My First Million - How to naturally monetize what you love

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

140+ real business ideas database: https://clickhubspot.com/lrgo Episode 858: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the weird ways people go all ...in on strange hobbies and make millions doing it.  — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (0:24) scent social club (1:54) Museum hacks (16:34) Mafia tours (21:39) Dolly Parton--Honorary Billy of The Week (45:04) LeBron James's brilliant business move — Links: • Scent Social Club - https://www.scentsocialclub.com/  • We Don’t Sell Saddles Here - https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d  • Equine Network - https://equinenetwork.com/  • Museum Hack - https://museumhack.com/  — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/  Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 It's a great example of you don't want to be the best, you want to be the only. That mentality is how you become the best. Whittle away the generic parts of what you do, and you will be the best one because nobody else is the same as you. And you're those sort of in a market of one. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. All right, Sean, I have something interesting to show you. And this is going to be a little bit of an advice line, but not for me, but for the person I'm talking about.
Starting point is 00:00:30 So the other day, as you know, my new thing in my household is I try to go on dates once a week every Thursday. You know, trying to become less roommates, more of a married couple. And so this lady reached out to me because she listens to the pod. And I had coincidentally also seen her Instagram. And she did something really cool that I wanted to tell you about. So go to scentsocialclub.com. So her name's Asia Graham. She started this business.
Starting point is 00:00:57 She was like a consultant. But she was obsessed with perfume. and she created this idea that I think is actually really cool that I call a perfume tour, I guess. But basically there's this part of New York, this street of perfume stores. Basically, she sends out a type form in advance to everyone on the tour, and you tell her about your personality and things that you're into.
Starting point is 00:01:21 You show up at a perfume store. She gives you a sheet where we list out three stores and three perfumes or clones to view. per store and she took us on a tour where we went to three different stores or whatever and she showed us like all this stuff and she's like here's why I think you would like this thing and she's like pointed it out and you can or cannot buy it you don't have to but look at her Instagram because this lady was amazing but the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that enthusiasm can be a moat in a business so our friend Nick Gray both you and I one of our favorite people on earth he has this
Starting point is 00:02:00 story where he started this business called Museum Hack, which grew up to $3 million in revenue over the course of like three or four years. And basically what he did was at the Met, at a bunch of other museums in New York City, the museums are free. And oftentimes you can get a free tour. But he was like, these tours are kind of lame. I'm going to give more exciting tours. And instead of free, I'm going to charge $200. And he would give this tour where his whole shtick was like, I forget all of the things, but one of his main thing was like, I'm going to show you five pieces of art that I would love to steal today. And like that small twist makes a world a difference.
Starting point is 00:02:38 And I don't care about perfumes at all. But I went on this ladies tour, Asia Grants. It's contagious, though, right? But it's contagious. I'm so into it. And like, she showed me one perfume or whatever. And I was like, that's dope. I'll take it.
Starting point is 00:02:50 She's like, that's $1,200. I'm like, where's the cheaper one? Show me the cheap. Back to the shelf and I'll put it back. I think I'll love the scent more of the cheaper ones. Where's like the Abercrombie? But anyway, I wanted to show you this because A, I think enthusiasm is a mo. And B, for people who have a passion, it doesn't matter how, like, quirky it is, this woman
Starting point is 00:03:12 turned this thing into, it's a full-time job. She makes a lot of money, I think, doing it because she does it for, like, companies and shit. Well, first, congratulations on the date night. That's actually pretty big in our culture. I appreciate what you've done there. And very creative date night. Yeah, got to mix it up. This is good.
Starting point is 00:03:29 So she's just doing this on the day, night. aside for people? No, it's a full-time thing. It's a full-time job. And I think that there's three types of customers. The first type is like a private tour, which we did, which I think it's like $500. The second thing is like she does group tours. Her bio is Asia Grant.
Starting point is 00:03:45 I have a perfume for you, the best New York City perfume tour. It's a great example of you don't want to be the best, you want to be the only, which is always a hard thing, right? Because somebody's always doing something. But that mentality is how you become the best because you continue to refine. and refine and refine and whittle away the generic parts of what you do until it's really the thing that you do well and you do and really whether you're the only one you will be the best one because nobody else is the same as you and you're those sort of in a market of one and she's a great
Starting point is 00:04:17 example of this i mean to be able to do this full time in new york city that's no joke i mean that that is you would not you would not you would not that takes courage right you wouldn't go into it thinking i'm sure this will work. No, not at all. And I'm curious, how did she build up brick by brick? Do you know? Well, originally what she did was, I think she got like her friends. And she was like, this is my friend, like, Jamal. I'm going to like show you his, I'm going to show you how I picked out his personal scent. And they like, and she like went store to store to store. And she's, I don't think she has a huge following. What does she have? 15,000 followers. Yeah, 15,000. And some of the videos do well, but, but they're not like out of this world. I would say, I feel like you might be early to the Asia Grant train.
Starting point is 00:04:59 Oh, that's why I'm talking about it. If she gets one format, she's one format away from being like 10 levels higher than where she is today and doing this. And this is great what she's doing right now. But when I say a format, I think people have this idea that like, oh, yeah, I'll go viral. I think go viral is the wrong idea. It's sort of this like false hope, like lottery ticket type of mentality. But when you say I'm one format away, you have all of the upside of the go viral lottery ticket, but you're actually using a more grounded approach, which is, look, if I can just figure out one core,
Starting point is 00:05:37 like show mechanic, right? My Instagram reel is a one-minute show. And this show, if I just get the right hook and then the right payoff, I can do that over and over again for a while here. I'm one format away from this becoming 10 times bigger than I am today. And I think she's kind of like this. Maybe that format is something like, I don't know what she does exactly because I'm looking at her Instagram
Starting point is 00:05:57 for the first time here. But I think if she stopped a guy on the street and like found his scent, but he just looked like a normal guy and it looks like she's stopping him on the street. He's a little hesitant, but it's this sort of makeover type of thing that's shrunk into this 30-second Instagram real.
Starting point is 00:06:13 I feel like she's one format away. I completely agree. That's great advice. I also wanted to ask you, how would you grow her business? So let's just say, I don't know how big she is. I'm just going to guess. Let's say she does $250,000 a year in revenue and $200,000 a year in profit.
Starting point is 00:06:27 You know, she makes a good living for herself. I think that most every business can get to $5 or $10 million in revenue in some capacity, given enough time. How would you get her there? Well, I think you, well, here's kind of a couple ideas. So I would say, one, you're one format away. The second is the content is the business, not the tours. So the tours are just content. Whereas I think what most people do is they say, I'm going to make content to try to get people to book the tour because that's where I'm, I get the transactional money. And so that's the real business. And I actually think if you want to go bigger, you have to flip that on its head. You have to say, the tour is just actors.
