My First Million - Million $ Quilting Empire, Babyville, USA, And Rapid Fire Business Ideas

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Episode 435: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) is joined by his business partner, Ben Levy (@benmlevy) to talk about meeting Al Doan - owner of a million dollar quilting company, creating Babyville, USA, taking meetings for no reason, and rapid fire business ideas. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. SHAAN'S NEW DAILY NEWSLETTER --> shaanpuri.com ----- Links: * Follow Ben Levy on Twitter * Missouri Star Quilt Co. * Justin Caldbeck Twitter * Justin Caldbeck * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (01:40) - Al Doan and his quilting empire (13:20) - Babyville, USA (17:25) - Justin Caldbeck (24:20) - Private Dinner With The Very Successful (49:20) - Taking meetings for no reason (54:55) - Rapid fire ideas ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

It started off simple. So he was like, I need a building where they had like kind of a warehouse or production. He bought one building. Okay, I'll grew that, bought a second building. And he's from this very small town, Hamilton, Missouri, I think it is. And so, you know, he buys two buildings. And then at some point, they kind of realize, all right, why do this with like nameless, faceless warehouses?

What if we could turn this into content or marketing? Like the YouTube channel's working. So what if we do kind of YouTube behind the scenes? And what if we make this more interesting? So instead of just buying two warehouses and then just like, you know, operating in stealth, what if we just bought all this land and we bought all the buildings that are in this area and we turn this into a tourist destination, a vacation, basically. So like it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere, but it's like the quilting mecca or like the people call it like the Disneyland for quilters. And there's like, like Main Street is all about quilts.

This is like quilt shop, quilt shop, quits all right. All right, what up? We got Ben Levy here. here. Sam is out today, but my business partner, Ben. So we got producer Ben, who's Ben Wilson, and then we got business partner Ben, Ben Levy, and Ben is here today. We got a bunch of topics that we want to talk about, but first, welcome to the pod. Yo, what's up, Sean? How's it going on, man? I'm good. Your dad, who's a regular listener, is going to be pleased because he's going to hear you

on here. And I'm sure he always sends you like a huge text message of notes every time you come on, is that right? Yeah, it's more like six emails. He'll be like, Like, hey, did you hear Sean say this thing? Or did you hear Sam say this or Sue Lee say this? And I'm like, love the notes, Dad. So you were just in San Francisco last week. And we did a bunch of meetings. We hung out and worked a bunch.

And then we hosted a meetup. We hosted a private dinner. I wanted to start with that. So I wanted to start with give me as many nuggets of interesting things that came up. People you met, stories you heard. products you heard about whatever you got from your trip to San Francisco. I'll let you take it from, take it away. Yeah, so the first thing that comes in mind is one, San Francisco is awesome.

But two, went to the Warriors game. So we went to the Warriors game on last Monday with this guy named Al Dode. I think he's been on the pod about nine months ago. So for people that don't know, Al is the founder of a quilt company. And he said one thing, Sean, I'm sure you could talk more about Al. But I think the one thing that he said that was pretty interesting. So Ben just said quilt. So, because you said it in passing.

I think people wouldn't even register what you just said. And actually, the way we met out was pretty interesting. Patrick Campbell came on the pod. And Patrick Campbell runs like a, he had profit well, which does like SaaS payments, analytics and all that good shit. So he has data on what companies are crushing it in terms of, terms of their subscribers and their payments. and he had told us that quilting is a huge niche. And he came on the pod, he mentioned quilting,

and from that we found Al Dohn, who basically runs a multi-hundred million dollar quilting business that he co-founded with his mom. So that's the setup. But continue. Yeah, I think his mom and like his four brothers and sisters, so it's a family, it's a family affair. So we hung out with him.

The last time we hung out with him was Camp MFM. And I think Al's an interesting dude. one, he's like six, seven. So he like skies over you. Every time I see him, I think he could have played in the NBA. But he said one thing that really, you know, one, his business is doing great. But two, the thing that he said that really raised an eyebrow for me was he's in the Harvard executive MBA program. So most people, when I hear the word MBA, I think immediately that it's stupid.

I just think it's a waste of money and you should go build something instead of go get an MBA. but he was like, yeah, I just hung out with the air of Crystal Geyser water. So the place of the water, you know, basically every water bottle you ever see in the airport or convenience store. And Sean and I were both like, wait, how do you know them? And he said, like, I think he said the woman is like, you know, basically it's an old French couple or something like that. Like he's like, yeah, I was hanging out with my friend. She's French. She's older and blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, how do you have this like old lady French friend? Where did that come from? He's like, oh, I did this Harvard MBA thing. And Al's like personality is not what you would connect with Harvard MBA. First of all, he does a quilting e-commerce business. So that's, you know, not like fancy pants, you know, Harvard thing. Second, he's this big dude with a beard who lives in the Midwest. And his, he's like super funny.

He's basically like, you know, Will Farrell slash Vince Vaughn. and so you just don't see him as a, you know, as a suit, but he did this suit thing and we were like, wait, is that a good idea? Should I be doing that? That was my takeaway from it. Yeah, I was like,

we should definitely be doing that. I looked it up. I think it's like a $50,000 a year program. They take like 30 people and everyone in there has a really successful business. So definitely should be doing that. I think he said it's all people who's business. Yeah, I think like the minimum bars,

like your business does 10 million a year. year. So like, you know, that's like the minimum sort of like norm. He goes, it's people from all around the world because international people like value brands higher. Like if you ever seen a Louis Vuitton store that's just full of Chinese people, it's like international people really love American luxury brands and Harvard is an American luxury brand. And he's like, you know, it's, I think he said it's three weeks a year for three years or something like that. He's like, but dude, you make the best friends. Like, you know, the people who I, you know, not everybody, but he's like, I made a bunch of amazing friends through that.

And he's like, dude, I'm in the middle of nowhere, Missouri. So I got to do things that will connect me with other people. And then even this trip to SF, we're like, oh, what are you in town for? He's like, well, I live on a farm in the Midwest. So my wife is down for me to just like take three days a month and just go to wherever, SF, New York, LA, just meet up with friends and hear what's going on in the world so I don't stay like totally disconnected in my bubble. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that was awesome that he does that. By the way, you should tell the Missouri star, because you wrote this newsletter on our personal newsletter yesterday about Al. And you should tell the highlights of his stories. Yeah. The thing that you didn't mention earlier about Al is the way that we met him is Patrick Campbell mentioned him. And then I think I just DMed him and I said, hey, do you hoot? And no other context. And that was it.

