My First Million - How to Interact with Famous People, The In-Person Event Playbook, and More

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about their interactions with famous people and how to leave a good impression, how in-person events make money (and why they're only getting bigger), and much more. ----- Links: * https://maven.com/samparr/ideation-bootcamp?ss=true * https://www.marathonranch.com * https://blippi.com/ * https://www.vstarentertainment.com/ * https://unreasonablegroup.com/ * The Bill Simmons Podcast * 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: (04:50) - How to interact with famous people (08:50) - Blippi (12:40) - Vstar Entertainment (25:15) - Building to sell (33:40) - Business Idea: Milo Again (39:40) - Drunk Idea 2: Waiting room experience for Zoom (42:15) - Drunk Idea 3: Give me a personality (46:35) - Drunk Idea 4: Discord property managers (50:10) - Drunk Idea 5: Fit furniture (52:15) - Drunk Idea 6: Bulletin board material ----- 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 Mor

So bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies. And when you sell a company for like anything north or probably 50 million, they likely have a banker. And I've been contacting bankers. And my pitch to them is this, hey, I'm thinking about starting a company in this space. You've sold a few companies in this space. Tell me everything about why this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer, what they were looking for. And maybe in five or 10 years, I'll let you sell my company. and I've been able to line up meetings doing this.

And it's genius. And I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations. And I was like, oh, wow, these guys are like vaults filled with gold. I met a famous person this weekend. I went and saw Jimmy, is it Yang or Wang, the comedian. I think it's O Yang or something. Oh, yeah. Well, it's Jimmy O. I forget his last name.

But he's, what was his character in Silicon Valley? Yang. And he's a comedian and he was an awesome guy. And my friend is dating him, Bree. And, uh, funny in person or not? Yeah, he's awesome. He was awesome.

Like comedian funny? Like you just talk to him? Or you're like, were you like, wow, this person should be a comedian if they weren't? No, he was just really insightful. And he had like really good, strong opinions and he told stories as well. I mean, I think you could actually do it. If you were to sit down and write a bit, I actually think that you have the same traits. but no, he was just a really nice,

thoughtful guy, but he was like legit, famous to where everywhere we went, people would talk to him. And it was pretty cool to see. And I imagine quite annoying for him. Because the people who are fans of him, because he doesn't actually talk like that. You know he's American, right? Right, right.

And but the Jim, they're fans of Jin Yang. Yeah, well, they are fans of him, particularly the Asian community. They love him because, well, he's just like, he's like representing nicely. But basically, they come up to, like, like a white guy came up to him and kind of said something a little inappropriate. And it was like rooted in like the Silicon Valley show.

And like they think that he has an accent and things like that. And that's super annoying, particularly in Austin where there's tons of like white bros. So I imagine that could be annoying, but he was legit famous. And it was kind of cool to see. When you're around people who are like, you know, famous in their world, do you, how do you act? Do you like, do you go door A, treat them like a normal person? in fact almost disregard their fame. B, nerd out about, you know,

asking them a zillion questions about, you know, the show and what, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, basically to ask them all the questions that they probably heard before, but with enthusiasm, or C, something else. What do you do? Dude, so I do, I do, I do it in a very direct way, kind of like the podcast where it could tell

that I'm, like, really confident, but I'm asking questions of that everyone wants to know. So I'm like, so what's like, are you like, kind of nagging them? Yeah, yeah. So it's like, so what's it like, here's a tiny example. I've got a friend of a friend who had cancer and he lost his leg. And when I first saw him, I was like, what's going on, man? Are you crushing it at pull-ups because you're lighter now? Like, how many pounds did you lose off that leg? And he like really quickly opened up because he was like, oh, you just got that out. You got it all the way. You're not acting like it's not here, but you're also not making a huge deal out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's like how I. usually when I'm with famous people, so I'm like, so what's it like? You're pretty famous. Is that cool or is it bad?

Like just very direct. And I typically find that it makes people lighten up. And they'll, and you are nagging them in a sense, but you're also like congratulating them. And they really will just open up. You're like, you're better looking in person. I watch the show. Yeah. You're way taller than I thought.

Yeah. You're not nearly a slight of build as I was expecting. Yeah. You're actually funny. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's like, you know, I don't care what people say. I think you're great.

Dude, my brother-in-law has the best celebrity move. If he sees a celebrity, he greets them like a long-lost friend. So he'll see like, if you saw Mike Tyson and he'll be like, Mike, what's up, man? How you been? And he'll go dab them up and he'll be like, but who's seeing you? He'll just like keep going. And they're just like, do I know this guy? Where did I?