Starting point is 00:07:02 I'm essentially having humans that I'm going to be using to create awesome content. And the real business is going to be building this brand online. So that's the kind of the flip that I think you have to do if you want to scale this bigger because the in-person tours can only scale so much. A guy who's doing this well is that guy, Jack's dining room. we've talked about him before on here, mostly because I don't really use Instagram and I bumped into this guy in New York,
Starting point is 00:07:26 and now he's like the one example I keep going to because I think it's pretty remarkable when he's done. He goes to places. He tries the best food in different cities and he just records Instagram content. Now, one thing he has is the thing called the reserve, which is like you pay some absurd amount of money. I don't even know what it is.
Starting point is 00:07:40 It's tens of thousands. It might be $100,000. I don't know what it is. There's some crazy amount of money. You pay to go on a once-in-a-lifetime food experience. You get on a private jet, on the jet. there's a Michelin star sushi chef. You land and there's caviar being poured down your eye.
Starting point is 00:07:55 And then you get champagne and then you know, Ben Affleck is there at this thing with you. And like literally like I think Leonardo DiCaprio goes on these. Like he's got like megastars that are fans of his that pay to go do these reserve things. But the thing is even if he sells out all of these, it's like a million or two bucks a million a million bucks a year of revenue and then it costs a shit ton to run these things. It's not a great business business. But it is absolutely incredible content. So I think using the real world business stuff as content is the smart idea.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Hormozzi is doing the same thing, by the way. If you see he's got these like in-person workshops and I'm sure he charges fine. For people to come. And I'm sure that thing actually does pretty well, like probably 10 million a year. But really what he's done is he's using that as a farm system to produce clips and content. And the content grows his brand. He's going to make way more off his brand being famous than he is off those workshops in the end. So that's the second piece of advice.
Starting point is 00:08:47 The third piece of advice I would say is, hey, I want to tell you about. something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed. And they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsor this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. You remember that's that great blog post by the CEO of Slack called We Don't sell saddles here. I think she should read that post. I think every founder should read that post.
Starting point is 00:09:25 He wrote this to his team the day Slack launched and Slack became ultimately, I think, a $25 billion company. But this was day one. And for those who don't know, it was a video game company for one or two or three years and it sucked. And he was going to give his money back to Jason Horowitz and they're like, dude, I don't care about this money. Figure it out. Just do something. And he does something. He's like, well, you know, while we were building this game, we did have this internal chat tool that was pretty cool. Like, what if we turned that into the product? That became Slack. So what did he say in this blog post? He basically says, look, let's imagine your Acme Saddle Inc. And you sell saddles. And today, you could try to sell saddles to horseback riders. There's not that many of them.
Starting point is 00:10:06 And he said, instead of selling saddles, we need to sell the joy of horseback riding. And he talked about how certain brands do this. Nike famously did this with jogging. So, you know, Nike didn't sell shoes to people who are already track athletes only. They basically, you know, as jogging became a national trend, they piggybacked on this idea that like people are going to have athletic shoes, whether they're athletes or not, that the everyday mom and dad is going to own these things and kids are going to own these things. And you don't have to be an actual track athlete the way that the company started. Lulu Lemon did the same thing. Lulu Lemon, if you walk in their stores, you can literally take a yoga class. That's kind of weird, right? Why would a clothing store
Starting point is 00:10:44 offer yoga classes? It's not a big moneymaker. But it was because they needed to promote the lifestyle of being a little yoga girl that you've got your cute water bottle and your cute pants and you're going to go to this thing and you have friends there and namaste and, you know, downward dog baby. Here we go. And so they promoted the lifestyle of yoga, not just selling these $70 pants. And so he said, we're going to have to do the same thing that we know that when you use this tool, your calendar chills out.
Starting point is 00:11:10 You don't have as many meetings. Your email inbox stops being overflowed. That you feel like a sense of camaraderie. with your team, even if they're remote, that you have, it feels like you're in the same room together to hang it out. That's what we need to sell is the feeling of great team communication, of a team working well together is what we're going to sell. And Slack is going to be a tool to help you get there. It's just your saddle. It's a mentality around marketing that I think would work well here. And so why I say this is because, look, I'm not a, you weren't a perfume guy until you went on
Starting point is 00:11:37 this thing. I'm not a cologne or perfume guy, but you are now. She sold you horseback riding, not a saddle. Because if she tried to say, hey, here's a cologne, you probably wouldn't have bought it. You weren't really interested. But then when you realize that, like, actually, smelling good is part of showing up well, is part of your personality that you can have one that's, you know, tailored to you. And it's very different than something that just- It was even better. She goes, you're a masculine guy. Very Midwestern masculine values. Stoicism, leadership, timelessness. Therefore, this one would be perfect. You smell it. I wrote this down.
Starting point is 00:12:13 I wrote horoscope, but better when you started talking. Because I was like, you can just cold read anyone and be like, you're a masculine guy, but you do have a soft side for the people that matter in your life. You're like, I do. That's so true. It's like, I can say that to any guy. And they're like, yes, thank you for telling me. And this is horoscopes but better because the horoscope trend and like kind of
Starting point is 00:12:32 the cold reading tarot card type of fortune teller type of shit obviously works. Obviously there's like a market for people who love to be told something like a about themselves and that they're part of something, learn more about their favorite subject, themselves. But in this case, she's selling a very good back-end product on the other end of it, which is like, here's water with two drops of oil and 99% profit margins, which is way better than what the horoscope person sells, which is the horoscope reading. The reading is free. And you buy the water at the end at this insane markup. Wow, this is horoscopes, but better. First of all, for those content creators out there who want to learn how to turn a date night into just a banger content session, you're welcome.
Starting point is 00:13:17 That was a business. You could write that off now. This is called being a professional, take notes. Dude, was I just Neo in the Matrix? Just seeing the code? I just know where Agent Smith was just now with that horoscope's but better shit. Yeah, classes in session, fools. I completely agree with everything you said.