And then I was like, I've never met you, but do you want to come hang out in North Carolina? It's a weird question. Why did you ask that? Did you know he was tall or how did you, or did you just take a random shot? Like, do you play basketball? Come to our basketball camp? I think I looked on you. I watched a YouTube video.

Like I heard of him. I looked on YouTube. Watch like a minute video and I was like, he looks tall. Seems like he has a good personality in this one minute clip I found on YouTube. So, hey, let's just get to business. Do you play basketball? And then he was like, yeah, I'll come. And he was like, I have no idea who you, like I barely know who you guys are.

But sure, I'll guess he'll fly. there and see with Deb. Yeah, and he was amazing. But his, his story is pretty cool. So basically, I think the short version, the thing you wrote in the newsletter yesterday, if people go to, it's just my name.com. So shanprory.com, you can sign up for the newsletter. You'll get this. It'll, it'll send you the story after a couple emails. So the story is his mom takes up quilting as a hobby. And she's just having fun. She's quilting. And then she wants to do, I guess, like, whatever is a more advanced quilt where you like, you got to like send your thing into a machine quilting company.

Is that right? Like how does that work? Certain quilts you got to send in? Yeah, I think there's like certain things that just need machinery. And there was like, I believe there was a six month way to get some machine built quote, machine built, uh, quilt made. And he was like, oh, shit, there's a business here. How is it a six month way?

And it was just like, there's too much demand. And so he's like, mom, forget. get this quilt, like you need to like, and they bought the machine. They're like, let's create a service company where we do this because it sounds like there's too much demand. So they bought the machine and then they make the website where they're like, oh, yeah, send us your stuff and we'll do the machine, you know, quilting thing for you. And then people started asking them for fabrics.

And so they started selling fabrics. People started asking them for patterns. They started selling patterns. Fast forward, they've built this company. It's called Missouri Star Quilting Company. And again, does, you know, nine figures a year. in revenue, profitable bootstrapped family business, co-founded with his mom. They sell, they have like 30,000 fabrics for sale now on the website.

And I was like, dude, what was the turning point? Like, did this work right away? And what did he tell you? He's like, well, I started, he like posted on Facebook like, hey, guys, made this quilt website for my mom. Check it out. Like two likes. Yeah.

And I went back and looked at all of his Facebook post yesterday. And it's like, I started a quilt company, buddy. and that was like his milestone in his life 15 years ago. And they must have figured something out. Well, it sounded like the thing that made it take off was he got his mom to start making YouTube content. So he was like, oh, YouTube was still pretty early at that time. He's like, all right, mom, record videos teaching people like how to be better at quilting. And they now have the number one quilting channel, almost a million subscribers.

and Jenny, whose his mom is like beloved. Like the comments are just like Jenny is the best. She's still wholesome. Oh my God. I love her. She's a star. So the YouTube thing took off. And then he went and stole the idea from wute.com about having one crazy daily deal.

So something that's like 50 to 100% off. But it's limited quantity, limited time. And they call it the quilter daily deal or something like that. And that trained people to just keep coming back to the website to see like, you know, what amazing. deal could they get for some new pattern. And those two things were like pretty major, you know, like growth hacks that they pulled off to grow this thing.

And he might just be the most successful, like, daily deal site ever, right? Like in terms of profitability. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how big Groupon is now. But like, you know, it's what he did is bigger than Woot. So, you know, that kind of worked. And then the other thing he told us about was his town.

So explain this town and what he told us like he's thinking, how he thinks about this town things. Yeah, so basically, when we discovered Al, we realized that he had a town. It was written about an NPR, a few other places. And essentially what it is, he needed a bunch of production done. So he needed a manufacturing facility for all the quilts they were selling. So they bought a town, basically that, which means they own a few restaurants. I think they own a few gas stations and they own a few manufacturing facilities and they made it the quilting capital of the world.

So basically it's where people go and they want to learn and seek, learn and use quilt. And they also, so he's basically like really, basically I think he's the pioneer of towns. I think he talked about this in the pod a while back, but he's all into towns. And yesterday he was texting us even more ideas about towns. Well, it started off simple. So he was like, I need a building where they had like kind of a warehouse or production. He bought one building. Okay, I'll agree that.

Bought a second building. And he's from this very small town, Hamilton, Missouri, I think it is. And so, you know, buys two buildings. And then at some point, they kind of realize, all right, why do this with like nameless, faceless warehouses? What if we could turn this into content or marketing? Like the YouTube channel's working. So what if we do kind of YouTube behind the scenes?

And what if we make this more interesting? So instead of just buying two warehouses and then just like, you know, operating in stealth, what if we just bought all this land and we bought all the buildings that are in this area? And we turned this into a tourist destination, a vacation, basically. So like it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere, but it's like the quilting mecca or like people call like the Disneyland for quilters. And there's like, like Main Street is all about quilts.

This is like quilt shop, quilt shop, quits all. And then they have like the Missouri Star one, which is the biggest store. So that's their retail flagship store. They use this to create content to create interest. People then like take a pilgrimage, a trip to go visit here if that's their main hobby. If that's their big hobby, it's like, oh,

here's the vacation I want to go on. And when they're there, they also have a man, what is called? Mansland? It's basically like, if you're the dude who got dragged to this quilting vacation, they have one area called Mansland, which is like really comfy recliner chairs, TVs, food. And it's just like, yeah, you hang out over here and watch football and let her, you know, let, let, like, Grandma go crazy at the quilt shops.

And so creating that town, I think, is kind of a. amazing. He said that they have 100,000 tourists come there every year, which is, which is, you know, still kind of relatively small, but he's like, yeah, dude, we just need like a developer to build a hotel. There's just no place to stay. And he's like, you know, nobody knows about this area. But I'm really, he's really bullish on turning the sort of the cost center into a marketing, a marketing tool. And I think that was really, really smart. And what, I wanted to tell everyone about the town you were thinking about yesterday? Well, we asked. time we were like, dude, I was like, dude, that's genius. What else would you do? He goes, got it.

Babyville USA. I was like, what? And he's like, he's got four kids or he's about to have his fourth, I think. And he's like, yeah, basically, I think you could make a town for all things baby. So let's say you're a pregnant mom or you just, you just delivered. You're in your, maybe you have a newborn, a one year old, a two year old. So most, you know, traveling is hard, first of all. for either late pregnancy or early kids. And nothing is optimized for them. Like even places like Disneyland and like places that are like kid friendly, it's like ages three and up really is like what's what's like acceptable and useful. And so he's like, dude, if we made this town where you could come and it's like some combination of like just a crazy spa for mom, mom deserves it.

