My First Million - How Dave Ramsey Built His $300M Empire, Trademarkia, And MFM Rip-Offs

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Episode 428: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about Dave Ramsey's multi-million dollar empire, surfer Laird Hamilton's superfood business, the importance of trademarks, and so much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. SHAAN'S NEW DAILY NEWSLETTER --> shaanpuri.com ----- Links: * Laird Superfood * Ramsey Solutions * MFMpod.com * Chambers * Flashes & Flames * Trademarkia * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (01:05) - Laird Superfoods (06:55) - Dave Ramsey (25:15) - Why Shaan is in a great mood (29:05) - Why you shouldn't buy domain names (32:05) - Chambers (39:50) - Trademarkia (45:40) - The people ripping off MFM ----- 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

Dave's back. And Dave's back in a big way. Here's some things that Dave has said. He says he has a $600 million real estate portfolio that is fully paid off. So $600 million of real estate equity that he owns. That's kind of insane. His media empire, which is like the combination of his radio shows and then all of the financial like courses,

training, seminars, all that stuff that they do outside of that, he says on their website makes 300, million a year in revenue. We're live. What do you want to talk about today? I've got a bunch of good topics. Let me bring up one juicy one. Last year or two years ago, you asked me a question.

You're like, who do you admire? I think you asked me that. And I said this guy named Laird Hamilton. Laird Hamilton is this, like, beautiful surfer dude. He's like in his 50s now, basically. He's beautiful. Like, we can acknowledge that. He's got, like, beautiful, wavy blonde hair and, like, a nice skin.

And he's pretty ripped for his age. And he always was ripped. And he's like this tough guy that surfs a big waves and whatever. He launched this thing called, what do you make fun of me? Because I'm dreaming about this guy. I don't even need to make a joke. You've done it all yourself here. He's a Ken Dow.

Like this is like, this is like objective. Like I'm just stating facts here. He's a human Ken Dow. He launched this thing called layered superfoods. Have you heard of that? It's like a coffee creamer that's made out of like coconut, I think. Right. Anyway, they took the company public.

I don't know why they did that. But they took it public at a $300 or $400 million market cap. At the time, they were doing $50 million in revenue. Look up the company now. Can you go and look up the, do you know what their market cap is today? Let me find it. I know what it was yesterday. I don't know what it is today.

Why would it be said different? Oh, wow, $9 million. $9 million. So this company, if you click a, I have a bunch of notes here. You can click them and read them. But basically, this company, they sell like, a fair amount of like coffee creamers. So yesterday, I think it was 8.8 million. Dude, so listen, they have 20 million in cash, no debt at all. Their revenue is decreasing. So like in Q3,

it was 8.8 million. In Q3 of last year, it was 10.9 million. So what's that? Like a like a four times eight. So it's a $48 million or 50 million a year business, but it's declining. They have good, decent gross profit. They have an okay balance sheet. But like the business. But like the business for some reason it's valued so low i'd have to dive deep into it and really look at the numbers but it's kind of ridiculous right so you were talking about wanting to buy a company you've said this before this is your target dude you get to hang out with layered hamilton sounds like it's your target dude that sounds like this is like you know those things where it's like we're auctioning off a date with laird hamilton it's like a hug why don't you buy this yeah you just bought yourself

a $9 million hug. Dude, why is this, why is this company, you haven't looked at this, but why is this company so cheap? What is going on? I don't know how much debt they have, but none. I said that. So I read their report. They had their Q3 report.

So I never understand this. In cash, zero debt. Zero debt. So I never understand when, when companies trade this far below their just cash value, because, you know, the obvious question that is, why do you not buy this thing for $15 million and just wind it down and distribute the $20 million to yourself and make $5 million, you know, like in the process. Or sell the inventory. They have like $13 million or something in inventory. Okay. Interesting. So yeah. I mean, I haven't looked at this because you just mentioned it. But yeah, there's a bunch of these right now that are like this.

There was one the other day that I saw that was kind of in the same bucket. But there's a bunch of stocks that are down like 95% right now that seem like, you know, interesting takeover targets. And we have a friend who was interested in doing this. And so I made a list of like 10. I was like, here's 10 that I think you could buy. Is this friend aggressive? It's an aggressive friend. Got it. I know who you.

Okay. I know which friend that is. How tight is that, by the way, just to be able to say, this is an aggressive friend. And you're like, I know who it is. Does this friend? Would this friend say to a buttling entrepreneur, your business is one Google away from me ruining you? No, I don't think so, but maybe.

They usually don't say things to their faces like that. They're more just like, you know, those sharks that swim only under the water, they don't put the fin out. He's more like that. Got it. But like Wish.com was the other example that I had recently seen that was like this, which is Wish, you know, pretty big brand name because they spent billions of dollars marketing this thing.

$10 billion market cap at one point. Now $360 million. So $10 billion to $360,000. million has 700 million in cash with no liabilities. So I don't know exactly, you know, I don't know exactly how you can buy these things. I think that's the challenge is like to actually acquire the majority. In doing so, you would push the price up because people would know what you're doing. So I think you'd have to make like a tender offer at a specific price that's like, you know,

whatever, whatever, you know, something above. But, you know, the board will just reject it. They'll say we have more cash than that on the balance sheet so we don't need to sell at this price. So I don't know exactly mechanically how somebody does this. I don't know if this is like, you know, fantasy math where you're like, dude, what if Shaq was in the, you know, the 100 meter race? You could just knock people over. It's like, dude, it doesn't make sense. It's not how things work in the real world.

So, you know, this idea of like public company takeovers is not something that I understand. Is that like a drunken conversation you've had, which is can Shaq win the 100 meter dash? You know, the one thing about this podcast is the number of on-the-fly analogies you have to create. It just really brings, that's a different skill. That's a different muscle. And, yeah, the muscle is not so strong yet. Still working on it. So, anyway, Laird Superfood, interesting company that I was eye in.

Laird, maybe a little less hot in my book now because this company is worth only $8 million. It's a buzzet 300. Now he's just a really hot fit guy before he was hot fit and rich. So he lost the third leg of the stool. Yeah, he's still famous and famous Trump's wealth in most cases, in most people's eyes. But anyway. All right. Well, let me tell you about somebody who is rich and somebody who is famous, but he's not hot.