Be like, George. Yo, how's Houston? Ah, George. And then he'll like, just keep going. And like just, it'll just make it seem like they are. They're just reconnecting rather than meeting for the first time. And I thought, what a hack. What an amazing hack.

Because these people meet tons of people so they don't remember. And so they'll automatically go with your assumption that you like sort of know each other or your equals in some way, peers in some way. You ever, have you ever been to a restaurant and the owner walks, around just greeting people and asking how things are. Of course, yeah. That is, I had a friend that told me he used to pick up women that way, where he was just like, I would approach this with the attitude.

Like, I wouldn't act like I was the owner, but in my head, I would act like the owner. How's it what we're doing here? Yeah. And I would just, and I had that energy and I was able to meet so many people with that energy. You had that restaurant owner energy. Dude, that's so good. It's a good one. And so I, like at HustleCon, when we're hosted HustleCon, or when you and I are

hosting one of our events. Like you, you kind of know everyone knows who you are. And so you kind of know that you have the feeling where you can just walk up to talk to anyone and they'll know what's up. Right. You have that energy when you're trying to meet girls and it's the best. Dude, that's so good. Like, I'm just going to start wearing like a small dish towel in my waist and go to restaurants and then just, yeah, just walk around, just have a drink and just be walking around, you know, greeting each table, making sure everything's going smoothly for them. Yeah. And you're not lying. You're not telling them.

I never said it. Never said it. You assumed based on my big restaurant energy here. All right, bro. I got a few interesting things to run by you. Did you have a lot left over from last time? Yeah, I kind of did. Can I tell you about one?

Yeah. I don't know like business slash idea, this niche. That's like got my attention right now. So I, did I talk about this the other day? I went to that the blippy show. Did I tell you about this? No. All right.

So do you know who blippy is if you're heard of blippy? I don't know what that is. No. All right. So like, remember back there we had Barney or like, you know, like Peewee Herman or whatever? He's like, it's like it's a dude. So he kind of looks like Peeu Herman or whatever. But he's more like a Barney or, you know, Sesame Street style show. So basically there's a guy who went on YouTube created this brand called Blippy. And he, he's entertaining. So he'd be like, oh. And by the way, the funny thing that he does is there's no like set. He just goes into like, hey, we're at the aquarium. But they just go in like after 9 p.m. It's like closed down. And so they have it all to themselves. Like, hey, we're here in Las Vegas at this rock climbing studio.

And so he just uses that to film his thing. But he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video. The video gets like 40 million views. So it's like, oh, well, you know, it's worth it to let these guys film there. And he just, like, goes around. And he'll basically just play with toys. He'll be like, I'm out of abandoned Chucky Cheese. And he'll go play with a bunch of toys.

And there's like music and whatever, overlaid. And it's the same guy. I'm looking at him now. It's the same guy every single time. It is, except for as he blew up and got famous. Then they switched him out with just. just a stunt double for a bit. And so like that guy is like a substitute teacher sometimes.

And then sometimes blipy comes back. But like the main guy is the main guy. He wears his outfit. It's like this blue outfit with this orange glasses. He like always looks the same. So anyways, my daughter love blippy. We used to watch a ton of blippy. And all of a sudden we see this ad that says blippy like the live show is coming to Oakland.

And so we were like, oh shit. And so instantly my wife buys tickets for all of us of the family. We go to this thing last weekend. And it's it's at the same place you did HustleCon. So it's at the Paramount Theater. And it is packed. Like, you know, hustlecon was like, you know, sold outish. This was like sold out, sold out.

Like all the, even the back shitty seat is like sold out. And it's full of parents and their kids. And then there's this like this, they basically just created like a little play, like a little mini musical one hour because kids don't have that long of an attention span. And it's just kind of like music and like, you know, lights and colors. And he's. Oh, Dinos. Orr, oh, rocks, oh, how much did it cost?

So every ticket, I want to say was... That venue's seats. Maybe like 60 bucks a seat, something like that. So that venue seats between 2,500 and 3,000, I believe. Yeah, so I think there was 2,000 there. And I believe the tickets were something like, something like 50, 60, 70 bucks, something like that. So we're in like 120,000.