Like she is, her body's going through a lot. she's not sleeping, all this stuff. Let's take care of her. Let's have the best sort of most baby friendly places, whether it's restaurants, retail, whatever it is. Let's basically let you try any baby products. So like there's like the mass stroller store where it's like you're going to get the best stroller.

We're going to, it's like you have the consultants there. You have a testing ground. You know, this is where you're going to find the best products and you get to test them. You get to learn about them. And it's like an expo for all things, baby. So you're going to sell a ton of product. You're going to provide a vacation or rest. You're going to be the most baby proofed and baby friendly.

Everything is going to be optimized for that type of clientele. And you could also do a bunch of fun thing. So he's like, dude, stroller races. You know, he's like, you know, we can, he's like, this would be such amazing, like, funny content that you could do around this whole thing, baby. So he's like, babyville. And, and it's, it's kind of true. because like we just hired a guy and he's like,

oh yeah, can I start after this date because I'm, I bought my wife a push present and a push present for those don't know. I was like, you know, after you deliver, you basically, it's like here's a gift or a vacation,

you know, to celebrate, you know, putting yourself through one of the hardest things ever, which is like, you know, labor. And,

and so I think baby moons are a thing. Push presents are a thing. I think there's already a whole bunch of like the culture around this stuff. And so if you made the instinct, Instagram worthy town for that. I think that could be big. I'm really hoping he does this because I want this. Yeah, and I want the baby combine.

I feel like I'm so competitive and so many of my friends are like, you know, I don't care about how I stack up to people my age, but I care like, you know, what percentile is my son in height and weight and how fast is he and is he crawling? I remember when when my son was like, one, we would just watch other kids on Instagram and decide who looks like they were in better. shape. Yeah, just compare. Yeah.

I think that's a great idea. And I still, yeah, I think the baby vocabulary contest, baby crawling contest. Yeah. Like crazy horoscope thing where we give you a scroll that tells you the future of your baby for $100. I can think of a million things to sell in this town. Yeah, I love that. All right. What else?

So we had Al. We go to the game. What else did you got? Another guy that I met up with was this guy Justin called Beck. so for people that don't know, Justin Calbeck, I think is one of the best angel investors of all time. He led the Snapchat C-deal,

Pinterest C-deal. He does have kind of a checkered past, so I think he was essentially canceled. So he was at Lightspeed, was basically canceled, I don't know, three to four years ago, and now he's writing seed checks as a GP.

So I basically met up with this guy, had talked to him a bunch on Twitter, and he said a few things about investing that I thought were particularly interesting and particularly worth thinking about. The first was a question, which was like, are you a good investor? And what's your answer to that, Sean?

Like, do you think you're a good investor? I think I think two things. You can't know yet. So I can't say with anything definitive because you only get measured, I don't know, seven years after you started investing. So the honest answer is, I don't actually know.

I do think I will do well with investing because I have a good network. I have good judgment when it comes to what startups have legs and what don't. And like, you know, I'm aggressive. So like, you know, I, what I lack in IQ, I make up for in like guts. And so I think those three will result in a great outcome for me. And then the other question that he kind of asked is like, can you defend? What did you say when he said that?

By the way, that's a great question. to ask somebody to be like, are you even good at what you do? Is a fantastic question. What did you say? Did you, did your butt clench and did you know what to say in that moment? I said, I don't think I'm great. I think I could be great if I try. He said, that's what everyone says.

Yeah, but I think I could. And then he was like, well, okay, answer me these questions. Then can you defend every deal that you've kind of pushed the table for without saying these two words, great founder. He was basically like, I hate when someone tells me they're investing because it's a great founder because that's something that nobody can argue you on, even if they know the person, because they're just like, I can argue you on market, I can argue you on product. I can argue you on, you know, 10 other things, but I can't argue you on great founder.

So can you defend every deal you've done recently without saying those two words? What's your answer to that question? Can I defend every deal? Yes, I can explain why we did every deal. Would I defend every deal? No, because I think we've made mistakes along the way. And we did deals or deal sizes or at valuations that knowing what I know today, I could say, you know, that wasn't a good decision, you know, going back with the benefit of hindsight,

I would think about that differently now. But I think that's natural. Like there's no way that you could get into anything as a, you know, start a new activity, new job, new hobby, whatever it is. And from day one, be flawless. Hell no, right? Now, could you, but should you have a line of thinking on everything you did? Yeah, here was my line of thinking.

Was my line of thinking always correct? No. Here's some errors I made. And I can tell you specifically, like three errors I made. One, I would say is the, oh, but I love this business. I hate the valuation, but I love this business. I think that is a pretty common mistake. And even though it sometimes works out,

like we invested in a company that was valued at $200 million, I invested because I had been trying to invest since the seed round, but I hadn't gotten in. So I kind of had, I was like, you know, anchored to this lower price. And now it's a multi-billion dollar company. So our investment's still up, I don't know, 40X. So it's a great investment from a return point of view. But honestly, it was a pretty dumb investment.

Like my only out was that this thing would, this company would go from 200 million to a multi-billion dollar company, even though at the 200 million I thought it was overvalued based on where the revenue was. And I think even though I think I got lucky on that more so than that was the correct decision. And I think that's the case for like a bunch of things I did where the difference in your outcome when you invest at a $8 million valuation versus 18 versus 50 versus 80. is just really, really profound. And the better move is to stay disciplined.

Don't chase the higher valuations. Just pass even on a good deal because you just want to deploy all your dollars in at the lower valuation so that you can have, when you hit, you hit super, super big. You know,

we did another investment that was at a $5 million dollar valuation and now it's at, I don't know, 300, 300, 400 million. And it may be, it may end up at the same multiple as the first deal I talked about. But the second one was actually using sound logic and judgment. And the first one was chasing something that I wanted.