Oof. Can I tell you what this is? Okay. Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very. Tell me what you know about Dave Ramsey. And I'm going to fill in some. gaps for you. So Dave, he's like a personal finance guru. He's based out of Franklin, Tennessee. He's in

his 70s probably now. We started as a radio host where it was just like Dave Ramsey like show. And then he parlayed that into like the Dave Ramsey network. So now he has like four or 500 employees based out of Franklin, Tennessee. And they do like 400 or 500 million a year in revenue where they sell like personal finance stuff. A lot of his, I think he's pretty controversial because a lot of his like rules, His lot of his personal finance rules are based in like biblical like rules. He also believes in like zero debt. And he, he's pretty conservative.

So people who aren't conservative aren't into him. Okay. Well, you do a lot more than I would have guessed. I guess the segment's over. Like Franklin Tennessee, how do you know this stuff? What's going on here?

He also bought all of his buildings without any debt. So he owns like a campus in Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't know all this. Did I, I don't know. You know, well, you spit in my food, but all right. I'm still hungry, so let's go. So Dave, he's 62 years old.

He was a realtor turned radio host, and yeah, he's from Tennessee. So basically what happened is by his mid-20s, this is like back in the 80s. But you didn't know who Dali Parton was, and she's also a Tennessee person. So, like. Yeah, I guess I, lesson learned, I'm not coming at you with any Tennessee trivia anymore. You're a ringer of that stuff. So by his mid-20s, he's got like a $4 million property portfolio, real estate portfolio. And it's kicking off some cash, maybe like 5% a year cash or cash return.

So he's making $250K a year off his real estate portfolio at that stage. At this time, 1988, so the year I'm born, his bank basically revokes his line of credit and demands that he pays it back. And he couldn't sell fast enough. So he gets foreclosed on and declares bankruptcy. This is like the trauma of why he's like, don't use debt. No debt.

He's like, debt bad, debt bad. Why? Because I burned my hand on the debt stove before this. And so he's like, he's got no money now. He's, you know, his marriage is on the rocks. He says he's, you know, considering committing suicide. But, you know, he gets back on his feet. So this is kind of like his story.

So anyways, today, fast forward to today. Dave's back. And Dave's back in a big way. Here's some things that Dave has said. He says he has a $600 million real estate portfolio that is fully paid off. So $600 million of real estate equity that he owns. That's kind of insane. His media empire, which is like the combination of his radio shows and then all of the financial like courses, training, seminars,

all that stuff that they do outside of that, he says on their website makes $300 million a year in revenue. I believe it. Which is absurd. You don't know any people that go to that? What's that? No, I've never met anybody that goes to this. Dude, in the South, it's a thing. So I had Texas employees.

And, like, if you're just, like, a normal couple where each employee makes, or each wife and husband makes, like, 60 or 70 grand a year, you'll, like, pay to go to, like, a Dave Ramsey. Like, he trains these financial advisors, and they host seminars. And you'll go to this, like, five-day weeknights thing where it's, like, instead a Bible study, it's, like, we teach you how to, like, save and, like, invest, I guess. Yeah, it's like, like, Jesus on the front. a P&L on the back.

It's like this new remix Bible. I love it. And so his company, Ramsey Solutions is just an absolute juggernaut. It's insane. So, okay, let's break down the media side. So he launches this thing in 1992. And basically, he's done content for 30 years about the same seven steps.

It's like this guy's just been talking about the same thing. I don't know how he feels like hours. I've never listened to like a full thing, but I don't know he feels like four hours a day of radio. It's a good show. Just saying the same thing every time. Like, oh, you got debt? Pay that off, right?

So he's got these seven tenants. So here's his seven tenants. All right. Number one, you establish an emergency fund of $1,000. That's your first baby step to financial freedom and Jesus bliss. Second one, you want to pay off all your non-housing debts ASAP, starting with the smallest one. So he calls this a snowball.

So don't pay off like the highest rate interest. Just pay off the small. smallest thing you can just to get momentum. All right. I like that. Then you increase your emergency fund to three to six months of income. Then you put 15% into a 401k or IRA. Then you start your 529 plans or whatever like the college funds. You pay off your mortgage. Now you're fully paid off. You got your safety net. Now you start to build wealth. And so that's his like those are his seven steps. His company Ramsey Solutions is a biblically based common sense financial education media company.

Not going to lie, that's a bar. That's an absolute bar. You know, like, hey, YouTube editor, play that clip of like, you know, Jayze, the first time he hears like the intro to like, you know, Timberlin's playing him a beat and he's like, ooh, that's nice. That's how I feel when I hear the biblically based common sense financial education media company. So that's amazing.

Then he's got, you said, you talked about this like, Nat, this Tennessee, like empire he's got. He got a thousand employees working there. He owns all the real estate.

So he's got, he owns, I don't know this is correct. The researcher might have just gone off the rails. Dude, he owns a lot. He owns a lot. He owns two office towers

that are 200 million square feet. That sounds absurd. I don't, that's too much. Not real. You know, we got to get the research. future, you know, stop drinking your product that you were selling from college.

Yeah, strike one. But he's got basically like, you know, a 50,000 square foot event center. He's got 60 acres of just like property land that he bought for $10 million. So owes a bunch of land, uses that land to run his kind of like, you know, you know, common sense biblical financial empire out in Tennessee. He's doing his show for three hours a day, five days a week. People call in and they're basically like, all right, Dave, you know, long time listener, our first time caller.

And, you know, there's part of it that's sort of like my first million. I actually think we should steal his stick, which is he goes, yeah, they'll call him, they'll be like, I'm worth $4 million and be like, how old are you? I'm 32 years old. It'd be like, fantastic, 34 million. He's writing notes this whole time. And then he'll be like, how much debt? And they'll be like, yeah, I got my mortgage, you know, $800,000.

And you could just hear him like, sits him with a little, a little tisk. You know, it's like dad's disappointed in me. And then he'll be like, you know, I'm making this much a year. I put this much away and blah, blah, blah. And then he gives him financial advice, which is kind of the same but financial advice every single time. But somehow people get really into this, this thing. And then the other things he does, which are just these hilarious segments that he has.

So he's got everyday millionaires. So somebody calls in, he interviews somebody that's worth a million dollars. But then he has, and this is good, the debt-free scream. Have you seen this before? Well, I used to think that it was like the equivalent of ringing a bell. Like, yeah, he had like a, he had a thing where people would call him, be like, I finally paid off my debt and they like celebrate it. They celebrate it with the debt-free scream.

