you're, and they like come up with ideas. And you're like, no, we already tried that. Or like, no, that doesn't work because this page looks like this. I'm like, let's just get it all, do it all the right way the first time. And that's something I never in a million years would have done. And it was worth it. Yeah, we did that for the Milk Road too. We hired this guy, Jeremy, who did our initial branding. And I never hired a branding agency like that for a startup that I was doing. But I was like, all right, I told Ben, I said, we're not going to do it off the bat. Like you're you saying you're doing it up front?

I think that's okay. I don't think that's necessarily bad. But I also don't think it's necessary. And so usually for a startup, you just kind of want to do what's necessary. When I say off the bat, I already had a quarter of a million in revenue. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I had told Ben, I said, he's like, he made a logo like in five minutes on Canva. And I was like, all right, I like this.

I like the name. Milk Road. Sounds fun. Goofy. Easy to say. I can get the domain for $2,000. Let's do it. And he made this logo in like Fiverr or Canva or something like that.

And I was like, all right. Let's run with it. He's like, you know, don't you think we should blah, blah, blah. And I was like, all right, here's the deal. It seems like you want to spend more cycles on it because you think the brand is important. And I agree. The brand will be important. I just don't think it's important for us to get our first 10,000 subscribers or even 100,000

subscribers. So let's make a deal. If we can get to 100,000 subscribers through our jenky thing, that will reward ourselves by investing in the brand. Because I think ultimately the brand, this whole exercise of like having a cool brand, it's really for our own pride more so than it's going to improve the like conversion of this right now or like it's unproven how that's going to do.

So let's reward ourselves. So we got to 100,000 and then we hired this guy. And then he took us through these like cycles and, you know, like, you know, review after review of these like decks. And then both were good. I have this guy in India who's like my designer for all my projects.

and to create that milkman character, who I think is actually the best part of the brand, he actually made it. This guy in India made it in like one day. And I was like, wow, perfect. Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much.

And so we just ran with that. Dude, I think the outcome was actually quite good. I loved your brand. No, I thought it was good. I thought it was a win. I told you the story, right? When I went on vacation to Hawaii and the guy, Jeremy, he lives there.

He lives in Hawaii and he's like, oh, you're here. Like, let's hang out. I was like, oh, yeah, great. And so he comes to the hotel. He walks up barefoot. And I was like, something happened? Like, you get her okay? And he's like, what do you mean?

I was like, you don't wear any shoes, dude. And he's like, oh, I don't wear shoes. I was like, you don't wear shoes? And I was like, most fucking branding agency thing I've ever heard, the most creative. Is he a white guy? respect for taking the I'm a creative to the

peak like you thought the beanbags in the office was it you thought that you know having these like Is he like a white guy who moved to Hawaii or is he born and raised? Like I moved to Hawaii. When they moved there they were like oh we don't need shoes on the island like we just live we're a part of the island and so they put their shoes in storage and so he's like yeah we had to go travel to Australia to go visit our family he's like I do get my shoes out of storage

I was like what a weirdo you don't need shoes that much that you didn't even just chuck it in the garage, just in case, like, you put them far away. Like, that's the equivalent of the guy, the branding agency guy, putting his phone on, turning it off and leaving it outside the room. Dude, just so, for the record, I'm on board with that. I think shoes are stupid. I walk around barefooted all the time. When it gets above, if it's above 85, no shirt, no shoes.

Just, that's just the rule. I'm always outside shirtless. I'm wearing socks right now. No. These feet, I hate where. Packaged. No, man. You got to get the calluses on there. Then it's like you're wearing shoes anyway. I dig it. But I'm happy you're back. We went, I went, I went, I had Ryan Holiday on and we'll do a recap about that. And then. Yeah, I leave for one day. You guys do a podcast about

how great Hitler is. I was like, wow. All right. Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, we had to switch some things up. Basically, we did this pot on Hitler, and I was talking about how sad it was. And then our freaking YouTube guy, he like put up this stupid thumbnail and it said like, things, or no, things you can learn from call things. Something about like, it was about like, like, you know, things you can learn from Hitler on business building. And I was like, whoa, no, not a chance. And I text it bad. I go, bed, you got to get rid of this.

This is, that's not at all what we talked about. This is, you know, and it had my face on it. We had my face next to it. And I was like, dude, that's not even remotely what we talked about. We talked about how horrible he was. And so, yeah, we talked about Hitler and had Ryan Holiday on just right when you left. Yeah, so I decided to come back. I cut my emergency short to come back.

Who is fucked, man. I can't let you totally throw our YouTube guy under the bus because he did contact me. he was like, hey, I think I'm going to do the Hitler angle. I think it'll get tons of clicks, but obviously it'll be controversial. Do you think that's cool? And I was like, yeah, man, go for it. Anything for clicks? More YouTube.

And you were like, yeah, put Sam's face on it while you're at it. Not my face, only Sam's face. Can you brighten the image? Can you brighten his face a little bit? Turn down the color balance? Yeah. Can you get Sam doing like a heart shape with his hands? It was the worst, man.