And, you know, I only had one possible way to get a good outcome out of that. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think he thinks similarly, like, I think, you know, the only thing that he said that I intuitively knew, but never really thought about is how many deals he looks at a week. You know, he's talking to 100 to 150 founders every single week, which I think is just like to do maybe one deal a month at most. So maybe he's doing one out of 600 things he talks to. And the thing that he said that I thought was interesting about that was,

you know, you kind of notice what good and great is. You know, most, there's a ton of people you meet that are in the good category in terms of founders, right? It's like really smart people building interesting things, great backgrounds. But there's very, very few people you meet that are great. So I think that was like a learning for me, which is like really being.

disciplined to only do deals when you think they're great, which I think applies to more than just angel investing. It kind of applies to everything. It's like most of the time you know what crate is, but you just get impatient and you go for good. Right. And I think his portfolio is pretty nuts, by the way. Grubhub, snap, open door, stitch fix, whatnot, imperfect foods, boom aerospace. These are these are some pretty solid ones, especially if we got.

in or yeah and i think you know i think obviously he was canceled or me too for a reason so like i don't i don't i can't say he's like the best dude personally but obviously he's a great investor yeah yeah you know it's hard to know what happened in certain situations and i don't know i try to for better for worse my thought when i meet people is when somebody tells me how great somebody is i don't assume that they're perfect and when somebody tells me how horrible somebody is i don't think that they're evil and terrible um i sort of take people at face value so i meet them. I, you know, ask them about the situation. I hear the story. And then I see how they treat me and I observe how they treat the other people around them. And I kind of just use that as my filter

rather than getting caught up in this sort of stuff. And I also have friends that I think are like, you know, great in one area of their life. And I can learn a lot from them in that area, you know, whether it's investing or business or fitness or whatever. And they're not so great in other areas of their life. Rather than sit there and judge them, I just try to, if I find somebody that's great at one area of the life, I just focus on that and I try to learn from them on that and I move on. I don't really get too caught up in the full picture. Yeah, 100%. And then in terms of, you know, other thing I took away from San Francisco was there was one other thing that we did that I took a lot away from, which was we had a small dinner with about 10 people.

I had no idea really what to expect. Like I went in cold basically knowing none of these people. So, Sean, you want to set the table for what that dinner was like? Yeah, we hosted a dinner at F.D. Inc., which has a great office in Fort Mason and San Francisco. We invited about 12, 13 people, something like that. I would say some of them knew each other, but most people didn't. So it's one of these very San Francisco things. It's like one person curates the guest list, and they're basically saying, trust me, these people are cool. And then everybody else just goes on that.

that assumption. And if you ever violate that, it's like, dude, I went to this one dinner this guy hosted and people were not cool. You're like,

all right, they're out. But as long as you can successfully curate this, you can sort of build a really cool community and brand around it. So we invited some people.

The conversation was basically, I think, you know, I saw your face at one point because in the most San Francisco thing possible, the conversation quickly shifted to like drugs, but like,

not like party drugs, but like, you know, people in San Francisco love this. like, you know, sort of like, oh, I microdose this thing, or I do ayahuasca, or I do DMT, or I do mushrooms, you know, for productivity and like all this other stuff. Like, I do this instead of therapy. I do this in addition to therapy.

I do this in addition to or to help my productivity. And it's like, bro, can you just drink coffee? Like, do you have to do all this? Are you sure? That's like, you know, my feeling because I'm like a more straight arrow guy. Like, I just, I don't do. I don't do any of the stuff. But that was, you know, that was pretty heavy part of the conversation at the beginning.

And then there was, you know, it transitioned from there. But what was your take on the, uh, the drug convo? Yeah. I mean, you know, I've been someone that's always, I haven't done anything, but I'm not, like, incredibly opposed to it. I, you know, my take was just seemed like that's what most people were focused on, like, uh, every, most of the people in that room were really successful. And the thing they were focused on was figuring out in some ways how to be happier.

Like, that's kind of. what it boiled down to is like, how do I be happier and how do I have better relationships with the people that matter? And it's always odd to be in, you know, I always find it kind of odd to be in those rooms where everyone seems like they have everything they possibly want, right? Like, I'm probably the least wealthy person in that room, the least well-known person in that room. And, yeah, so I find that interesting that people are resorting to that type of thing and maybe there's a lot of great to be had. The other thing that I took away from it is everyone talked about this thing called

Touchy-feely, which is the thing that happened. I think it's like a Stanford class where basically you boil down. The leadership class. Yes, everyone was talking about how to be a better leader and how to really connect with people. And the one thing I wrote down in my phone was, I'm an asshole. So I remember, like, basically their take was this is like really when all these things boil down to is recognizing that you're the assholes. asshole at every situation.

Then I remember afterwards, I was like, I don't know, maybe I'm just an asshole to everyone for this kind of reasons. I think the line was, every great marriage comes down to one realization. I am an asshole. And once you realize that and you accept that, it humbles you, but it also, it's sort of like, you understand the other person's side because damn, they're dealing with this asshole. And I thought that was like a really, I don't know if I believe that, but I thought it was a great

line. There was one part on the, so that the, the, the drugs part I thought was interesting because it was like, some of these things that are taboo today become very normal 10 years from now. And Silicon Valley is usually at the front of that curve. And you're right, it was stunning. I mean, this is a very successful group of people. There wasn't a person in that room who wasn't wealthy, successful, all that stuff. And I would say what?

40% of the people at that table had experimented with some version of, you know, a like, I don't know what you would call, a hallucinogenic type of drug in order to try to be happier, you know, happier, less anxious or better in their relationships. And that's just a crazy ratio to me. That's a wild ratio. That's a very San Francisco, a ratio that you get. And sometimes San Francisco is just off the reservation,

and sometimes they're ahead of the curve. And it's pretty hard to figure out which ones, which. You know, these are the same people that in, you know, 2012 we're talking about Bitcoin. And this is the same group of people that, you know, whatever, they're like, you know, experimenting with AI four or five years ago. You know, so they are, the hard part is you can't write it off

because often these are people that are right in a bunch of areas. Yeah, the touchy-feely thing I thought was cool because they said that one framework for communication. I think that's probably worth saying, which was, so they're talking about how great this touchy-feely thing is. and of course my natural question was like wait so like like what what did you like what's an example you're saying how great this was and how it changed everything for you like what's an example and uh our friend siki siki chen who now runs runway gave this great uh framework he goes

they teach you that there's what was it five layers of communication and so let me see if i can remember this off top of my head so he's like the first one when you deal with people you're going to be at one of these five layers so it's like uh level one or layer one is ritual. This is like, you know, you're walking to the office, hi, hey, hi, you know, hey, what's up, it's up. You know, like, just like, it's automated. It's not like, it's just a ritualistic thing.