I think there's things we could learn from this guy. I think we should steal some of this guy's stick. And so he's really got something going here. Anyway, so you, wait, you've never heard of him. No, no, I've heard of him. I didn't realize how rich he was. I just thought he was like someone's dad that gives him. basic financial advice.

He's got the dad vibe. He's got the vibe of someone who calls diabetes diabetes, diabetes. Like that's what the, you know what I mean? Like, the thing above your head is definitely a rough to him, not a roof. He's got that type of. 100% on the diabetes thing, dude. So good. End the podcast.

Too good. I need to now laugh for 30 minutes. I don't want to do the rest of the podcast. That's his vibe. He's a little judgmental too. And he's like, this is the only way. Yeah, he's opinionated. I mean, he's Dr. Phil for money.

He's, you know, he's got his thing, which is like, this is how you do things. He's like a guy with the big belly who wears suspenders vibe. You know what I'm talking about like that? Like that type of vibe. So he's not wrong. It's just sometimes his energy, I think, is a little bit judgmental. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. I was going to make a bunch of jokes about his look, but I decided to turn the other cheek or whatever he would want me to do. So his show is like nationally syndicated on radio, which I think is like the hack. So 20 million people a week apparently listen to this. I don't know how they. It's huge. But like when I used to drive, I would listen to it all the time.

Yeah, of course you did. Of course you're his target market. So, you know, he's basically carried by like 600 radio affiliates. I think that's amazing. So he's got his books. He's got 23 bestselling books. I don't know what that even means. That's like their, that's their, that's their, that's their, that's their personality.

So he's got like his daughter does it now. And he's got these other people like Ken and Dr. John and like all these other people that he's created as other other kind of personalities or brands. They're called the Ramsey personalities. So he's got them in. Anyways, live speaking, courses, they got an app. They have, you know, all kinds of stuff. It's kind of crazy. So let me give you some of his tweets or quotes.

Some of his tweets or quotes. I want you to react to him with a hallelujah or a no brother, not for me. All right. So the first one. If you're working and paying off debt, the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you're working there. Hallelujah. I'll give you that. A half-hearted Hallelujah.

That's fine. If you come to work late and they're paying you, you're stealing. Don't steal and expect to be promoted. Hallelujah. I'm a capitalist pig. There's nothing socialist about me. I'd put my receptionist on straight commission if I could figure out a way. 100% hallelujah.

Love that one. All right, Dave. Now you're talking about my style. All right, here we go. If somebody calls in and they got more debt than their annual income, he'll say, that's a small shovel and a big hole. I love that. Love that. Dave.

All right. Fantastic. Okay. Then he also says, he quotes the Proverbs 227 and states, the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is a slave to the lender. No, I think that that's wrong. I think that you can use debt, like, effectively to help you. Carries a gun. The guy's awesome.

Guys, awesome. And I did not. He carries a gun? He carries a gun. He carries a 45 with hollow point bullets, according to himself. You know what a 45 is? That's a pretty big round. Yeah.

That's the biggest round I know of. That's a big round. Yeah. So anyways, fascinating guys. in his 60s that like I could not believe his empire generates this much cash. 300 million a year is a is a pretty absurd number for this. Dude and he's been doing that for decades. He just shows you how big the Tony Robbins empire must be.

Like Tony Robbins says this thing during his, his things. He goes, my business is bringing over $500 million a year. But I didn't know what that means because like it's like when a ad agency guys like, I've spent over $100 million dollars, you know, I've generated over $100 million. in revenue. It's like, no, dude, you took a, the company gave you a budget. You pushed spend at the

average normal rate. And you've done this for 10 years and you added up their total revenue number. Like that's, that's not you. Or like, you know, a lot of people will say they own $100 billion of real estate with, and like, okay, cool. You know, so what's your equity in that? And they're like, well, it's 80% bank loan. So the bank owns 80% of it. And then of the 20% down, I syndicated that out. So I got a 3% broker commission on it and I own 2% of the of the property. It's like, okay, let's be a little more real real real. So to me, it was pretty stunning to hear that he's got a $600 million fully paid off real estate portfolio and a $300 million year business uphire if those numbers are to be

believed. I could also see this being totally full of shit, by the way. No, no, no, no, no. It's not full of shit. It's definitely not full of shit. I don't have any way to verify it, but like I know his reach and I know that that is like very attainable. Antigod.

Yeah. Dude, did you just read a book on words Christian say? No, dude, it's still flooding. I just have a little special something in me today. Either I'm going to get canceled or I'm going to get a good laugh out of you, and that is worth the risk to me. Have you been south of the Mason-Dixon line, man? Have you, like, been in the Midwest?

What is the Mason-Dixon line? Apparently not. You went to Duke, but Duke's not really the South. I don't think my skin color is allowed south of the Mason-Dixon line. I don't know what that is. Have you hung out in, like, Tennessee? Missouri, Kansas, Alabama. You've never hung out in many of these places, have you?

Huck out. Is there something to do there? Have you ever even been? I drove through, but I came to California. I had to step through the mud of the Midwest to get here. You got to go, man. I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. All jokes aside, so, you know, I got my southern street cred.

Dude, that's like saying you're a burden certificate. Just because you've been to the airport, don't mean you've been there. That's like with this stuff of thing. You got to get out, man. Even just go to like, this sounds very. Get out is right. If you're in Tennessee, you do got to get out. Dude, just go.

Exactly. You're, go drive an hour and a half north and go to a Walmart and just chill and just watch what people purchase and watch their body. You got to get out of your little San Francisco bubble, my man. You got to get out and see like there's 350 million people in America. I got to tell you a funny story. Yesterday, I went to go. I left my house for a meeting. So I go meet somebody very interesting.

I might tell you about this later in the pod. So I go meet somebody very interesting. Who? I'm deciding if I want to save it to do a bigger thing or he's going to come on as a guest or maybe I'll tell you about it. I haven't decided yet. Do I know them? No. I don't think because they're not in your world, right?

Like you know about Dolly Parton. You don't know about like, you know, the NBA. So it's like a different, different. Yeah, another big baseball guy. So brought by my wife and kids came with me. It was like kind of a long drive. I was like, oh, why don't we all drive down there together? You know, nanny's out sick.

Just drive down together. We'll go to McDonald's afterwards. My kids love, like, getting a Happy Meal toy. So it's like, we'll do that. There's none around us. We'll go out there. So we go to this McDonald's kind of out. You know, I've driven an hour away.