Starting point is 00:13:37 I think it's awesome. We have to get Asia Grant, if you're listening, you've got to implement some of the stuff and give us an update. I like finding these, like, creators who are early in the journey and figuratively buying stock in them. We did that with, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:50 Heberman, Brian Johnson, now Asia Grant. And so I think it'd be fun to get an update on her. But I wholeheartedly agree with your advice. By the way, our friend of the pod, David Perel, has a great phrase on this. He calls it having a personal monopoly. And a personal monopoly is when you are, you are known for something. You're known. And so, you know, he was the writing guy online. And he was all,
Starting point is 00:14:12 he taught writing courses. He always talked about writing. And he has a podcast called How I Write. And he really wanted to build a personal monopoly. I feel like Asia Grant is building a good example of building a personal monopoly. She is going to be the New York City scent girl or the New York City perfume person, right? Like she's got that, she's got that thing. Now, all she has to do is just add layers and layers and layers of defensibility of more, more and more stacking on top of that until there is really only one. Nobody else could ever come into that category. And I think people are surprised, but how big things can get. Our friend, Nick Gray, did this with museum tours. It was called Museum Hack. How big did that get? He told me that they did $2.9 million in revenue the year they
Starting point is 00:14:51 sold. And the way the business worked was he started doing a bunch of tours. He was probably the only tour guide for a year. People spent $168 or something like that, almost $200 per tour. Oftentimes, the tours were not even sanctioned. Like he would just like get a group of eight people and just like walk through, and I think actually the whole time, he was like, hey, I can just do this, right? And they're like, well, it's open to the public, so yeah, you can do it. And so he did that. And then eventually he hired, he had roughly 100 people who were like up and coming Broadway people or comedians or actors struggling, you know, creatives. And he would teach them how to do these tours. And that's what he did. And then he sold at some multiple of, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:30 either revenue or profit. So in addition to making the money every year, it was actually a sellable asset, which people don't really think that something like that can. And he became like the museum tour guide. And then, you know, this sounds silly to like use these phrases together. But he reinvented himself as the two-hour cocktail party guy. Right. Another thing that you think is really stupid and dumb. A, two-hour cocktail party, that's ridiculous. A, who would write a book on that? And B, do people really want to learn how to do it? He wrote the best book on it. And he sold, I think he sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It's another enthusiasm is the moat because what's Nick's edge is that he just is more enthusiastic about two-hour cocktail parties than anyone else
Starting point is 00:16:07 you know on earth. That's what he naturally felt that way. And really, it's less of getting yourself to do something as it is giving yourself permission and trusting that that's a thing that you can lean into it and you don't have to like withhold some part of yourself or kind of sandbag yourself and kind of hedge. He just didn't hedge. He didn't sandbag himself. Just did what he wanted to do and like went for it. And, you know, obviously amazing things have come out of that as well. Can we talk a little bit about these kind of like real world experiential tours? So there was the guy in New York City who was doing a million dollars on Airbnb doing the police tours, right? Was it the mafia tours. I did it. I also did that one. Awesome. Yeah. So there's like a kind of genre of these things.
Starting point is 00:16:52 You know, when we went to New York last month or whatever, actually David took us on a walking food tour, which was awesome. He basically just took us through New York, but like, I'm not big into sightseeing, but if you can't tell him, pretty into food. And so I was like, okay, you want to show me some stuff, but we're going to eat at every stop at a cool place that has a little story and is known for having the best froyo and then the best burger, and then the best this and then the best that. And that's what we did. And it was amazing. And I think that as a thing, as a thing, food tours, why isn't that a bigger deal? Like, that is the way I want to explore most cities. Is that already a thing? When I travel, so my wife worked at Airbnb, and I think she, I don't know if she worked on,
Starting point is 00:17:33 but somehow was involved with Airbnb experiences. And so she would always hype it up. And we all, whenever we travel, we do food tours. That's like how we get around and like learn about the city. It's really awesome. But there's this guy in New York City. If you Google, like, New York Mafia tour, Airbnb, you'll see his listing on Airbnb experiences. He was a tired police officer and he gives like a three-hour tour where he would take you to different restaurants and different places where famous mafia incidents happened. And you end at a restaurant where he's in cahoots with the owner, like they gave him permission or he gets a reservation.
Starting point is 00:18:04 And he tells you like, you know, the table that we're sitting at, you know, Sammy the Bull or wherever their names are, like sat here and they brokered this deal. And so we are kind of like them right now. Let's eat some spaghetti. And it's awesome. And this guy, he's an ex-cop, he actually sold his Airbnb experiences listing to another person. who now has like five or six or seven X cops giving these tours. And so it's a very miniature version of like, all right, I retired as a cop.
Starting point is 00:18:34 I still like want something to do. Like, this sounds like a good thing. Let me just step it and do this. And so I actually think that like people can vary. It's not easy, but it's fairly simple. They can turn very passionate local experiences into thriving businesses. If I had a guess, you could make many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing experiences based off of history and food just like this.
Starting point is 00:18:55 another guy who did this was in the sushi space, actually. So there's a guy. I think he's in Hampton. His name is Guy. Guy Allen. And he opened up this restaurant. We went to it in New York, this little omicasse bar.
Starting point is 00:19:09 It was in the like, dude, you look like it was like, you have to go down this back alley staircase. I was like, there's no way. And then everyone's like, this is the hottest, hottest omicasse ticket in New York right now. I was like, no way.
Starting point is 00:19:20 Where are we? And I walk in, the sushi's great. And I was like, dude, how did you, How do you get people to find this place? It's literally on an unmarked staircase and an unmarked door. Like, how could people, how could this have gotten hot?
Starting point is 00:19:33 Like, you're literally defying the laws of real estate here. The restaurant is called Sendo Sushi. Yeah, Sendo Sushi. And he was like, oh, well, you know, I basically spent a decade building up my Instagram because I just love sushi. I just, he's this guy had just great enthusiasm for sushi. And he had been traveling around talking about sushi on his Instagram. He had a book, like a sushi coffee table book.
Starting point is 00:19:55 I think that he had released. All that stuff led up to this point where as soon as he opens the restaurant, bang, you know, like line, wait list, et cetera, et cetera. And what's funny, by the way, when I met him, he, like, told me what he was doing and I was like, this is a horrible idea. And then I, like, he's like a white young guy. And he's like, I'm opening up a sushi restaurant. I'm like, are you sure?
Starting point is 00:20:14 Right. Why? There's easier ways to meet Asian women. Like, it's not the only way white guy in New York. But you know, one thing that was really fascinating actually on the business side, because there's only like eight chairs in the restaurant. So I was like, dude, I get why there's a line. There's only eight chairs.
Starting point is 00:20:30 Like, you know, what are you going to do? And he's like, well, delivery is huge. And so apparently they're doing like millions a year in DoorDash deliveries and pickups, which is like I just never really seen that. So it's like this interesting kind of like a ghost kitchen. Like more than half the restaurant is just a back, back kitchen for delivery. But it's not like most ghost kitchens on DoorDash where you've never heard of the brand. or it's like a random, like, fictitious name.
Starting point is 00:20:58 This is like a really high-end, well-known brand that has this huge delivery operation. I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah, they kill it, and it's awesome. We're giving shout-outs to everyone. Order from Sandoz sushi. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done,
Starting point is 00:21:14 the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content.
Starting point is 00:21:32 You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Well, call us Dolly Parton, because that's the next subject. RIP. We famously had a Dolly Parton moment many years ago where you were like, yeah, you know Dolly Parton. And I was like, honestly, not really. You were like, what? I was like, I know the name, but I can't really tell you.