You're just a quick, quick hello. Then there's number two, which is extended ritual, which is, hey, how's it going? How's your day? You know, what's new? These things that you say, it's an extended version of the ritual. You don't really care or you're not really. asking the question, you're not really expecting anything, nor are they really telling you what's going on in their life. It's sort of this, like just this dance. We do. The third level is you're

talking about some content, but it's surface content. So at the third level, surface content is you're talking about a project. You're talking about something you're working on or something you're doing, something that's happening. You're talking about the game. You're talking about the project, whatever it is. And what he basically says. was like, you know, most of our communication just happens at these three levels every day. But the problem with it is, imagine in every interaction, there's two tracks. So on your left hand is the track of like the content of the conversation and on the right is the relationship between the two people.

And at these first three layers, the content might be moving, but the relationship is not moving. The relationship is not being invested in. And so if you want to be somebody who's better at building relationships, like you don't you need to get out of just these first three layers and get to number four four and five four is feelings about the content so how do you feel about what's going on right i feel stressed about this project i feel worried about this thing i feel so excited about um this game tonight you know whatever it is and you're sharing a little bit about what's inside for you how you're feeling about the thing not just talking about the thing so that's that's better that moves it forward because you're

there's some vulnerability there. And then the last one is feelings about each other, which is, dude, you know, I felt disappointed when I expected this was going to happen, but actually this happened. Or I felt annoyed or I felt frustrated that we keep ending up in this same loop. And being able to share that is obviously the saying how you feel about the other person. And I said negative ones, but it could also be the other way. Like, you know, I feel, you know, I love working with you.

I love, or I had so much fun. I felt tons of joy when we were doing XYZ. So you can sharing how you actually feel about the other person is the hardest one. But when you do it, that's what moves that other track, the furthest. And they talked about like the little nuances. Like instead of saying, I feel like blank, blank, blank. Anytime you say like, you took it away from how you actually feel. It's just, I feel blank or I felt blank is the right way to do it.

So I thought that was pretty cool because that stuff, it's hard to learn anywhere, like school or whatever. And it sounded like that, you know, you talked about the Harvard Business School thing. That was one note. And the other one was this Stanford touchy-feely thing as like, oh, that sounds pretty cool. I should check that out. Or, you know, I want to get better at that. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, call, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, Grow Better. And you told a great story, basically, by your experience, doing that same thing at the prison yard. You should tell that story. Yeah, so, all right. So once upon a time, I get an email from my boss, and this is a guy, Michael Birch.

So he was basically the main investor in our company. and he's kind of like my mentor. When I moved to Silicon Valley, I moved here to work with Michael, Michael, uh, built multiple successful internet companies. That's what I wanted to do. So I was like,

I want to learn from this guy. And, um, I always, I don't know how other people feel this way, but whenever I'm around somebody who I really admire or I really like, like, like, I feel an intense pressure to, um, just like do good in that, do good in that setting.

Like I just always wanted to like put my best foot forward. Uh, if it was a meeting, I wanted to look smart. If it was a social situation, I wanted to be Mr. Charisma and like, be this, they brought me to this event. I want to have the best conversation. And sometimes that's okay. That's natural, but often it felt forced. And it was just a lot of stress. So anyways, he emails me this thing, says, hey, come with me to this, uh, this. I did this event and I want you to come to it. You know, don't ask too many questions. Just come. He's like, it's Friday at this time,

just show up. And so I show up. And what he signed me up for was, uh, this group called Inside Circle, I think it's called. And basically they take a group of kind of like Silicon Valley CEO type people, a group of men from the business world, and they bring them inside of Folsom Prison. And they take you to meet inmates who are in prison for life. So they have a life sentence. And so you go to this sort of like, I don't know if it's maximum security or whatever,

but you go to this like intense prison. And you're going to meet with people who are in prison for life. If you're in there for life, you did something that's, you know, murderer or, you know, sort of equivalence. And so I'm like, oh, shit. And he's like, yeah, it's a two-day event. It's like an overnight event. I was like, what the hell?

All right, thanks, Michael. So I go to this thing. We walk in and I don't, I still don't really know what to expect. I'm like, are we giving a talk? Is this like an entrepreneurship talk? Like, what are we trying to do here? So I'm prepared for like some presentation or something like that. But instead, we walk in, the guys all get uncuffed.

we all walk in together and we all sit in a circle and I'm like, oh, this is a feelings thing. Oh, shit. This is like, you know, this is like AA or something.

I don't know what I got myself into, but my brain is racing. And when the guys were walking in, uh, you know, I'm like, it's kind of like scoping everybody out. And there was one guy who walked in that just stood out right away.

He was wearing sunglasses and he had a cane, but he wasn't blind. So I was like, I don't know how. this dude has this privilege to like be able to have a stick that he walks around with and sunglasses but this guy's got clout immediately you could tell and he was the only guy who was like not smiling not talking to anybody he had like two guys around him who like kind of escorted him to see brought him a clip of water and i was like oh shit this is the guy who like runs the prison

got it uh i've seen movies about this shit i know how to like spot the alpha this guy's the alpha and so the event basically starts as follows they go break him under like smaller circles, you know, groups of six. And, and, you know, this guy who's been here, he's the facilitator, he'll begin. So break up into group of six. Of course, I get paired in a group with this, the tough guy. And I'm like, all right, what do I have to do here? What do I need? Again, what am I trying to try to do well in this situation? And basically, the group was sort of like, the activity was sort of like, you just, each person goes around, you just say what's on your mind. First guy gets up and he tells this,

super intense situation that he's in. He's like, uh, right now I'm feeling, um, frustrated man. I'm feeling pissed. Feeling angry.

I'm like, oh, fuck. He's like, I'm feeling angry because, uh, my daughter who's on the outside told me that, you know,

she had been, um, sexually assaulted and I'm pissed that I'm not there to beat that guy's ass and then, you know, protect her. And, uh,

and so this guy tells us like really intense thing. And then, And I'm like, oh, shit. And then the next guy says an even more intense thing. And third guy says this really traumatic, he's working through this really traumatic experience. By the third person, I'm no longer listening. I'm in my head. And I'm doing the math. I'm like, okay, I'm three people away. What am I going to say? And like, I mean, look at me. I'm wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt right now. I'm like, you know, my parents love me. My life is pretty good. I'm healthy. I'm happy. And all of a sudden, I'm like, God damn it, parents, why did you have to love me?

I don't have shit to say here. Like, I couldn't you have just had a drug problem and made this a little easier for me? Like, what am I supposed to say? That's not going to stand out like a sore thumb. Like, I can't be like, the biggest problem in my life right now is we have this deadline for this thing we're trying to have this new feature we're building by Friday. And I just don't know if we're going to hit it, guys. Like, you know, that's it's not going to fly here.