And then he played four shows in a row that weekend, and then he went to the next city. So it was like, no, he had done eight shows or he was doing something like that. So it was like some crazy like thing where I was like, oh, wow, this weekend they made whatever, 800 grand. And yeah, the tickets, tickets basically range from like, you know, 60 bucks to 90 bucks. And the place is lit, by the way. So like, you know, he comes on stage. Kids go crazy.

He's like, you know, he'd be like, you know, what does the bubble do? And everyone's like, pop. And he's like, when I say pop, can you say pop? And like, so it's like not like a quiet show. because kids are loud anyways. So some kids are just not paying attention. My daughter during intermission was like, I want to watch Blippy on YouTube.

And so we had to open up YouTube on our phone and give it to her during intermission because she couldn't go five minutes without stimulation. And then they have like the merch and the concessions. They have like all that shit, right? So it's like pretty dope actually. And I was like, wow, this is kind of genius. They just took YouTube IP. And this guy who was there was not blippy.

The guy on stage was just some, you know, theater kid. who like didn't make it. And so he's like, all right, plan B, I'll be, I'll be blippy. And so it was like they took the IP, but they made their own show out of it. And so I started looking into this. And there's a company that does this called V-Star Entertainment. Awesome. So V-Star, what they do is they go license these kids brands.

And then they put on kids Broadway, basically, and they tour around the country. Awesome. And so. And Blippy is just a guy with a guitar, right? Or were there more instruments? No guitar. He's just, just him. So were there any instruments or was it just like a soundtrack?

Just soundtrack and like lights and like stage props. Wow. So he only had like his crew. Like you know, if they came out as sharks, like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks and then they whatever. That's awesome. It's a mini theater show, right? And so VStar Entertainment, they do another brand that you've probably heard of call or you may have heard of called Paw Patrol. It's basically another kid's cartoon.

So guess how much this is my like kind of triangulation. Guess how much they sold in Paw Patrol tickets last year. Just take a guess. 20, 20 mil? $40 million. $40 million in event tickets? And event tickets for, and that's just the tickets,

not the merch. And that was just last year in 22. I don't know. It's like, this is like the just before COVID numbers. So like, oh, 2019, 2020,

something like that. Wow. So they got bought by Cirque de Soleil. So first, so the backstory is some guy decides, oh, you know what? Like, he's watching Sesame Street. He's like,

Sesame Street should do a live show. And he goes and he basically raises 500 grand. from this guy. He mortgages his house. He gets an extra $25,000 out of his home equity. So he's got $525,000. And he goes and he gets the license to Sesame Street. He started with the Sesame Street show and then Muppets. And like he did a couple of...

But that must have been years ago. This was in like 1980, something like that. Yeah. And then this other guy was doing it. They merged. And that whole thing gets bought by Cirque de Soleil last year. Is it Cirque d'A? By the way, like, guess how much Cirque de Soleil revenue was?

Have you ever been to a Cirque show? No, I've not. But I do know that the guy who, who started it is a Canadian guy. He's a billionaire. I read Dan Blazerian's book, and they talk about that guy a lot. I think he's like, I mean, he started a circus. So he's like, Liberty or whatever. Yeah, he's really eccentric and wild and everything. So it made him a billionaire. How much revenue does it make? Ben, have you been to a Cirque de Soleil show? Cirque de Soleil did a billion, does a billion dollars a year in revenue, which is insane.

10% of five or 10% of all Las Vegas tourists go to a Cirque show when they're in town. Is that Wait, what's that at? Cirque? Is that the, is that like the name? Well, they have like 10 shows, right? It'll be like, they have, oh, and then they have Zumanity. They have like, whatever. And the Beatles. Yeah, I know all about it. And I'm, I'm into it. And it's publicly traded, or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity, right? Private equity owns it now. And, um, and it's a pretty badass business. The idea was do a circus, but no animals. So it was like only human performers. And to do that, they did like crazy acrobats and like great costumes. It's basically its own genre at this point, though.

Right. And so he built that thing into a real juggernaut. And so Cirque then bought Blue Man group and VSTAR entertainment. And so they got Blue Man, which is like an ad. What they had said was like, we do 10 million in ticket sales a year for Cirque to Soleil. Blue Man adds another two million. And then and VSTAR adds another two million. But they're all like different ticket prices. But like they do 14 million and tickets sold per year. And so this like this like live entertainment thing really has caught my attention because. I think as the world moves more and more digital, the demand for like these one-off experience, like, hey, let's get out of the house and go do something. I think it's just going to keep going up. Music festivals, that's a winner. And then there's like, I think plays and musicals are going to be a winner. I think they're going to be bigger than they were before,

even though the world moves digital. And in fact, because the world moves digital, what do you think about all this? I 100% agree. And so earlier today, I sent you a Notion Doc of some of my notes on, I'm interested in peer business. which is basically like you pay money and you're part of a club and you meet up with them. And I can't talk too much about what the names of the companies were,

but they were doing like one of them does a hundred million a year in profit. And it's basically two or three meetups a year. And there's executives paying $50,000 a year to be part of them. And I think actually these are going to completely boom. I think conferences right now are interesting, but those are really hard. This actually seems way easier to pull off. All types of meetups. and B's, I'm 100% on board that I think that in person is, is the move.