I saw that picture and I was like, bad. Can't have this man. You got to delete it immediately. Please delete that. The reason I thought it was okay is because in the first 30 seconds of the video, you say, Hitler's obviously a bad person, but I don't think it's wrong to like study his life and learn lessons from it. And so I was like, well, he says he's a bad person in the first eight seconds of the video. I think it's okay. You ever heard that phrase? If you're explaining, you're losing. Yeah. If you're explaining you're losing, that is that that is totally right.

I was like, it didn't work. That was a, that was a, I understand. People liked that episode, multiple people were like, my favorite episode, you know, I just shared, I don't know if you saw those tweets. There was a bunch of people who really liked that episode. Yeah, and they also liked the Ryan Holiday one. So basically, you're welcome. You're welcome for carrying the load for a while. I'm going to take a, this November, I'm thinking about doing a motorcycle trip and I'll be gone for five days.

So you're going to have to see if you can. I got you. Carry. Yeah, you're going to see if you can carry the weight during that time. Yeah. Why, you know,

why, uh, why Stalin is so misunderstood. Yeah. We can talk about this another time, but do you know that YouTube channel, ghost town living? Yeah.

That's, those guys who bought that town, that abandoned town and they, they kind of vlog about, you know, as they've been building it out or whatever. So I, invested in it and um it's like me and ryan nathan berry and like three or four other guys and i wrote a

i think i gave him 25 grand so i think i own like less than one percent of it but uh i'm gonna i want to i want to ride a motorcycle there and and check it out it's like four hours outside of la i think it'd be fun that's interesting why do you invest in that well you can ride your motorcycle there anyways right so what what do you think like this is going to become a valuable investment no it was an emotional thing no it's it's it's it was an emotional thing my justification was it was like me, Ryan, Brent, the guy on there, my friend Brendan, and like three, and Nathan Barry and like, and then only three other entrepreneurs. So it was seven of us. And I figure, well, if I can like somehow like get invited to like a thing there or get to talk to them and I invest in 25 grand, I bet I can make that money back just off these relationships or just like a cool story. Like, so that's kind of how I thought about it. And I thought and I asked Nathan.

Well, and so I did for that reason. And I also, I did the whole deal without seeing any documents and just talking to Nathan. Nathan. Nathan Barry wrote me a text. He goes, just so you know, there's a little bit of room if you want to join this. Here's the pros and here's the cons. Here's why I did it. And I go, okay, cool, I'm in then because you just said you're in. I'm in, because you know, I trust him. So that's, it was that simple. That's great. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Okay, cool. And I have, by the way, I have a couple banger topics. I'm in a, like, I have a lot of research going on right now. And I'm excited. There's some that I'm like, I'm like, they're almost so good. It might need to be. its own episode. Like I want to do one that's basically breaking down like what's actually going on with VR. Like is VR kind of like dead in the water? Is it low key killing it? Like you know, that sort of thing. And so we've been doing a bunch of research on that. Share it with me. And we'll do a whole episode on it on Monday and I'll be the straight man and I'll ask two questions like I don't know anything.

Okay. Sounds good. I think it needs basically it's good as is. But I think it can be a lot better. I actually want to go talk to a bunch of like the VR app developers to be like, yo, give me the real deal. like, what are you, like, here's what the data tells me. But like, do you agree or disagree? So I want to talk to a few other experts, which normally I don't do that. Normally it's like either that happened already accidentally spontaneously. Yeah, you're not doing it. It's the capital J journalism.

Yeah. So this time I'm kind of like, I don't know, going further for some reason. But I think it's because I actually want the answer because I want to know if I should be investing more in this space or not. And, um, and also, dude, a couple of my investments have taken off. like the first of some of the early deals with the fund is now two years old and we now have two or three companies that are like 40x to 80x returns um not liquid yet so you know anything can happen but that's like a crazy multiple and it's like it's such a it's like so in my brain

I knew intellectually this is how it's supposed to go supposed to do this angel investing thing you get this basket of companies and then you're looking for these breakouts that are going to return this huge, you know, multiple 20x, 30x, 50x, 100 X, 1000 X returns. And then when you start to see it actually happen, you take out the calculator app and you're like, wow, this is incredible. $100,000 can turn into $10 million just like that. And $100,000 can turn into $50 million if it does one more like leap here. And that's pretty exciting.

So that's just been a like, I don't know, for some reason, that's been a, I don't know, like a second wind in terms of like once things. I guess in general, when things become real, things always ratchet up. I have always felt this way. Like the first time I took a dividend out of my business, I was like, oh, okay. I thought I was already like, you know, all in, but like this made it even more real and exciting. And I'm ratching it up when I thought I was already ratcheted it all the way.

And the same thing's happening with the startup investing stuff where now as these startups actually break out, it's like you ratchet it up even more, even though you thought you already were. But that tangible hit of success, same thing happened with content. creation. I thought I was already trying and then, oh, now we're getting 100,000 plus per episode. Okay. I'm going to start doing research. I'm starting doing more like that. I was like, I thought I was already doing research. But no, now I want to push the envelope further. All right. Well, let's do a whole thing on VR on Monday. And we'll talk about your investments.

Cool. We should actually do a thing where we. A portfolio update. Yeah. And we can balance it. We could be like, okay, I lost this much money in the stock market. And we can do a more wholesome, like a more holistic thing. So it's not just hey here's some wins it's like that means i have to log in and look though i don't even yeah fuck that never mind