So I'm like, fuck, fuck, I'm panicking. And I'm not listening at this point. It keeps going around the circle. finally it gets to me. And I'm like, okay, I just got to tell this, like, this, kind of like this, the most traumatic thing that's happened to my life, whatever. I guess I'm going to say it to these strangers. And I'm going to hand it up a little bit and really like, you know, just try to deliver

this. I essentially start performing. And so I tell this thing about some family thing that happened in my past. And I'm like doing these dramatic pauses. And I'm like, you know, not like pretending to cry, but I'm definitely pretended to feel it a little more than I was actually feeling it in that moment. I tell the story. And I told it good.

I'm a good storyteller. And so I'm like, I brought my A game because I was under pressure. I told a great story. And I'm like, all thanks, you know, thanks to all for listening and on to the next.

And then the hard guy goes, man, that's some bullshit. And I was like, oh no. What? What? And I go,

what? And he goes, man, that's some bullshit, man, you're just saying that shit. I go, know that really happened.

He goes, I don't care if that happened. He goes, you ain't really feeling that. And so this guy basically instantly sniffed me out in a way that very few people can really tell, you know, when I'm BSing like that. And now I'm feeling like, am I going to get beat up? Like, what's going to happen here? This is a worst case scenario. The hard guy is like, just like went out of nowhere. He didn't say this to anybody else in the group.

But for me, he's like, that's some bullshit, man. And he was like out. He was like out on me. And he goes, he said something. He goes like, he goes, I go, what do you want me to say? He goes, I want you to say what's on your mind. What's you really feeling? And I go, I'm feeling nervous.

He goes, why? I go, because I want you to like me. Like the truth came out. I was like, I want you to like me. It was the honest situation. And I'm like, oh my God, what did I just say? The lamest possible. thing of one man can say to another.

And he paused and he just goes, that's your truth. And he like accepted it. He goes, that's your truth, man. And he got up and he like got it. He came up to me, whatever. And we like, whatever. He's like, you know, I appreciate you for telling your truth.

He hugged me. And he sat back down. And I was like, what just happened? He's laughing now. This guy had it cracked a smile the whole time. And he just thought it was so funny that obviously he scared me shitless, which he did. And he got me to break, which he did.

did. But it also showed me like, you should just, you know, lead with the truth. It's a lot easier than trying to perform. But, uh, yeah, that was my like touchy-feely, uh, touchy-feely, like intense experience. Yeah, that's basically what touchy-feely is, right? It's just like trying to get to the core of what you're actually feeling or thinking, right, and sharing it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I haven't done it, but it does seem like it's about being a little more, more honest, more authentic and less of the surface level autopilot shit that we get used to doing kind of in the real world.

All right, what else we got? So that was your San Francisco trip. Any other big ones? Otherwise, let's do a couple of cool ideas. The last one from San Francisco is, the other person that came to dinner was this guy named Kendall. So he bought the Milk Rood with Mike.

So MillCrew is a crypto newsletter that Sean and I started and sold. And I think I worked with them for three months pretty hands-on. And every time I see him, it makes me think of this, which is, you know, instead of asking what would Jesus do, I ask, what would Mike and Kendall do? And they do two things really well that I try to embody whenever I ask that question, which is like, one, one Kendall himself is really good at spotting an opportunity. So he's basically, he's thinking and fishing all day to find what they should go attack. And then Mike is really good at consistent intensity.

So what I mean by that is, let's say you're trying to figure out Facebook ads. every single day for 10 hours, he'd be looking at it, try to see what's working, what's not, and doubling down, instead of being like, oh, Facebook's working, I'm going to go work on Pinterest now. I'm going to go stand up a Twitter ad. So I think when I saw Kendall, it just reminded me, like, be more of Kendall and Mike and anything, because that's a winning combination to be, like, great at spotting things. And then once he spot something that you want, like, take incredible intensity to get it done. Yeah, so these guys each have basically, you know, candles, bills and sold companies for something like just under $100 million, two companies. My last company, I think, sold for nearly $200 million. So obviously very successful. But when we met them, you know, I always look for, okay, what was it about this person? What, what contributed to their outsized outcome? Because usually the shit ain't an accident.

You know, we always say, you got to have some mattress. So it's like, what are the attributes that this person had that led them to that? Some people, it's, they're amazing engineers. Okay, great. They built some crazy shit. Some people, it's like they're amazing investors. They are great at spotting opportunities and whatever. For some people, they're great salespeople.

You know, this guy could sell ice to an Eskimo. I can see how they were able to grow their business really fast. This person, you know, somebody's really high IQ. They're just super, super smart. they, you know, they built this thing that I could barely understand half the words about, you know, but they understand that industry. They navigated it. With Mike and Kendall, I felt like, with Kendall, I was like, you wouldn't want to compete

with this guy because he's just going to figure out the loophole in the game. Like, he's going to figure out the cheat code. And he's going to figure out, oh, in Mario, you run onto this block that you just hold down and then you fall behind the screen, you run. And then you get the magic flute that lets you skip nine levels. And I feel like that's Kendall. Kendall will find the magic flute that lets you skip levels, whereas you're sitting there trying to beat every single level.

He was just like, no, that sounds painful. I'm going to find, you know, I think I heard or, you know, there's got to be this like solution where I can get ahead faster. What is that? Who's making the most money? And then how do I do what they're doing? So he's good at sniffing out that thing. And Mike is like,

Mike is smart, but he's not like, he's not like he's the smartest dude I've ever met, but he is one of the most intense dudes I've ever met. it like we'll have a meeting and then we'll go out for drinks but somehow in between he ships like a notion doc with all of the action items tagged and like referenced because he's like well obviously that was a good plan we should write it down and then do it and I'm like yeah well don't say it like it's common sense like you know we're going to get a little distracted over here and we're going to you know we'll stretch it out we'll procrastinate a little bit

And he's like, well, why would you procrastinate? Just do the whole thing right away. It's like, I don't know, because I'm not you. I'm not a machine. And he's a machine. And so I think it's really useful to just be around somebody like that. And I think we had this theory when we sold the milk road to them because we were considering different offers.