Yeah. And I think that, so then I started thinking, like, what are the other opportunities? And so I think, A, you could just, like, go compete with these guys on, like, either the same brands or another brand. So, like, what they did was the V-Star guy took TV IP, turned it into a live show. What the blipping guy is doing is taking YouTube IP and turning it into a live show. And I think you could just even do this for more. So, like, I think you could even do, like, we've talked about religion, which is the greatest free IP in the world. So I think if somebody could do this for religion, which would make an extremely

kid-friendly, in fact, kid-focused, like Christianity show, basically. I think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre. Because, like, if kids love trucks and dinosaurs or whatever, and you could just basically create the, like, the show, you know, day with dinosaurs or something like that. And once you get, like, if you have a certain level of quality, moms will spread this. And they will talk about it. And they will, like, in their mommy groups, they will help you sell these tickets. And I just feel like there's a like, it's not that hard. Like you build one show and you sell that one show a thousand times, right?

Like the show goes on tour. Mama Mia has made like, I don't know, some stupid amount of money just being the same show on tour with replacing the low-cost actors. Yeah. I'm trying, while we're talking, I'm trying to find the numbers. So we used to, so we did events, but we would do like this thing called HustleCon, which was like our big one, or like thousands of people would come. But then we do this thing called 2X. And 2X was basically from like 7 p.m. to like 10 p.m.

and it was basically we got 15 or 10 women all who were in tech and business. Not that many of them were like well known, but they would have 10 minutes to like tell a story. And we would charge like $25. But then we would get tens of thousands of dollars and sponsors. But we got to the point where we could pull this off like kind of like almost weekly in other cities. And when we started doing this,

The hustle wasn't that popular, but we were making, like, I think like 30 grand a night when we were doing it. And we had one employee running it. And she would use a team of contractors. And then we wouldn't supply anything. Like, I think we had free wine. But I don't know. I don't even think it was free. Like, we wouldn't supply anything.

But then when we have corporate sponsors and we crushed it. And in my head, I'm like, I can always fall back on this to make a living because it was so much easier than people thought. Right. Yeah, that's pretty good for a tech bro, a tech bro business. Like, all of the, you, you were running one of the best, like, women's entrepreneurship events. Yeah, because you got labeled wrong, dude. Yeah, I'm like an onion man. There's layers.

But basically, like, we used to do this thing called pizza in 40s, where we would do a meetup, and I would interview someone, and they would drink a 40 ounce. And when the 40 ounce beer was done, the talk was done. but then like women were like this is like there's all dudes here and so we created like a like a wine version and that had like way better it was like called like cheese and wine i don't even remember but that had way better engagement and so we're like oh like let's pursue this vein like there's clearly an opportunity here and so we created two x which uh comes it's it's like two x chromosomes which i thought was clever i stole it from reddit uh but anyway we would do i think we did 10 or 12 uh in one year

and every single time it was like 20 and 30 grand and the cost the cost was nothing the cost was renting the venue which costs like $3,000 and we would make like 20 grand. And you also had readers in every city, right? So that's how you sold the tickets. Yeah, yeah, but we weren't basically the speakers sold the tickets. The reason why we had 15 speakers was I was like, I bet each 15 will get 25 people to come plus our like a little bit of our engine like this is easy. And you weren't making the money off the tickets. you're making enough sponsors really anyways.

The tickets pay, the business model was the tickets paid for the event. And then the conference was all or the sponsors were all the profit. But when it's, there's two things going on. One, like women. So whenever you have like an underserved community like sponsors definitely are willing to pay more. And two, it was like a B to B component. So it wasn't kids component, which I think would alter the economics. But my point of it is that I think that it was far easier than people thought.

And it was way more rudimentary. and raw than people thought, and it worked. We just used Splash that. I think if you Google like 2X, the hustle, you'll like see like the splash that is basically event bright. It was nothing special. And it freaking worked. That's dope.