Starting point is 00:21:57 Because you were like, no, no, you know, Dollywood? And I was like, Dollywood? What is it, Dollywood? And you made fun of me for years that I don't know Dolly Parton. And honestly, justified. Because now Dolly Parton, unfortunately, just passed away. And I went to doing learning about Dolly Parton, I did not put enough respect on this woman's name. Can we do a Dolly Parton?
Starting point is 00:22:14 Yes. The only of the week. Sean, describe who Dolly Parton is or what she looks like to a non-white Midwestern? or guy. Well, you know, this changes over time at the age. But like, you know, she was this kind of almost larger than life character, big blonde hair, almost like kind of all-American, but then every knob was just dialed up. The makeup was dialed up. The hair was dialed up. The body was dialed up. Everything was dialed up. The style was dialed up. That's kind of like became part of the schick. And she's actually talked about like the dumb blonde packaging. Like she kind of
Starting point is 00:22:45 created the brand. And then she was like, I don't mind when people call me a dumb blonde because I know I'm not dumb, and I'm not a blonde either. And like, basically, like, you know, she created the brand, the iconic look, which was very distinct. And, like, you know, I've always, like, joked about this with myself. I grew out long hair once during COVID. And I was like, well, people are like, why are you doing this? And I was like, well, you can't be good looking.
Starting point is 00:23:09 You've got to be interesting looking. And it's just like a general philosophy, which is like, actually, like, in terms of branding, that actually is not untrue that, that you, like, distinctiveness matters a lot more than sort of the objective attractiveness about somebody. So what do you know about her? For the other ignorant people like me who didn't know, here's the story. So fourth of 12 kids, you know, born in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, immediately has like, you know, a sort of gift, but also an interest in singing,
Starting point is 00:23:40 writes her first song at five years old. At 10, she's performing on stage. And, you know, fast forward the tape. And she's a very successful singer. And if that was the whole story, it wouldn't be a very interesting story. but the singing part is pretty impressive. She does over 100 million records sold, 10 Grammys. But then she just was a prolific businesswoman.
Starting point is 00:23:58 So she owns this thing called Dollywood, which is essentially like a Disney World in Tennessee, like an amusement park that brings in millions of visitors a year and is actually a big contributor to her fortune. And the reason why she can qualify is Billy the Week. She kind of passed away with a net worth over $500 million, which very few artists ever get to. And then on top of that is this larger than life personality.
Starting point is 00:24:22 Every quote you hear about her, any person who ran into her, just like on any age, any background, any race, any political orientation, they all loved her. And they all literally like, there's quotes now that she passed away, they were like, I remember meeting here and I went and called my friend. I was like, I think I actually met an angel. Like, you know, like, just like these quotes that you don't really hear from most people. And also a very prolific philanthropist. did a lot of great things in the world where her music is, you know, maybe three or four on the list of great things that she did in her lifetime. And I just wanted to kind of walk through some of these incredible,
Starting point is 00:24:58 incredible things that she did. I was pretty inspired by some of this stuff. And by the way, just on accomplishments, some of her most famous songs, she didn't sing. So I believe she wrote, I will always, is it I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston? Yeah, there's actually a great story around. Do you know the full story of this? No, no, no, no, no.
Starting point is 00:25:14 Okay, so two crazy things about this. One, she wrote, I will always love you, and Jolene in the same night. Oh, wow. Which is one of those, like, there's these, this happens many times. It's like these, you know, days where decades happen type of thing, where people get this creative streak and they just go. And this is, she's a good example of one of these. The second thing is she did sing the song.
Starting point is 00:25:37 So one of the things that happened was when she went out to go try to be an artist, she leaves the home, she's going to go try to make it. And like, there's like this hero. journey of anyone who goes and tries to make it. We had our version of that, moving to San Francisco, try to make it as a founder, as a tech entrepreneur. And she went to Nashville. She went to Nashville, try to make it as a country artist.
Starting point is 00:25:55 And she was actually singing backup for this other guy. And she had a deal with him where he's like, okay, I'll take you to my gigs. I'll pay you. But you'll be a backup singer and like side performer, basically at my shows. And you got to give me five years. And she's like, okay, like, I don't really have any other way to make it. But like, all right, so she agrees to this. She's now seven years into this thing.
Starting point is 00:26:15 And it's pretty miserable. Like she doesn't want to be this guy's sidekick. And he doesn't treat her that well. They kind of are not even on speaking terms at this point. She's still performing at his shows. And she kind of like, I'm going to quit. And she, using the emotion of that, wrote, I will always love you. She performs it for the guy.
Starting point is 00:26:31 And she's like, I want to go out on my own. And he's like, on your own. And she's like, I have the song. She plays it. He breaks down crying. And he's basically like, all right, I'll let you go if you record this song. And I want a piece of the action of this song. And so she, and she, you.
Starting point is 00:26:46 You know, one of the things that she did a great job of in her career, one of the reasons she built such a big empire was she understood the value of her music in a way that most artists do not. And that song, I will always love you. It was such a banger early on that, like, everyone who heard it knew this is going to be a winner. Elvis wanted to buy it. So Elvis was like, I'll sing the song. And she's like, amazing.
Starting point is 00:27:10 And he's like, and I'll own over 50% of it. And she's like, I don't want to do that. Like, how about you sing the song and we'll do the normal, like, kind of, you know, whatever the rights breakdown normally is of the song creator versus the artist who sings it. And Elvis was like, no, no, no, I need to own.
Starting point is 00:27:27 Most of it, I'm Elvis. I'm going to blow this thing up. And she turns them down. She turns down Elvis to make a better on herself. That's like a Sylvester Stallone move. So she bets on herself. She sings the song. The song does well. One day, she's in her car, she hears Whitney Houston singing it. And she's breaks down.
Starting point is 00:27:43 She's like, it's like hearing the song for the first time. Like what Whitney did with it was next level. But because she owned it, she got royalties on every time that song plays, which if anyone's been in the world, it plays all the time. And so like in the 90s, she made like tens of millions in royalties just off of Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You. Well, and the album that that song was on, it was for The Bodyguard, the movie The Bodyguard.
Starting point is 00:28:10 At the time, I think it was the number one best-selling sound. track of all time. And that was that song and that movie was one of the reasons Whitney Houston became a American superstar, but catapulted to global superstar. And then, like the legend that she is, she took $10 million that she made of that in the 90s, reinvest it in like an all-black community to build housing. She was like, it just seemed like the right thing to do. And she just kept doing what seemed like the right thing to do over and over and over again. And nobody's perfect. But man, she did a lot of amazing things. I'm going to tell you something. What else? Yeah, tell me everything. Okay, so she's pretty famous for some of the philanthropies she did in Tennessee.
Starting point is 00:28:44 So she, her dad could not read her right. And she always saw how that kind of held her back and like, you know, 12 kids. Dad can't read her right. He worked really hard, didn't make a lot of money. And so she was like, all right, like, they were like, Dolly, you know, you could set up a foundation. You could set up a fundraiser. You could perform at. She was like, how about I just get books in the home?