We're going to this McDonald's out there. And there's a, so I'm like waiting in what I think is the line. But you know McDonald's kind of ambiguous with the line. There's not like, they don't have like the airport. Order at the checkout. Or you have the self-checkout too. No, there will, there's like self-checkouts, like, to the left on the right,

then there's like the cashier in the front, then there's some people just waiting for their order. You don't know if they're in line or not. Like, you don't know what's going on. And so there's a guy in front of me and the cashier's just like waiting. And I was like, oh, you can go.

She's ready. And then the cashier just goes, he doesn't have money. I like, I like peeked my head in front. I'm like, oh yeah, sure enough. He's a guy doesn't have money. And I was like, I thought it was such a funny thing for the lady to say,

now he doesn't have money. Like, that's so funny to be like, so outrageous. of a comment? Why did she have to say it like that? But it was like the most direct line to the answer. Like not like, no, you can go ahead. He's not, he's not ready or he's not ordering. He doesn't have money.

I was judging the book by its cover. And he didn't even, he just kept standing there just hoping that he could, I don't know, take someone's food that didn't show up or something. I don't know, what are you doing? I was in the bathroom at the airport recently and there was like a line for the urinal, but there was also like a line for the stalls and the guy walks out to me and he looks at the stall and he looks at me and he goes he goes

you wait to poop and then you have to answer to laughing yeah people say the weird as shit man and then you have to answer too right like you can't not answer at that point

Why am I playing it playing into this? It was just a dead face. It's just looking at it. He goes, you went to poop? And I was like a 12 year old. I don't know why I thought that was so funny. Oh my God. I have another business.

You want to talk about business or no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. We're idiots. By the way, if you're listening in Austin, we're doing an event. Well, actually, we're doing two events, I think. The second one's not confirmed.

The second one is Sean and I doing a live pod late April. We're going to have more on that, right? Bro, it's confirmed. We're doing it. We just don't know the venue yet. We don't know the venue yet. We need to know, is it going to be 300 people, 1,000 people, or 3,000 people? That's kind of the only thing that we're missing here is how many of you will show up to this live show in Austin where we can, we're going to put on a little show.

We're going to meet and greet, have some fun, maybe do a little private dinner with some people afterwards. So I think we should, we're going to do. that end of April. Where do they go to like sign up for that? We put the link in the description here. Yeah. And then go to, what's our website called? MFMpod.com.

MFMpod.com, which is like my first million pod.com. And then we're doing another one. This one is not a we. This is a me. Sean's not coming to this one. It's just a casual hangout session. We're doing that mid-when is that? Oh, no, in a week?

Mid-March? March 15. So Wednesday, March 15. So Wednesday, March 15th, it's free. You can just show up and we're just going to hang out. And you can find that also on MFMpod.com or by the time this episode's air, airs, I will have tweeted it. So you can go to my Twitter handle, The Sampar, and see it.

Sam, I'm in a great mood. Can I tell you why? Yes. I did something that I forgot is an amazing tactic and techniques. I'm going to say it out loud here. So other people could do it, but also it's a reminder to myself to do it. Have you ever heard of something called flooding? No.

you text someone a lot of, no, I have no idea. It could be a lot of things. Don't urban dictionary. It's probably something weird. But here's how I learned about it. Tony Robbins talked about this thing. So he goes, somebody asked him, they go, what's a like, you know, marriage like advice or a thing you do in your marriage that like, you know, makes it better? And he basically had like two stories that I really loved.

I'll skip the first one for now. I've told it. I teach it in my course, but I'll skip that one for now. The second one that he had said was he goes about once a month. we'll do something called flooding, which is basically us, we sit down on the couch, you know,

like we're about to watch Netflix or something else, but instead of just mindlessly veging out to some TV, we watch videos or photos, we go of some part of our past, some era of our past. So maybe like this vacation

that we went on or our wedding or whatever. And you basically, you'll get this flood of memories and emotion that are linked and anchored to those moments, but most people don't like revisit it in a kind of like in a in a like a specific like a conscious way or an intentional way like this and I do this in two ways um one I'll do it with like life photos or videos videos or videos of photos the second one is and this is the one I did before

this which is why a blog post or something or I will pull up a bunch of videos that were really funny to me back in like the day back in college like back when YouTube was like the new shit E-Bom's world. And like, you know, things would go viral, but it was like, yeah, e-bombs world. Like, things would go viral. And, like, everybody knew about that video, you know, whatever, that Charlie bit my finger or whatever. But there's this set of videos that were so funny to me. And they're not even that fun.

Now that I go back and look, it's kind of like an old movie where you're like, dang, this movie doesn't hold up. It doesn't have the same juice. Like, things are much funnier now. Like, the average TikTok is funnier than the best videos back in, like, 2006. Which videos did you look at? Okay, this is going to sound dumb, but have you ever seen this video? You know, 12-year-old boy disclaimer, here we go. I've written this video of this cop pulling over this guy,

and he's got his hands above his head. Yeah, yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. And he goes, he's patting him down. He goes, all right, let me just check the pockets. Hold on. Here we go. Hey, what's this?

And the guy goes, that's my penis. And he goes, that's your penis. And then he continues on. And this video racks me up Just the way he goes That's my penis And that's your penis

And so there's that video But then there's just a whole bunch of these That were like Just goofy videos Like a lot of them were like You know The news anchors interviewing some Like that kid who's like

I like Turtles kid Or like the grape stomp video Or like whatever This is a whole bunch of these And I watch like six of them And they just cracked me up in this like A simpler time But I didn't have kids

A Wife at a More I didn't have it, you know. It's just literally that was like those videos were just took me back. They just teleported me. And so highly recommend this idea of flooding. You probably have done some version of this on accident, but like make it a practice. It's pretty awesome. And it just puts you in an amazing mood.

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. So I did it recently.

So I'm going to tell a story that you and I were texting about and I can't reveal what I was selling because it was kind of against the law and I didn't know it at the time. But I tweeted out recently. Statute of limitations. You're way past that. It's been more than 10 years. Is that a real law? That's definitely a legal. That's definitely a legal.

Is it a figure of speech? Here's what we'll do. We can mention, I'll say it was alcohol. That's all I will say. It was legal alcohol that I was selling. That's all I'm going to say. I was like, anytime you have to specify it was legal, probably not a good thing. So, well, so here's the story.