All right. What else we got? All right. Let me, I just got kicked out of the document. All right. I got it. So one thing,

tell me what you think about this. One thing that I've been doing as I'm now starting to like get back into the game or thinking about it. So I've been setting up calls. So I've been setting up calls with bankers. So bankers, which I didn't even know what those were, bankers, when someone, when like Sarah, my wife went to Penn. Worked at a bank.

Yeah, and she, like, I would always make her friends, were like, yeah, like, I, you know, I'm a banker. I work at a bank. I'm like, oh, which branch? And so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies. And when you sell a company for like anything north, probably 50 million, they likely have a banker.

And I've been contacting bankers. And my pitch to them is this, hey, I'm thinking about starting a company in this space. You've sold a few companies in this space. Tell me everything about why this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are, that the buyer, what they were looking for. And maybe in five or ten years, I'll let you sell my company. And I've been able to line up meetings doing this. And it's genius.

And I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations. And I was like, oh, wow, these guys are like vaults. filled with gold. Dude, so much. Baker's need podcasts. Like, why are these guys not talking?

Well, they have so much info. No, but they can talk like, generally speaking. They don't, they can't talk about any specific deal, but like,

they know a lot, dude. And they actually know everything. It's like your accountant. It's like accountants. They know everything. Yeah. They know everything.

And they've been telling me so much information. So I like, they'll like basically, they'll say, here's why this company was doing well. Here's why it was succeeding. Here's why they bought it. And I'm like, all right, great.

What other companies was that buyer trying to buy and why? And they're like, well, they always struggled with blank. And I'm like, boom, thank you. And then I'll say, like, you sold three businesses in the same space, which one was more fun to run? And so, like, for example, I'll give you a concrete example. The business that I'm interested in now, we've talked about a bunch. It's like a Vistage, so which is basically a peer group. So companies that it's like a group of 10 or 40 people who all,

have a similar job title and they meet together and they discuss their problems. And it's like a safe space to discuss shit you can't talk about on the internet. And some of them do huge. One of them, I can't say which does over a hundred million in profit a year. And they're just like meetups in real life. And I'll just be like, well, what job titles was Gartner or whoever buys these companies? What job titles are they trying to get to and they're really struggling to reach? And they'll just tell me. I'm like, oh, great. I can create a community around that. And I think I could build it to sell it, which what I want to know from your perspective, is that even a good plan building to sell? So part of me is like, yes, it's clear path to make money. Another part is

like, it's kind of lame though. Yeah. Well, I think where you're at now, let's take three, three options. Build to sell, which is basically optimizing for like, oh, is there a sort of like a flip? Is there a, is there a buyer on the other side of a business like this? The other one is build to win, which is basically like, for example, when I talk to these bankers, what I'm trying to figure out is which of these businesses is like not a special snowflake where it's like, oh, that's actually like a rinse and repeatable model. Like I didn't, like that founder didn't like catch lightning in a bottle at the perfect time and it's their perfect background and they got really lucky about this one thing.

It's like, oh, those I don't want to emulate. I want to emulate the one where it's like, I think somebody could start that same business today and do equally well or do just as well in this one adjacent space. And you don't need to be a genius with that. And so that's the second part of it, which is like build to win. It's like optimizing for something that's going to work. And then there's a last one which is sort of like, you know, build for fun or build for mission, which is like go for something that like you something you would never want to sell

that you're willing to do even if it's low likelihood of success. I think we all know the answer is to do that bucket, right? Like I think the question is like, how. How much security do you need before you go do the thing you know you should do? Well, or it could be a combination of authoring. It could be like you enjoy winning or you enjoy this space and you want to make it successful. But there's a great clip from you and what's what's all in David Freeburg. There's a great clip that I shared that you and him had where he basically said that founders

always sell themselves short and they go for these small ideas. because they think it's more reasonable. But when doing that, they kind of screwed themselves because it's actually easier sometimes to do much grander, bigger ideas because that attracts the crazy types of people who you want to work with. And it's the least competitive because nobody else.

Not every Joe is going to try to do it. Like, you know, going and try to, you know, start a railroad business or whatever versus an FBI business. It's like, well, they're both going to take all your time. So that's equal. money, well, you're going to have to go raise money from investors. One will let you just raise, you're still going to get the money you need from investors.