And it was like, I don't know, dude. I think we're not, like, it's hard to put a price on we're going to get to hang out with these guys who are going to make us better as entrepreneurs. That's a factor. And so, yeah, I think we've noticed this in a bunch of people as we meet people. me and Ben always call each other in debrief after meetings. And I think one of the more common ones is they have this, like, intensity is often the most common trait that we're seeing in these successful people

because they're so different in all these other ways. But the one thing they have is like once they see an opportunity, they're pretty effing relentless and focused on doing it. They don't procrastinate. They don't wait around. They don't, you know, half do things or quarter do things. they like overdue things and they do it with like the intensity knob

is cranked past the 10 they broke the knob and it's on 12 I feel like that's been common for a bunch of people that we've we've hung out with over the last few years yeah yeah and I think like now that I see great I'm like okay I wasn't great I can be great

yeah he's great right right that's true the other one that was funny was we bumped into Rahuligma at the Warriors game So if people don't remember this, when Elon bought Twitter, there was this guy that went and he was standing outside the Twitter office with a giant cardboard box. And he was like, yeah, I'm a data science engineer at Twitter. I got fired on.

Elon came in. He fired me. And then the reporters were like, oh, tell us, you know, what are your thoughts on Elon? And how does it feel to have this? And he's like, you know, so this guy didn't work at Twitter. He was a giant troll. And he's friends with some friends that we have. And he had sent a text like an hour earlier being like, dude, there's hell of people outside of Twitter.

I'm just going to take a box and pretend I got fired. You want to come? And him and his buddy went, took an empty cardboard box and tricked reporters from CNBC and all these places. There's all these articles about with these guys featured. He said his name was Rahululigma, as in, you know, ligma these nuts. And, you know, his other guy, Daniel Johnson. So it was ligma and Johnson. who were pretending to be to be fired.

And so they kind of went viral in Silicon Valley as like, Silicon Valley loves when people, you know, trick the media or beat the media or point out that the media is stupid. And the media loves the opposite. They love to point out when Silicon Valley is stupid and overrated and overhyped and overfunded and all this stuff. It's like a little war that goes on.

And so Rahul was like he won one, he won a key battle in that war. And so we're at the game. I'm like, dude, that's the guy. That's like, again,

he's a random engineer, startup founder that nobody knew a few months ago and now he was sitting court side at the Warriors game with two like billionaires and he was just hanging out and I was like you know this guy probably went to college

studied hard spent 150K getting a degree you know trying to make his startup successful and the thing that like catapulted like a random inflection point in his life that catapulted him was this random troll he decided to do and I think that's just kind of

amazing and very, I don't know, there's a lesson to be learned in there. What was your reaction to that? Yeah, one, I thought the troll was incredible. Like, I think when, you know, I'm not an anti-big media guy, but I have seen, you know, when you're on the inside of a story and what they, you know, how they spin it to make a great headline. So I had one great troll. By the way, the best part of the troll, he's holding up a Michelle Obama book. It was a cardboard box and he had the Michelle Obama book. And then they go, what do you think about, you know, getting fired or to Elon you know, was that right? And he goes, this would have never happened under Michelle Obama, which makes no sense.

That is so funny. Yeah. And they didn't somehow pick up on that that this guy's just, you know, this guy's lying. Yeah, so good. Other thing is just like do things that make no sense. Like I think a lot of, a lot of stuff I try to do, like makes no sense why you would ever do it. You can't like map it to anything going forward.

You're just like, oh, it sounds fun and funny. So fuck it, like, let's do it. Yeah, we've talked about that before, the do cool shit budget, which is, do you have a budget of both money and time that you allocate towards things that don't have a clear ROI except for that sounds fun or like, dude, that would be hilarious or that would be that that's amusing or I don't know, like I've never done that before. And I think, you know, the way Google had, Google had 20% time where basically if you worked at Google, you could spend 20% of your time on anything. that you thought would just be cool for Google. So they, you know, they're like, hey, we're going to pay you in one fifth of your time. You can spend not on any project that we assign you

or that has ROI. And like Gmail came out of that. And Facebook had these hackathons that were the same thing. It's like these late night hackathons. It would take away a bunch of productivity from engineers. But they were like, you know, this is fun. This is good for culture and good shit can come out of this that we can't predict.

And like, you know, the like button was built during one of these hackathons, for example. You know, the like button is obviously, you know, massive for Facebook. And so I think that everybody should have this do cool shit budget. So how do you put, take 10 to 20 percent of your time and your money and put it towards things that are just for, you know, shits and giggles. I know I do that. I think we should do that with our companies. I think everybody should really do that. Yeah. I mean, the one thing I try to do consistently is just talk to a bunch of random people that, you know, there's no real ROI, but a lot of interesting stuff

comes out of all those conversations. Yeah, you should explain how you do that because, I gave you access to my Twitter and I was like, I don't know, I get a bunch of DMs. I can't keep up with all this. And you kind of took that and turned it into an asset. So like what did you do? And you basically just blocked off like what Thursdays or something. We just have back to back,

like four random meetings with people that you think are interesting with no agenda. Is that like, that's my read of it. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, a long time ago started by basically saying, oh, uh, people think Sean is awesome. So how do we DM them and just get on calls and meet interesting people and have

no agenda and just shoot the shit. So we just DM people and say, what's up? This thing is awesome. And you get like a 90% response rate. Sometimes it is a little weird because people will be like, thanks. And then you're like, all right, I don't know what to do with that. But sometimes people give you an opening. They're like, oh, cool, dude, what's up?

And so I would be like, how do I pour those into conversations to talk to as many random people as possible? Over time, I started to do it from my own account. And the main idea is just like no agenda, talk to someone about what they're working on, ask a bunch of questions. Almost every single time I learned something that I didn't think about before, whether it be like, oh, wow, this company is huge or this thing they're working on is actually way more interesting than it appeared when I first saw it. And then I try to send them interesting things as I see them on Twitter. Like I think one of my best skills is I'm always on Twitter seeing interesting things. so then I just send it to a bunch of people.

And over time, it tends to lead to good outcomes. Like, I think almost everything I can count to, or, like, say in my life is because I'm good at that on Twitter. Yeah, like, when I think of, oh, this person is great at networking, I think about, you know, some, like, I don't know, tall dude is good at shaking hands and making small talk and, like, you know, some smooth operator, politician type dude. And that's not, you're a...

you're an amazing networker, but you do nothing like that. And your method is, first of all, it's all online. Secondly, you're just like, I feel you don't overthink it.