I tweeted out that I think it always bothers me when people collect domain names. That's a pet peeve because I'm saying if you're doing that, you're doing the wrong stuff. Because people will say, I've got this great idea. I'm going to buy a domain name or even worse. I'll say, I've got this amazing domain name. I should build something for it. I'm like, dude, don't build something just because you have a domain name. So anyway, I tweeted out. I'm like, just make money first and just use like a, you know, store name.com for like the initial like hundred bucks in sales and then go and get the domain name.

And someone's like, you can't do that. And I was like, oh, no, I've done it a bunch of times. And like, yeah, well, you're doing it because you have a name. I was like, no, I didn't actually in college tons and tons of times. In fact, I found this old website that I had. And it was alcohol name. wordpress.com. Right. And I went and looked at the old stats,

and it's getting 5,000 views a month still. On a WordPress.com free website. It's a store, it's a quote, a store that is a blog post and a click to PayPal. And basically, what I did was there was this really unique drink that was sold in Nashville. And for some reason, only one or two stores were carrying it, but this particular type of drink was popular.

across the country. And I thought, well, I should set up an online store to sell this stuff. And I did. And I made friends with the person selling at the liquor store, whatever. And I go, hey, I'm going to sell this for 3X, the markup, but I'll buy a bunch of it from you. So whatever. And I did it. And I didn't, I'm an idiot. I didn't realize that, like, as this thing was growing, I was making like a lot of money. And I went and told the legal team at my college, I was like, hey, I think my business is, like, working really well. Do I need to set up like an LLC or something? And they're like, oh, you're breaking the law. Like, you can't, you can't sell this without like a liquor license.

I was like, but it's like a collective, basically this thing that I was selling. It was a very rare whiskey that was in a very particular type of bottle. That was like a collector's item. And I thought like, it was just like a collector's item. I even know if people are going to drink this thing. So anyway, it was making like $1,000 a day sometimes. And I looked at the old blog post that I was selling this. And it was hilarious.

And it reminded me like of a simpler time when I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Yeah. And life was good. And I was building motorcycles in my living room, and it was working out well. So I was like... I was building motorcycles in my living room, sleeping on the floor, and selling their collector's whiskey illegally on the internet. It was a simpler time. You know, The American Dream.

The American Dream. I was one of those kids that had... You probably had this, too. I didn't have beer. Like, you remember those college kids that would have, like, beer cases, the cardboard? on their walls. Yeah. I wasn't that bad, but I did have an American flag.

I definitely had the American flag. So I was pretty trashy. But, yeah, I was, so I was looking at my old, like, blog that I used to do. And I couldn't even remember the password. And so I flooded myself a little. I'm just flooding my pants today. It's great. The good thing is, by the way, this whole, if you're not watching on YouTube,

you're missing half of it because Sam's wearing a Harvard sweatshirt while we tell these stories. We just talked about someone illegal whiskey, waiting to poop. You made a bunch of jokes about the South. This is so stupid. Oh, my God. All right, I have something for you. So there's this company that's for sale that I came across. So check it out.

Go to chambers.com. Chambers? Okay. Yeah, like that Harry Potter stuff, Chambers. Chambers and partners? Is that it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Okay. Dude, check this out. So this website, I think they're mostly in Europe, but they are in America as well, is they put out these rankings once a month or once a quarter, something like that. And they go and they interview lots of, I think they have 200 employees who do this, 200 employees who go out and interview different lawyers. They talk to your past clients and they try to see which cases you're winning. And it's all done manually.

Like there's not like a lot of like tech behind it. And then they create these rankings for like best legal firm or whatever like that or like, you know, a good firm for this, good firm for that, like different niches. And then they put out these rankings. And if you're a lawyer, you can pay money and get like a plaque. They'll send you a plaque. And then also they'll allow you to use their thing in the, like, when you send an email, it could be like voted a top lawyer by chambers.

And you could do all that. Dude, this company, they do 44 million euros. Or, yeah, or sorry, 44 million pounds. So what's that in real money? That's like 60 million in revenue. And then 18 million in profit. And they're selling right now for close to $500 million. It's a crazy company.

You saw this like for sale somewhere? Just like on a trade magazine for media companies that I follow. It's like a small thing called Flash and Flames. Because this cut that website, they cover like B2B media stuff because I'm like been obsessed with B2B data business. What's the name of the B2B media thing? Flash and Flames.com. I love it. It's like my favorite site.

I didn't even want to tell people about it. Yeah, I like how you tried to just mutter it. That's when you know it's a good one. It's a good one. Like, I'm a paying subscriber to it, which is like ridiculous. But dude, these lawyers pay like $1,500 to $4,000 a year. And they said they have like no churn. They're like, we have, no insurance from us because these lawyers want it for so much.

These lawyers want it for so much. And I am interested in this. And I found like eight or nine other businesses. They call them like data businesses or databases or intelligence businesses. And they're not really much tech. But right now, a lot of them are selling for eight to ten times revenue. And I found 10 examples of companies that have sold in the eight to ten times revenue range for one of these data businesses.

It's ridiculous. It's crazy. And this sounds like a scheme because what they do is they rank you. And then they go, hey, if you want to make like a special profile on our website, we'll do that. And it's $4,500 a year. And what we'll do is, like, once ranked, you could purchase this one pager where you get a profile on our site. It's almost like a Wikipedia page where they like one of their journalists just writes like two paragraphs and it says like this legal firm is known for X, Y, and Z. And then you could put that.

If you're a lawyer, you could put that in your email signature and you're allowed to do that. And then people can click and see whatever. It's crazy, man. This is a caper. They're pulling it off. And I love stuff like this. You know, it's like JD Power. We talked about.

You know how you know they're smart because their logo is like it looks. like a medallion, like a, like, it looks like a special emblem or award. Like, it's a sea with this, like, I don't know what you call these, but like the pedals going around it. Um, you know, put this on the YouTube channel so people could see it, but like a reef. It's, yeah, it's like a reef around it that like just looks like, you know, what the Olympics in Athens would, would award their, uh, the top performers, right? So like you, they're, they're really playing into the whole thing with their brand. Uh, so I think that's pretty cool. I have a business that's sort of like this. And their name is partners. I'm going to create like something like this. Do you know, just partners?

Manas and partners, you know, like we'll just do something for the people. You know, we rank, we rank best condiments, mayonnaise and partners. I got to figure this out. We can put this on the logo. But I love these rating businesses. What's the one you have that's similar? So I was, have you ever done like, like trademark search yourself? No, what's that? Like when you start a business and you want to look up, is this a good name, what do you do? Do you pay a lawyer and say, hey, could you just tell me a this trademark's available? Do you do that later once you get going? I do that later once I get going. Is there is there an importance to having a trademark? Yeah. It's very hard to sell a company without a trademark. Did you sell the hustle without a trademark? I didn't have a trademark.