Just one you'll maybe raise more at a higher valuation and the other one you'll raise less at a lower valuation, right? But did you agree? Do you agree with him? I do agree with him. And I've thought this for a very long time. I remember back of the day, did you ever hear about this thing called the Unreasonable Institute? I don't even think this is around anymore. That's a great name.

It's sort of like the same guys who did Summit. It's not actually the same guys. but it was the same idea. It was like the unreasonable institute was basically this like, it was based on this one word, unreasonable, in the way that the hustle is built on this one word, hustle. And trans is built on one word, trends. And so the unreasonable is it was exactly that.

It was like, it's going to take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward. And it was like very inspiring. And they met with all a bunch of people, you know, a bunch of people who did that, the sort of Elon Musk types who went and did unreasonable things. And then you start to look at it and you're like, you know, all things equal.

I guess your inputs are sort of the same. It's just your time and energy. And then like the outputs can be very, very different because what you're going for. The inputs aren't the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard. But it's kind of impossible to build something huge and not work very hard. All right. Who do we know? And let's do real examples.

I'm not saying it's not true. But who do we know that's building successful, awesome businesses without working too hard? Well, how about Suli? I actually don't know. What's his schedule? Does he grind constantly? He works hard. Yes.

He works hard. So then no one. We don't know anyone. But you and me, like maybe. I'll give you one nuance on it. He got there faster than the normal person. So it looked like it came easier. But that's just because he was better.

It wasn't because he worked like he. He wasn't putting in a tenth of the hours. He was putting in the same number of hours and getting there 10 times faster, which is. I just think that like, there's a worm. where you have business A and it doesn't grow nearly as fast and you're working 40 hours a week. And then you have business B that's growing significantly faster and you have to work 100 hours a week. Like that is a reality. Yes, that's true.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about like very little. I'm talking about normal versus not normal. There's also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blogs or something like that where it's like or they teach a course. It's like, you know, like let's take your buddy Neville, right? So, Neville, I don't think you and me. Well, but because I'm doing multiple things, right? So it's like on each one I'm not putting in as much time.

But like overall, I'm working harder. And if I didn't do those other things, that one thing would just expand in time. I would just do more. Wait, how often are you working now a day? Normal work hours? Not normal hours, but I work like a, the equivalent of eight hours a day. Got it. Just not all to get it, not not all continuously.

All right, but back to, what was the original point? So my point was like, is it, is this really true that you can kind of like chill and win? And like, no, I didn't mean, I didn't mean chill less or sorry, chill more, work less. Wait, so then, bro, if you agree with Friedberg, which I think I do, why are you not going after like one big grand thing? Like I started a newsletter. That's not exactly like, you know, that's not like world changing entirely. It's neat. But I would put it on a six out of ten in terms of like maybe a five in terms of like big ideas.

Right. Yeah, I agree with you. The reason why is because to me it's not a bigness contest. It's a do I have a clear picture of what I want to like my life to be? And then can I like, do I have a crystal clear picture and then can I make that happen? and it's like knowing what I want and then getting what I want. And so what I wanted was not to work the hundred hours, right? Even though I, even though I agree like that's cool, it's fun.

And if I did do it, I do think there's all these extra benefits. You'd get amazing talent to come join you. You'd make a bunch of money. You'd have a bunch of fun. Like there's great benefits if I did the big one, the big, big one. But I decided that like what I wanted. You wanted. Yeah.

Yeah. What I wanted more was more like the four. 40 hour a week, but hours spent on doing these types of things. Like, I love teaching. Teaching is not the most, it's not the most like world changing, unreasonable institute style, you know, like, let's go land a rocket on Mars type of idea. But I have the most fun doing it. So I'm just optimizing for like a different thing rather than bigness.

I'm optimizing for like, you know, my own enjoyment. And so that's why I'm not going after that. So I need things that are sufficiently interesting so that I'm interested and big enough so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time. But like it's not maximally big. Right. I feel you. Well, to wrap up the bank thing, I think it's been kind of interesting. I'm going to continue doing it.

Maybe I'll, I didn't ask these people who I spoke with today if I could talk about what we discussed. So I'm not going to bring it up. But very useful. I sent you the notes. They were cool. They're great. And also this technique, whether it's a specific technique or a similar technique, it's like there are people who just know a lot of things, you know, people who invest other people's money, accountants, bankers, people like, you know, VCs are like this. They see, they see hundreds and hundreds of businesses a year.

And so it's like, those people, if you want to like speed dial your learning, you can go to them and you can get basically free learning off of them. That's it. That's the episode.