Starting point is 00:29:05 And they're like, yeah, but Dolly, you're an artist. You could go do this and you could tap into your network. you could raise money and have a gala. She's like, how about I put books in the home? And so she just decided to send books to people's homes for free for years. And she sent like 300 million plus books to people's homes over her lifetime. What's that called? The imaginary library, 325 million books since 1995 as a tribute to her father who couldn't read her right.
Starting point is 00:29:32 Okay, so that was one of them. There's another thing she did. She went to her county, and she got all the seventh and eighth graders in the county. And they had a huge problem with graduation, I think, like. like 35% of the kids were not graduating. And so she went and she said, I got an idea. Same thing. Again, like kind of ruthless simplicity
Starting point is 00:29:49 in her approach to solving these things. And so she just went and she said, all right, I'm going to pair all of you up. And here's the deal. You're going to sign a contract with me. And the contract says if both of you, everybody gets a buddy. And if you and your buddy both graduate,
Starting point is 00:30:04 when you graduate, you get $500. Now this is back in the 80s. So it's like more like kind of $1,500 or $2,000, basically worth of money, which is a lot to a kid. She was like, if you both graduate, you both get the money. But if you don't both graduate, you don't get the money. And the dropout rate dropped from 35% of kids not graduating to like 6%. It was like this incredibly effective program that was basically Dolly Parton being like, listen up, kid.
Starting point is 00:30:31 Like, give me 500 bucks if you graduate. Dude, have you ever, like there's all these studies going on right now about the Stimmy checks, stimulus checks. And turns out that just giving poor people money is probably better than like a huge percentage of charities where they're like, you know, in order to like help young single moms who are poor, I'm going to help you get a job. I'm going to help you like you. You got to go to this program and then we're going to get like or I'll just give you two grand. And like they have found that like because it's a it lacks administrative costs and it's just here's just money. And like there's a a larger percentage of time, it just gets a desired outcome.
Starting point is 00:31:09 And they asked her, they were like, you know, why are you doing this for these kids? And she basically, she herself didn't have kids. And the reason why she had endometriosis and basically had like a hysterectomy when she was in her 30s. And so she couldn't have kids. But like, listen to this attitude. She goes, I didn't have children because I believe God didn't mean for me to have kids. So everybody's kids could be mine.
Starting point is 00:31:29 And I could do things like the imaginary library because if I hadn't had the freedom to do the work, I wouldn't have had been able to do all the things that I've done. And like, what an attitude for somebody who took kind of like a lemon from life and was like, okay, I can't have kids and put a different meaning on it. It's like, so everybody's kids can be mine. And I'm going to go help all these kids instead. And I just thought that was like kind of amazing. You're this, this evolution of Sean from not going to, from not knowing who she is to being her biggest fan, I find to be incredibly endearing. You are, this is like, this is like watching puppies play.
Starting point is 00:32:04 Are you having this reaction in you? because I have this all the time. If I tell somebody about a show being great, and they're kind of like, yeah, yeah, and they don't watch the show. And years later, they're like, dude, have you seen this show? I love the show.
Starting point is 00:32:15 I'm like, I told you about the show. And I get infuriated. And I'm just like, I need to, like, assert my, like, my claim to the, like, thing. Are you feeling that? No, I can't stake that because, frankly, at this point, you probably know more about her than, like, I grew up listening to her,
Starting point is 00:32:33 and I lived in Nashville. And in Nashville, she was always, like, like a mini mayor. She was like, she's always been like the shit forever. But now you actually know the facts. You're like a tourist who like knows how tall the tallest building is. So true. So true. Yeah, I'm doing the tourist thing where I like got the pamphlet and the guy. Yeah. Like you know everything in the local? You know why I paid attention to it? Because I saw when it happened, it was like, okay, Deli Pardon passed away. And I'd remember just thinking like, oh, Sam's probably cares about this. And I scrolled on. And then I saw the,
Starting point is 00:33:03 I saw Trump had like a tribute. And I scrolled. one tweet and the Democratic Socialists had a tribute. And that never happens. It didn't happen when, you know, the queen died, Michael Jackson. You know, nobody gets that side. I was like, wow, who gets the, like, these kind of, like, warring tribes to both actually be like, yeah, she was the shit. And rappers came out and were saying she's the shit.
Starting point is 00:33:28 And Taylor, you know, Eminem was saying it and Taylor Swift said it. But they all didn't say, like, generically, they had a personal story of some way in which She did a really good thing for them, somewhere along the road. Like, there was this great story that was like, she lost some Grammy, some musical award to Three Six Mafia. And then they were like, Dolly, like, you know, bummer on the lost. You know, three six Mafias kind of, you know. And she's like, they're bringing it home to Tennessee.
Starting point is 00:33:53 I'm happy for, I don't know their music, but I'm really happy for, like, I'm really happy for that. You know, I'm going to go home and listen. Have you, if you look at what Martha Stewart has done, that's a really kind of, that's somewhat of an interesting, comparison, although I would say Dolly was probably a better person. She was married to the same guy forever and like what seemed like a pretty good personal around, whereas Martha is a little bit more sharky. But she was like well respected by all these people. But she also, nine to five,
Starting point is 00:34:19 if I'm going off memory, so I could be wrong here. But she was regarded as like a definitely like a woman's right advocate. The movie, you mean? Well, the song was written for the movie. Oh, so good story about the movie, too. Here's another fun fact that earned another respect point in in my books. So she goes into acting. And I think a lot of people take confidence from one area and it becomes false bravado when they move into another area. You'll see this lot with like, I'm a businessman. Now let me give you my views on Gaza. Right. Like, you know, it's like, well, maybe you're not the best person to do that. You just have the ability to talk about it. That doesn't mean you necessarily have like earned your stripes in this one area. So she goes into
Starting point is 00:35:00 the movie business. And like, I would say most celebrities in the go into the movie business, they show up for the cameo and they want to do a good job. But like, you know, they should kind of show up and, hey, I'm me. You know, so that should be enough, right? She not only learned her lines, she learned every line of every character in the movie. She had the whole movie downloaded in her brain because she wanted to be so prepared to do a good job. And that's how she showed up. And it kind of blew everybody away on the set because they were like, wait, why does Dolly know every?
Starting point is 00:35:28 She knows where the, like, the scene changes and she knows where the cut is going to be. Like, how is this possible? We just got here. It's day one. Let me give a couple others. Nobody knew her phone number. So she was, we all love an unavailable queen. And here she was. She was like, you know, nobody knows her phone number.
Starting point is 00:35:46 If you want to get in touch with her, you fax her manager, your phone number. And then you'll get a call from a phone number and she'll talk to you. And so she wanted to be kind of independent in that way. Did you read about her husband? Well, all I know is that she was married for like 60 plus years and this guy was like never in the limelight. I don't think you could find a photo of him. Yeah, that's crazy. He basically was, I think he was a truck driver.