Typically, it's very hard to get acquired without owning your name because it's a giant liability. So for example, like if somebody else owns the trademark and you get six years in, you're going to have to change your name because the more valuable you get, the bigger your exposure is for them, to say, I own the trademark this. You have to change your name. But maybe my name, I mean, it was called The Hustle. Maybe it was too broad of a name. You know what I mean?

Well, I don't know. There's probably some troll out there. Listen to this. Be like, hey, hang on. Let me go get this guy. So, um, dude, I'm past the reps and warranty. Like, the escrow has been paid out. So there's a great, uh, there's a great, um, story.

I think, uh, the early episode where Moyes came on and told the native story. So it's like, I don't know, episode 10 of this podcast. Uh, moise tells a story about like, when they, tried to sell native, they got in trouble with it. So they go, they have a deal to sell native. And as they're doing the diligence, or like, as they're prepping for the diligence,

they're like, shit, we don't have the trademark for native, native deodorants. And they're like, okay, well, let's just get it. And they're like, well, you can't get it because somebody else owns it. They're like, what? Who owns native deodorant? There's no other native deodorant. Look, I have the domain.

They're like, well, no, there's this guy. I think it was like someone in Palo Alto. If I remember this story correctly, I might be butchering a little bit of this, but somebody in Palo Alto who was kind of like a patent troll type that owned the name to it and owned a bunch of names like this and they were like and he's like okay I guess I can go buy it off them because they're not doing anything with it so he goes to them tries to buy it for like whatever 20k they're like no he's like okay you know whatever goes up 200k no and like the guy wanted millions of dollars for this name because he knows your business is valuable you need

this name you're going to change your brand name for your consumer package good that's That's like, you know, you can't change Doritos to be called, you know, like, like Fluffies, you know, tomorrow. It doesn't work. You lose a lot of value. And so they were like going back and forth. I forgot exactly how he got resolved. I think he ended up buying it for $2 million or something like that.

Or. Loisted? I think so. Or something else happened where they like threatened to, they were just like, all right, screw you. We're not going to do it at all. And the guy, like, realized it was like his last ditch effort and like, and they ended up getting it for whatever.

them out. You know, I forgot, I forgot what it was, but they acquired it in the end. But yeah, anyway, so, so I've had this problem with the business of mine, which was that I, up for, I'm like you, I'm like, oh, I don't need a fancy domain. I don't need a fancy name. Let me just start the business and go. And then I start and it goes and it gets popular. And then I'm like, okay, I should probably like incorporate the company and do like payroll and do like all these things I should, I should have been doing it. But like, I didn't want to do all that stuff if there wasn't like a real business here. And so then you try to go back.

and some things are easier than others to correct going backwards. One of the things that's hard to correct is if you chose a name that wasn't right, you know, you have a problem. And so with one of my businesses, I had done the actual search myself. I should have just paid a lawyer to do it, but I went on the USPTO search website,

which I don't know if you've ever gone there. It's like, you know, imagine like a government. It's like a DMV website. And so you go there, you try to search. And I search for our brand name and nothing came up.

But it turns out there's like a fancier way to search where it's like, yeah, that brand name or like, with an S at the end or like with associated other words that would make it too close. And I didn't know that. And so I remember being so frustrated with this interface and I was like, somebody should make a, because this is a,

it's a public database. It's like somebody should just make a more consumer friendly layer on top. And then I found a business that does this and I got in touch with the guy who does it. So there's a business called trademarkia.com. So it's like trademark with IA. So trademarkia.com. If you go to it, all of a sudden,

it's like, like if you just compare side by side, like in the YouTube chat, you should do this. Like take USPTO and try to find even where do you go search for trademarks and then like how that looks

versus this where it just says, search 11 million trademarks for free. Search your thing. Example, Mickey Mouse. And it's like, you can just type in your brand name. So like if I typed in,

you know, the hustle, I'm going to search for this. And it's going to tell me what trademarks exist for this. Who owns them? This company kills it. What categories that they're in?

Okay, so HubSpot owns it now. So it says the hustle, Hubstall owns it, it's pending, and it was filed December 3rd, 2022. When did you sell? December 3rd, when did that? Two years ago? What would that be? 21? Yeah.

So, wow. So they, yeah, I didn't own it. They also, it also looks like you abandoned one in 2020. So, you know, somebody did the something on your team. Maybe tried and didn't get it or whatever. It tells you what class it's in, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a great. great little thing and you can search for like associated names or whatever.

It's a great website. And so I reached out to the guy who owns it. I was like, dude, this is a, and so I said, trademark is a great, great idea, brilliant interface, you know, props to you. And he goes, so the guy lives in the Bay Area, actually. And he goes, yeah, it's a really cool website. You know, we have $5 million an ARR. And I can't, you know, we never raised VC, 5 million in AOR.

are it was kind of declining from the peak but I just came back to the company remove the subscription I got big plans now you know I want to talk to you about it and um you know he's going to try to make this like he wants to go for like the billion dollar outcome and I was like dude I think you have a five million dollar year cash cow um that you could probably get to like eight or nine with just like some simple tweaks and like you know chill like that that sounds awesome um but but I thought this is a really cool website again it's just a simple like these businesses are everywhere man these businesses are hidden in plain sight and In this case, it took a public data set and just put a much more user-friendly wrapper on top

versus what you were talking about with Chambers is they created their own data set and then they own that proprietary data. It's called, you know, who was it? Anon from CBM sites was on. And he was like, no, we just like taking public data that's messy and we just make it a little bit easier to. Yeah, we just make it clean. By the way, my first million is owned by Advanced Magazine. publishers, which is a big company in New York.

And it's a entertainment services, namely an online non-downloadable video series featuring star athletes explaining their life as millionaires. I guess it's that GQ thing, which I search or where I see when I search on YouTube. But anyway, badass. I love this company. In fact, you want to get, I'm going to go trademark this before this episode comes out. Because now somebody's going to go squat on this. Do you, and a funny story about Native.

Deodorant. I've always remembered the story. I've never brought it up to you. So you and I, the Hustle's office and Twitch's office was just a block or like 50 yards from each other. So if, you know, there's there was like Kearney or whatever you were and then you were the left. If you go to the right, there was a little cafe that was lovely that I really liked. And I believe Moise, the five, so native deodorant is a company called Native Deodorant. They sell deodorant. It was sold for $100 million in cash and it probably does hundreds of millions now. And it has like a really cute branding. They make shampoo.