Starting point is 00:36:10 Maybe Ari can correct me, but he was a blue-collar guy. And there was like a joke, which I don't know if it was true, that he, like, never saw any of her performances, but she, like, loved him and, like, said he was the man. But he was like this very much like a, what is it called, the strong silent type. He's got a masculine scent, too, huh? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:28 He, I don't know if he would go at a perfume tour, but if he would, he would get the flavor rain, which was also the same one I bought. And so, yeah, he was kind of cool. He was like, like, mysterious. We'll leave you with a great Dolly Parton quote. I tried every diet in the book. This is about dieting.
Starting point is 00:36:46 I tried every diet in the book. I tried every diet in the book. I tried eating the book. It tastes a lot better than most of the diets. She's awesome, man. All right, well, Dolly, you'll be missed. Sorry I didn't learn about you until you passed away, but I have a big fan now.
Starting point is 00:37:01 I have one more story that I could tell you. As it happens all the time, coincidentally, it's all going to converge. We're going to combine enthusiasm into southern stuff. Have you heard of roping? Roping. Is that something you do in your date night now as well? Or what's going on? Well, we're not there yet. But roping is, it's similar to, it could be part of a rodeo,
Starting point is 00:37:24 but it's basically where not a bull, but a steer. They're actually different. I think a steer is a castrated bull. in case you're wondering. Dude, what a low-key, great insult to start using. You're a steed-in-hury-a-bore. If you know what I mean. Could be a bull.
Starting point is 00:37:42 No balls, though. Yeah. Roping is when the steer goes into the area, and then two guys have to, like, quickly, like, rope it. Like, you know, you have to... Like a lasso, catch it. But what do you do? You snag it, then what?
Starting point is 00:37:56 Pulls you? A lot of people think that I'm, like, a hillbilly, and they assume I know these things, but, like, I don't actually know. Right. It's cosplay. Yeah, it's cosplay. And dress is like a cowboy, but lives in a, like, fancy New York City apartment.
Starting point is 00:38:08 Yeah. I've been to the rodeo, but, like, sort of, like, seeing, like, a Mardi Gras parade. Like, I can't tell you anything that's actually going on. And so... Roping. What you got? But it's a sport because it's, like, done by, like, working-class dudes. It's a little bit, like, golfing used to be.
Starting point is 00:38:23 It was, like, enthusiasts were into it, but it's not much of a sport in terms of, like, professionalism and, like, being a big thing on TV, although it is... It's still quite niche. Well, in the early 2000s, there was this guy, these two guys named Andy and Tom, and they started a company. I believe it was called Active Interest Media. And they started, like, buying these niche magazines. I think they bought one on sailing. They bought one on a couple other things.
Starting point is 00:38:46 And eventually, they kind of came to this conclusion that there's this, like, niche sport or people who care about horses. Like, they love horses, particularly, like the cowboy shit, like roping. And they're like, this might be a thing. And so they start this thing called the Aquine Network. And they start launching magazines where they are appealing to horse owners, which is kind of like laughable, if you think about it. Not laughable, like to the people who are into it, but laughable if I'm like,
Starting point is 00:39:15 you're going to create a big business for people who own horses? Like, that doesn't sound that big or interesting. And they turn it into a magazine. Magazine start going down. They turn it into a website where they only are getting like 600,000 monthly unique. Like, it's pretty niche and small. But what they noticed was, that there's this one company that was advertising on their website. And it was basically the
Starting point is 00:39:35 AAA for horse trailers. So if you're driving, like my aunt and uncle, by the way, are professional cowboys. My cousin was a professional bull rider. My aunt and uncle own the bulls that they are paid to bring to different rodeos. And it's called bucking bulls. That's what they call it. They're like, how hard can your bowl buck? You get paid on that. But there's this whole subculture of people who are bringing horses on trailers. And when their trailer breaks they need a very particular type of like AA person, AA, AAA, AAA. Yeah. A A. A. A. Yeah. It's like a Canadian talking about alcohol anonymous. AA.
Starting point is 00:40:13 Anyways, they realized that this business is like, this is kind of interesting. And they called a guy. They're like, how do you grow this thing? They're like, I don't really. I just advertise with you. That's how I've gotten all my customers. And they're like, being going. They're like, when niching down doesn't work, knits down harder. Okay, go. So then. Yeah. And they did that. And they bought this business for like, like next to nothing and they've grown it and they're like bingo we got the we got this a great crazy idea where they have this like small website for horse owners but they buy and start every business under the sun for this and so they own the the triple a for horses they own a fly control
Starting point is 00:40:47 business that has 4500 people spending something like 300 or sorry 45 000 people spending like 300 a year and they like send you stuff to keep flies off your horse they now own the largest roping event in the country and they own all these other businesses and i just saw that they sold they sold for three hundred million dollars i think like six months ago and now the guys who were previously i believe the president and ceo of wwe are now helping run this business because they think that this is going to be like the next big entertainment business particularly roping they're like four one k's for your horses they do everything well they have ride tv which is a two hundred dollar a year streaming network where you can watch the best roping events. They have a barrel racing event.
Starting point is 00:41:34 They have a jumping event. They created software. How do you know this? Where did this come from? That's what I do. Uh, I just asking Mozart where the notes come from. Yeah, I just, I'm always interested in media and I saw this business and the founder and CEO, he said they do $85 million a year in revenue with high 20s profit margins. They only have 200 employees. I saw they just got bought for $300 million. And I saw that the WWE guys, I forget their names, who they are. I saw that they are now on the boards and they're like are leading the business. And I'm like, what is going on? And then coincidentally, we have a guy in Hampton, who's also named Sam, and he built software to help horse owners, like aggregate stuff. And I had kind of heard of this business. And he was like,
Starting point is 00:42:20 dude, you got to check out the horse world. It's way bigger than anyone realizes. And he's like, these people who own horses, they will go broke. They will not. pay their rent before they give up their horse and their horses rent because horses cost like 30 Gs a year to maintain. And he's like, they are so passionate. I've never seen such a crazy thing. So anyway, that's how I got into the horse world. But pretty interesting, right? Dude, have you ever been on equine.com? Yeah. Yeah. I could literally just buy a horse right now. I don't think that's their, I don't think that's theirs, is it? I don't know, but there's a horse called Houdini's Bride. And right now the bid is $1. He's in New York. He's a
Starting point is 00:42:59 thoroughbred, but like, I don't know, take a look at who Eugenie's bride. He doesn't look like a thoroughbred to me. Go to, go to Aquinetwork.com. It's pretty good. Hold on. I don't want to lose my cart as I check out here. Go to Aquinetwork.com. Look at this website. Yeah, it looks like they got the two businesses you talked about in terms of their product. Fly control and roadside assistance. EQN sports desk, your source for Aquine Sports News. in case you needed one. Dude, TBPN for horses, let's go. You know what I think is actually going to be a huge thing?
Starting point is 00:43:35 Peptide for horses. Oh, yeah. Peptide for anything. Peptide for anything. Peptide for babies. I haven't heard one peptide for X that I haven't liked. Yeah. I pepotied for dogs.
Starting point is 00:43:46 I was like instantly like, hey, who's doing that? I need to invest in that. Peptides for men. Peptides for women. Peptides for horses. Sure, why not. Well, that's my story on the Aquine Network. This is just like one of those.
Starting point is 00:43:57 Sam specials where I just want to show you something that I didn't think you knew about and hopefully awe you. Did I awe you? You awed me. You don't seem odd. It's kind of like a silent fart. It's like an inner awe. Like there's like a deep, a deep awe. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase.
Starting point is 00:44:31 I'm just all in on Mercury. Why, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife. Very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market,
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Starting point is 00:45:07 Did you hear about LeBron James' brilliant business move? Which one? No. Great answer. LeBron did something very, very interesting. I hadn't really heard of any athlete doing. So I don't know if you know, the Lakers owner got in a bunch of trouble and had to like flip the team recently and it was like this whole thing.
Starting point is 00:45:26 Well, in that, people started looking into like, well, what is his firm, Guggenheim, like these advisors, investor bank type of shit? Yeah. What have they been helping with? And one of the things they found is this thing called the LeBron James. Wait, hold on. You miss things up. The guy who owns the Lakers is rich because he owns a financial firm called Guggenheim. Is that right? He has like Guggenheim, but then he owns insurance companies. And why he's in trouble is because the insurance companies, insurance companies have a float. You can invest the float. That's what Buffett and others have been doing for a long time. But there's a capital. you can't invest the float in companies you also own. And he had reported like, yeah, like I got a little bit of replay. Yeah, like whatever.
Starting point is 00:46:03 One percent or something like some small number, like a billion dollars of related party assets. And then they looked into it and it was more like 20 billion dollars. It's like way above the threshold. And this is a legal thing. It's a therefore, yeah. Like it was like a whistleblower and it was like, so now he's in trouble. And his insurance company needs to sell related parties. assets that they had used the money for to get back in good standing. And so he had to sell the Lakers.
Starting point is 00:46:32 He's selling like his stake in Chelsea or something like that. He's whatever, whatever team he owns. Which is interesting. He sold the team to a guy who got rich partially because of an insurance company because he wanted the float, Josh Pichner. Yeah, yeah, exactly, correct. And so he, anyway, so that's what's going on there. So they find this thing about LeBron. And so what's the LeBron story? Okay, so here's the short story. I wanted the name of it. It's called King James funding. People find this LLC. King James funding. What is that? And why did it get $300 million in this bond offering and this highly rated credit bond? So here's what happened. LeBron when he was just many years ago, probably is 2018. LeBron James, while he's in the
Starting point is 00:47:14 Cavs, decides to create a bond offering against his Nike contract. So I don't know if you know, but LeBron has a lifetime contract with Nike. And so just like Jordan is still sewing shoes, even after his career. LeBron has a deal with Nike to keep using LeBron's name and likeness to sell products. And LeBron realized, LeBron or his team, and then actually his money manager, who's the same money manager for wealth manager for Beyonce and a few others, came up with a very smart idea, which was they'd used the old Bowie Bond thing. I don't know if you know, David Bowie.
Starting point is 00:47:48 David Bowie, the musician created something called the Bowie Bond back in the day and raised like $50 million selling his like future music. catalog. It's like this really innovative way to pull down funding. But it's a bond, so he wasn't selling it. He was getting money up front and he would pay, I don't know what, a 7% loan and people thought that it was a C. Exactly. So what LeBron did was LeBron created a bond offering. And it's a 30 year bond or 31 year bond with like a sub 5% coupon. So he basically owes 5% interest, but he got $300 million up front. Now the beauty of this is debt, when you get debt or a loan, it's tax. taxed, yeah. So he gets 300 million of cash now. He doesn't have to wait for this lifetime contract.
Starting point is 00:48:32 He doesn't pay tax on the 300 million. So he gets 300 million outright that he can use to like invest or do other things. And it's secured by this Nike contract. But he still owns the upside of the Nike contract. It's not like he sold the asset. He just took a loan against it. So he still will make more than that off the Nike contract. How is this different than factoring or like when you get a loan against your receivables? It's not, right? I think it's like technically a little bit different, right? So in a bond offering, like other people can participate. So like several firms participated in this bond offering. It was rated by a credit agency who kind of like looked at it and said, this is like, this is better than the U.S. Treasury, you know, like this thing will pay out.
Starting point is 00:49:12 And so, you know, he did that. And he, unlike factoring, you know, he didn't do the, he didn't like take the whole contract and basically like say, yeah, give me X up front and you keep like when you factor, let's say a million dollar contract, you might take $900,000, they get to keep $100,000. Because that's the Vig for giving the money up front.
Starting point is 00:49:33 He still gets his whole thing. He just has to pay this loan down over time. And there's still some risk. Like if he did something inappropriate or whatever, like Nike could have, you know, taken the contract away. But that's, okay, so that's crazy. That's interesting.
Starting point is 00:49:48 Good for LeBron. Kind of amazing. And this is only on his off-court income. It's not on his... like actual basketball contracts at all. And so this was like just his endorsement deals and all that stuff. It's pretty brilliant. You know, props to LeBron for a pretty badass business move.
Starting point is 00:50:04 But what about Guggenheim? How did that come into play? Guggenheim has like an advisory practice. So when they traced it, they were like, it, great. So these different, like, you know, like, what were the names of the companies that like bought it, right? It was like, who bought it? It was like Midland National Life and North American Life and Health.
Starting point is 00:50:23 like two Midwestern life insurance companies were buying it, but they were advised by an arm of Guggenheim. And so that's just how it's not like Mulan is entangled in this. It's just they just found it because a lot of people were looking into like It sounds like it was all
Starting point is 00:50:39 it's all very circular. He wasn't even all the Lakers then and like, you know, maybe this, maybe there's a relationship and maybe that's why he went. I don't know all that. But like definitely, definitely very interesting.
Starting point is 00:50:51 Not quite Kauai Leonard interesting, but definitely Interesting. There's a funny meme going on right now in the Instagram space of like, I guess there's a, there must be a channel or something, but it's popular now for athletes to talk about how much money they made. But they're like, like, I made a hundred million dollars, but that's not as much as you think. And they like break it down.