They make everything. And I remember walking by this lovely cafe. And I thought, huh, this cafe is called Native 2. And their logo looks just like Native deodorant. And I realized that Moy's worked nearby. And so I put kind of two and two together. So if you Google Native Co. S.F.

Yeah. You'll see a little cafe. You'll see their Yelp page. They've changed their logo to green, but it used to be yellow. Or sorry, it used to be blue, the exact same as native deodorant. And so I have a feeling that he was just thinking of like good branding. I've walked by this. And I was like, this is, I remember thinking, dude, boys, they're ripping off your brand.

Are you doing it? Exactly. And now it's realized the obvious. He was like, all right, I need a name. Looked out the window, saw it. It was like, that's my name and my logo now. That's mine. If you go to this, if you look up at Native Co.

The spacing is exactly the same. It's exactly the same. And it used to be blue. It looks like they're in COVID. It was the exact like Nivia blue. It was the white background with the same blue. Now it's green. It looks like they closed in COVID and they moved to a new location.

But that old location that we were at, it was the same logo and it was called Native Co. And I think Native Deodorant was. The domain was also Native Co for him. Yes, it was. It was the exact same thing. And so he must have been just walking down the street. And he goes, like, yeah, that's me. That's mine now.

You know, it's just like there's that meme on the internet of like a stick figure handing an item to another stick figure. And hey, I made this. And the second stick of a figure looks at it goes, I made this. That's basically what just happened. And I don't think I've ever like said this to him. But I would love to hear what his rebuttal is. But he 100% stole the entire branding, the name, everything from this company. know if stealing is the right word, but kind of.

I mean, that one looks like stealing. It looks like he actually went to took a screwdriver, took their sign off their office, moved it across the street and put it on his office. It's the exact logo. I remember seeing that for years and being like, huh. And I just never like put two and two together. I didn't realize he worked there, but I was like, wow, they're really ripping off his branding.

No, that cafe has been there for years. I remember walking by it for years. Well, now they're shut down. I mean, this is like everything that's wrong in society. he sells his business for $100 million. Poor cafe, you know, shuts down, you know, sadly during COVID during the pandemic. This is the way the world is going. Dude, have you seen people ripping us off?

I don't know if you've seen this, but no, but that's cool. In the next two weeks, you're going to see Twitter threads, LinkedIn, short videos on TikTok, other podcasts, talking about the exact same stories that we tell here. There's like this group of 10 people that just take our content and then they just say the exact same thing. They just tell that exact same story. They're going to be like, dude, Dave Ramsey. How Dave Ramsey built a $600 million empire, animation, this, that.

And they're just going to literally steal our shtick. It's kind of annoying. I get it. Michael from our future has done it a few times. Yeah, they do. Yeah, he's one of the 10 that does this all the time. Who are the other nine? I mean, I don't even really want to give him shine of doing that.

Yeah, this is literally, if you're one of those people, just, you know, have your own silent embarrassment. There's nothing wrong with sort of like taking ideas and remixing them. But what most people do is they just take the same idea. They just tell the same story the same way that we already told it in their own Twitter thread or their own LinkedIn and whatever else, which is fine. But like give credit at least. If you're going to say the same thing, be like, oh, I was listening to My First Million

and they told this great story, check it out. That's, I think, a slightly better way to do it. But, you know, whatever. It is what it is. But this is why, so I have a new project. I'm actually going to announce it in about three weeks. This is why I didn't announce it. I've been working on this for almost a year now.

I didn't want to announce it. Copycats. Everyone talks about building public. I hate building in public. Building in public is not cool when you're popular. Building in public is really cool when you want to get popular. Yeah, exactly. But once you already have a following, I don't want to do it.

Like the Milk Road, did you guys have a bunch of copycats? Yeah. Yeah, tons. There's like, there's tons of embarrassing ones that are out there. there's like people that literally just took the same exact newsletter and they would some people would translate it so they're like oh i'm you know leche leche whatever and it's like the mexican milk road and then they would translate it to spanish and just like google translate and then publish um there's another one that uh there's one i don't know if i want to put this guy on blast but um someone who tried to buy the milk road and failed yeah i know you then just tried to copy it it in his own, like, way. And you can just say, the funny thing is,

they very rarely work. They don't. And it's like kind of surprising, why don't they? I kind of expected them to work. Like, for example, when people take our content and then write a threat about our LinkedIn,

like it does pretty good. Like, that kind of works for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't really keep doing it. But the copy of the whole newsletter thing, like for some reason, that doesn't really work. I'm not sure. I'll explain why.

I know why. Do you want to know the, so basically if for, people who have been raised on the internet, they have a very high bullshit detector. And do you want to know the best way to circumvent someone's bullshit detector? Don't bullshit. You don't bullshit. Don't bullshit. That's how you circumvent that bullshit detector. You don't bullshit. And people can sniff this out. And so if they read something and it's like, dude, you're like a not cool older guy trying to act like a cool younger person. I know that this is not good. Like this doesn't work.

I told you about the NQR, right? The KFCs in two. The KFCs in China, not quite right. It's like, dude, it's the same menu. This is the spicy chicken sandwich. And it's like, that's not quite right. And people, it just doesn't taste right. The taste buds reject it. Now, I believe that when it comes to, if I use one product and then somebody tries to copy it, I'm like, why would I want the shitty copy? I'm just going to keep going with the original. But in markets where you're reaching a new audience or people who haven't heard of the original, I'm surprised it doesn't work. And I think my theory of why it doesn't work in those cases, I think you're right when it's when people have tasted the original that they don't really want the

or when it's like a community community brand like personality driven you know it's it's that one moat that peter teal doesn't understand brand yeah the one the asburger proof uh yeah that's that one asber proof uh weapon we have so you know the one thing that i think is is true which is like this like iceberg theory which is which is like if you look at an iceberg, like the part you see at the top is like, you know, five percent of the total mass that's there. And so what I think people get wrong when they try to copy a business is that they only see the top, the 5 percent.