Starting point is 00:51:11 They're like, and then now there's like a competition to where it's like, but I still slept out of an air mattress or like, but I, you know, like, but I still like, I only wore one sack. Like it's like, it's so like, or they're like, have you noticed this? Like, this is, we got to like, I don't know if this is actually a me, but I'm kind of pretending that it needs to be. PR poison is basically saying $100 million isn't as much as people think. So it's like you first dig a huge hole and then to get out of the hole, you're like, but I only wore the one sock.
Starting point is 00:51:41 It's like you have to do the like really likable, like, I'm just so grounded, you know, type of thing at the end to try to dig yourself out of this hole of 100 million isn't as much as people think. Yeah, I just like, again, I'm trying to say we have to buy stock in this potential meme. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm noticing that like I'm seeing all these athletes like, I only made this much money. Enter huge sum of money. But when you think about it, it actually, you got to do this tax.
Starting point is 00:52:08 You got to get your mom a house. You got to do this. So I really only netted with Enter, also big number. And therefore, I had to do enter an extreme frugal thing that potentially may or may not. Is that frugal? Right, right, right. Like, LeBron famously, like, he doesn't turn on roaming when they go play the Raptors in Canada. He's like, no, I'm good.
Starting point is 00:52:27 Like, if I got Wi-Fi, I got it, if not, or not. And he's got, like, Spotify with ads still. It's like, geez. There's another version that's, I think, like, you can watch the pendulum swing and culture. And so there was, like, a big swing for a long time, which was, like, flashiness. So, like, a way, like, the cool thing to do was to ball out, whether it's the cars, the houses, the clothes, the chains, the grills, whatever it was. And now I think it's swinging back the other way where, like, you see the athletes bragging,
Starting point is 00:52:58 like, I didn't even touch my NBA contract. I live off my shoe deal. My NBA contract goes into this, and that's compounding. And I own 42 gas stations. And can I tell you about cap rates? And, you know, they're going, like, Saeed bulky on their ass. And they're like, you know, on the other side of the spectrum. And I think it's going to be cool to be fiscally responsible.
Starting point is 00:53:18 it seems like that's the way that the culture is shifted and that's now the brag and before that's the flex, before the flex was look at like the hydraulics on my car type shit. Yeah, well, it's because all these guys current and ex players have podcasts now and like the best clips, the ones that go most viral are when they talk about money
Starting point is 00:53:40 and therefore like sophisticated or savvy or just like slightly responsible moves and discussions are becoming the viral things, and therefore it's becoming more popular to actually be that. Actually, I think LeBron gets a lot of credit in this. LeBron did a bunch of things that most guys don't do, so he turned down McDonald's and Coca-Cola early on,
Starting point is 00:54:05 and one of the reasons why was they basically discovered this pizza chain called Blaze, and they were like, look, you could do this McDonald's deal, and you'll get the cash, you'll get cash every year. But we could be owners of Blaze, and we could be a part of like the franchise and if we talk about that we use our put our muscle behind that
Starting point is 00:54:23 that might end up being worth a lot more Magic Johnson and Shaq had done these things with franchises so people people kind of started to understand like oh you don't want to be the employee you want to be the employer you don't want to be the one getting just this marketing payment
Starting point is 00:54:36 you want to be the owner and like that's the goal and so and similarly like his tastes are not like he doesn't shout about drinking Hennessy he's like an avid winehead and we'll talk about wines that he loves.
Starting point is 00:54:49 And it's like almost like in some ways it looks sometimes like a little overcompensation. It's like, you know, it's kind of like the funny memes where he's like reading the, he's like holding a book, but it's like upside down. He's on page two. Always like, like, what's your favorite thing from the book? And he's like, oh, man, so many, so many. How got to choose? And they're like, well, just name one.
Starting point is 00:55:07 He's like, oh, man, one is like. I don't want to expect the author. So many are coming to mind. I just can't even tell you any of them. So it's like, he kind of gets made fun of that way. But like, in a way, look, this guy grew up. super poor, single mother, never met his dad type of shit. And like to have made it, it's like, yeah, I own assets.
Starting point is 00:55:25 I have wine collections. I read, I do, you know, like all the sort of hobbies of the traditionally white and wealthy. And I think like those golf, like he's on a huge golf kick right now. Is he good? He's like, okay. Actually, his son is amazing. Really? So his son, who gets a lot of shit because he's like, you know, can't live up to his dad's basketball career.
Starting point is 00:55:47 watch one video of Bronny James swing at a golf club and tell me he didn't choose the wrong sport. Smooth as butter. Unbelievable golf swing. And so, you know, like I just think there's like an interesting thing to watch where the trend setters are,
Starting point is 00:56:01 it's cool now to do the stuff that was kind of lame white guy stuff before. And now that's the cool thing to do. Dude, that's awesome. I, I've never been like the biggest LeBron fan. I don't pay attention to basketball, but like obviously he's famous. He's no darling pardon.
Starting point is 00:56:15 Yeah, but like, He doesn't do anything bad. No, it's incredible. I mean, like, you could like, again, this is not a basketball guy. Like, I guess there's a stereotype that he flops and that he, I saw a video that I don't know if it's AI or not where Dennis Rodman, he goes, Michael Jordan's the goat. And then LeBron's the other goat, go on to another team. Oh, shit.
Starting point is 00:56:39 Wow. I was not prepared for that. That's good. He's like, again, I don't know if it's AI or not, AI or not. But it was like potentially AI, Dennis Robin, being like, Michael Jordan stayed with the same team. He won all the time. This guy, like, gets upset and he leaves. Like, you're not the goat. But, like, he seems like pretty controversial for. He's unassailable. I mean, basically, look at the history of any child actor, any child's
Starting point is 00:57:01 It's impossible to be as clean to him. He was a star from the time he was, you know, 12, 13, 14, on the cover of magazines at 15. You know, his high school was airing his games when he was a junior in high school on ESPN, they're playing high school basketball games at this kid. And for that to have worked out, it's literally like one in eight billion. Like there's not really any, you know, go look at Buccoli Koken and go look at like people who had far less fame and attention and expectations as LeBron
Starting point is 00:57:29 to have not just not become a screw up, but to have actually exceeded the delusional expectations, is unbelievable. Yeah, I like that teary die the other day because there's like an inspirational video of him playing with his son. I'm like, that is the coolest shit ever. Like those videos, or when, like, someone plays their first MLB game and the dad's in the crowd, like, crying. Right.
Starting point is 00:57:50 I'm like, that gets me every time. Does he have other sons or just one? Yeah, he's got another son, Bryce, who's also a basketball player. He's in college still. He's better, so I think he has a good chance to make it. And then he has a daughter as well. This episode is called The Boys Got Range. because frankly, we were all over the place
Starting point is 00:58:15 and also frankly, I think all of it was amazing. And frankly, it all landed. Yeah. So shout out to Frank. Shout out to everyone. That was awesome. That's it. That's the pod.
Starting point is 00:58:27 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It has a podcast that is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Starting point is 00:58:42 And it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Sue. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcast.

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