And they're like, okay, I'm going to copy that. But they don't know what goes on underneath. They don't know that basically the uncopyable thing is the people, the personalities, the engine underneath that's coming up with the creative ideas, that's coming up with the next marketing thing because this one starts to decline. And so I think that's the part that's typically hard to. copy. But honestly, I'm surprised that more of them don't work because if you're sufficiently talented, I think it sadly does work more often than it doesn't. We should do an episode where we

talk about the things that people have copied and it's become better than the original. Like there are stories of the Samware brothers. So it's these three brothers in Germany. And they have the company called Rocket Internet. And it was a clone factory. And they basically, it was publicly trading until recently, but the reason they started this company was they like cloned Amazon and all these other companies, Zappos, Uber, things like that.

But before they started that company, they cloned other things and they sold it to the original. So they cloned eBay in Germany and they sold it back to eBay for $90 million in like three months. And then they were going to do the same thing with Groupon, but they got bigger than Groupon

and they realized, oh wow once you get huge this business sucks we got to offload it and then they try to do that with zappos the shoe company but they got bigger than the original zappos so the bigger they were their market cap was larger so they couldn't sell it and they uh like this is their whole strategy it's a very fascinating strategy and so far it's not panned out for them other than like hello fresh they did hello fresh and they copied blue apron and hello fresh worked right yeah i think there's an art to there's an art to copying and this is a whole whole i think we could do a whole podcast about like, if you're going to copy, here's how to do it. Here's that to do it in a way

that feels good to your soul, feels good to customers, actually works and is not just going to result in like a massive waste of time. And so I think there's a bunch of different factors there. I think one thing the Sam War brothers did, one of the factors, for example, is they, they did the same business in a different country. And so I think, you know, geographic, differentiation is important. I think that's one that that that you can. And you can copy and make things work when you do a geographic difference. But then there's some traps with that, too, that we could talk about. But, all right, where do you want to finish up?

I think we should, well, there is one thing that we should do. And yeah, I forgot about that thing. You're aware of it. I think I'm aware of it. I can't seem to find my pen, but I need it. That's okay. You don't need a pen. So basically at this pod.

Something. Some sort of agreement. You do, but you sign it, but just with a click of a button. So basically at this podcast, my first million, our content, unlike every other content on YouTube, it's actually not for free. Right. Not a free podcast. It's not a free podcast. Because what you have to do, if you've seen more than one episode, you have to do this thing called the gentleman's agreement, which is, it's called that because we're not there. I'm not behind you to stare at your screen. That's why it's a gentleman's agreement. It's an honor code. You have to basically go and click subscribe on YouTube because we'll get more subscribers. That helps the algorithm. We get more views and then we'll do more dumb stuff for you. So it's called the gentleman's agreement. If you watch more than one video, you have to do. You have to do. do this. Everyone's doing it. I have a addendum to the gentleman's agreement.

Came from a, from a listener. She pointed it out. She goes, not only have I signed the gentleman's agreement, I've signed the lady's understanding. What's the lady's understanding? There's not many phrases that will stop me in my tracks, but I stopped in my tracks.

The ladies' understanding, I thought that was phenomenal. The ladies' understanding, that's actually when you also click, subscribe on the iTunes, or the, I was called iTunes, on the podcast app and the Spotify app. You go that extra mile. Go to that extra mile and give us the ladies' understanding

along with the gentleman's agreement. Since we started doing this so two things about gentlemen's agreement. Number one it's funny because we're talking about copying. You stole the stick from somebody. Dude, I stole it. He called me by the way and he was like, isn't that awesome? It works so good. And he invited me to go to a UFC fight. And you did it right because you gave credit

to him. You put your own spin on it and yeah, you credited him most importantly as being like this guy did this awesome thing. And I was like, wow, I got to try doing this. So, you know, you credit him, and that's cool that you guys are going to see a fight together. That's amazing.

Now, the second thing is, we have grown a lot since we did this. So we started doing this. We read 100, the first time you did it, I believe we had 145,000 subscribers on YouTube. That's like a month ago? We have, yeah, that was like, yeah, maybe 45 days ago, something like that.

And now we're at 180,000. And the people who watch the YouTube videos, they know this. In fact, I'm looking at a tweet right now, which he goes, he goes, he just at mentioned us he goes watching on YouTube is better than Spotify but yeah no shit I told you this

it is way better to watch the show on YouTube and in fact what I think we should do to really like juice the agreement to even add more you know see appendix A of the gentleman's agreement I think we should do a piece of content that is only good when you watch it

so so here's my here's my proposal to you Sam I think we should do basically like shirtless yeah Sam's going to be shirtless And I'm going to screen share But I think we should screen share Us going through like a pitch deck

And making it Taking one from average to awesome Or like good to great And just show how we would tweak the copy How we would make it less like better And we'll use a real one And so I think we should do that And put that only on the YouTube channel

Because it would only make sense to see it No, I think that you should log in to chase.com And show your checking account And it will react But we won't say the number. That's genius. You know, this is why you complete me, bro. I gave you a shitty idea and you gave me the old yes and.

We're going to go to Chase.com or whatever, Bank of America, whatever you use. And you're going to watch you log in and we're just going to react. And that's it. By the way, the yes and is the corniest thing that the startup world tried to take from like the cool, like, you know, people who are actually funny world. because actually it's a no, but which is what you just did there. No, but we should do this instead.

Improbed people are one step below a cappella people in terms of the nerds. So like there's no way we're cool and improv people. You ever been around around? An improv person's like being around someone who does CrossFit,

you know, like just stop talking about it. I can't stand improv people. They're exhausting. It's like a It's cross for people with that muscle. Dude, Theo Vaughn said it's like a blind Jack Russell. You know what those are?

It's like that dog that's yapping everywhere. And when it's blind, you just can't stop it. It's going all over the place. That's why I feel about an improv person. Yeah, I think you're right. I did improv so I can confirm. This is correct. And you're correct that it's below Acapella,

which is below anything that's actually cool. Yeah. Acopella is the worst of the worst. I remember hanging out with people from New England and they were bragging about Acapella. And I was like, dude, shut up. Why are you talking about that? You don't want people to know. But when hockey ball, people hang out with each other, and they're, like, ordering or they're, like, waiting for their food at the table.

And then one guy's like, and then it's like, hum. And this I start, like, harmonizing. It's like, dude, you got to stop. Like, you know. If I hear the Lion King song one more time, I'm going to put a bullet in my head. That's why I feel. But I'm with these people. If I've ever trapped on a subway and, like, they do a flash mob around me and start singing.

Those people are above Flash mob people are above The Acapello people are going to do something I'm going to start vomiting just to out-outrageous them In that moment That's the pod Yeah