If I was to kind of reverse engineer what I think is good, what you do that's good, is you find interesting people, you compliment them on what they're doing. That's interesting. You then send them things that are like kind of helpful. Like,

oh, do you see this or check this out. Or you might like this. Or you met this guy. You should talk to them. And you just like add little nugget one, two, And by the third nugget, they're like, I like this Ben do.

This guy's, this Ben guy is all right. You know, he seems to, he likes me and he's helpful to me. And like, therefore you're interested in them and therefore they're interested in you. Whereas I think I always took the reverse approach, which had terrible results, which is, I want you to like me. So I'm going to tell you all the interesting things about me. And like, no matter what, how interesting I am, I'm nowhere near as interesting to them as they are to themselves.

And I think you do an amazing job at like just being interested in. and being helpful, not asking for anything in return. And that's how we met. And then that's how I feel like you've built. For all the people I meet, you end up with a better relationship with them. And so there's something you're doing that's amazing. And I'm still trying to figure it out. I think the other thing is like introducing them to other great people.

Like, I think that's always an easy win to be like, you should, you're having this problem, meet this person who can help you. That's like a great way to do it. And in college, I used to be like, oh, I just need to always check in and see how someone is doing for them to like me and want to talk to me. Like, now if someone did that with me, I'd be like, bro, what do you want me to say? Like, I'm good. Or I'd be like, oh, you went to Duke.

I should write that in my notes and, like, send you an email when Duke wins a basketball game. Then I kind of realized, like, what do you get to think, you know, like, if someone said me a note every time the sons want a game or I'd be like, okay, like, what do you want me to say? Like, thanks for, like, thinking of me that the son's on a game. So I was like, how do I just actually understand? understand what they want.

And like when I see interesting things, just send it. And maybe it's useful. Maybe it's not. But they know I'm thinking about them in that moment and time. Right. Yeah. I think that skill goes a long way. Julian Shapiro has an interesting version of this that he does that I kind of love,

which is he'll just send you an email with one image in it. No subject line, no text. And the image is a random meme, but it's like, Julian's sense of humor is really weird. And so it'll be like a picture of a parrot. And then on the parrot's chest, it says, look in the top right corner. And you look at the top right corner and it says, not this one, the left corner. You go to the left corner. It says, not up here, idiot, down there.

You look down and it goes, go to the right corner. You finally go to the bottom right corner and it says, I love you. And it's like, he'll send you that and nothing else. Or he'll just send you like eight straight random images of like, you know, I don't know, whatever, grill is eating cake. And you're like, Julian, what's going through your brain right? now and I don't know what this is, but it makes me laugh and it's just different. And it's like, it's really quick and easy for him to do this. And it's like, I don't know who this guy is,

but he's interesting and he's fun and he makes me laugh. And like he does this like, you know, we talk about these things that like Sam does his, you know, let's fuck when he gets into town. And he wants to meet somebody who he only knows online or he's friends with. And that's just like a better, like more fun version of like, let's hang out. Julian's like random. meme thing is interesting. Your thing where you send a little helpful nuggets of, hey, did you see this? I think that works too. Everybody's got their own style.

But, you know, the style I think doesn't work is me, me, me, me, me, which is the style that I had originally taken, which was like, well, I'll just focus on what I want and what I think is cool. And then people will be interested in that. It's like, no, not really. Yeah. And for a while, I'd be like, you know, in college, there are a number of people who teach you

in college, like, oh, make a LinkedIn post about your internship for getting. A lot of people are going to care or like send people updates on what you're working on. I'm like, I don't know, who cares that I got an internship at Walgreens, you know? And like if someone sent me that, I'd be like, instead send me something interesting or cool or ask me an interesting question or like, send me something you found interesting about what I'm doing. That's way more, I think that's way more valuable than like what the other person wants. Right, right. We should add this on a few ideas. We should do like five minutes of rapid fire ideas. Okay, you go first.

First idea I've been thinking about is something related to your D to C business, which is wholesale. Like one of the things I've been thinking about is wholesale. So for people that don't know, basically you have a Shopify store. You want to sell more in micro boutique. So let's call it the local clothes store in your city. Right now that's really hard to do. So I've just been thinking about someone could build something in the space that makes it really easy. We talked to a company doing this that basically makes it really easy to.

spin up and run your sales channelizable sale. Anything to add to that one? That's a great idea and a no-brainer. We have a person for our EECOM brand who, we have one person dedicated to kind of doing this process. It's very manual. It's like, find a list of all the mom and pop boutiques.

Great. Now reach out cold in this script. And it's all managed through Gmail or, you know, some sales tool. And then, so like sourcing them, reaching out to them,

managing the payments, and invoices, keeping track of your analytics, who's actually, who's a big spender for you, who's falling off and churning, you should reach back out to, you know, all that stuff, making it easy for them to shop because they're buying in bulk. All that stuff, I think, can be, I would love a tool that does this. And by the way, we should reach back out to that company that we talked to about this and be like, hey, we got to do this. Yeah, all right, give me one of your ideas.

Let's do two more. All right, you told me about NIL, which is the college name and likeness thing where basically college athletes can now get paid. So up until now they couldn't get paid. Now they can get paid to do, you know, appearances or merch or different things like that. I love businesses that are built around rule changes or law changes because it takes something that was impossible and now makes it very possible. And there's great examples of this. Like Oscar Health was built as soon as ObamaCare came out. And so one I think that somebody should do is if I'm like, you know, 21 years old or whatever,

I'm 18 years old right now, I would be like, all right, I now have access to a bunch of influencers that are in college that want to get paid and the marketplace is not efficient yet, meaning they have more sway than they're priced at just because people haven't abused this channel yet. So I'm going to be the one to abuse this channel. I'm going to be the one to grow like crazy off this. The way that the movement watches guys built a luxury watch brand using kind of cheap watches because they were like, yo, Instagram has these people who are popular influencers.

We should send them all watches and pay them to promote. And they built a $100 million watch brand before Instagram influences became a big deal. So I think somebody should do this. And it's like, all right, you should work backwards from what do, who follows college athletes? and what do they need? So let's assume for a second that it's other college students at that college or fans of that college that follow them.

What could I sell? And so what are the best products? And so maybe it's financial services, like credit card type stuff. Or maybe it's like a beverage brand, like an energy drink because I remember in college, like people would drink Red Bulls and five hour energies staying up late studying.

I think you could create a new five hour energy off the back of NIL or you could create a new condom brand. Like I don't know how big Trojan or directs. these brands are. But, you know, they've been around for a while. They're kind of stale. And they don't, they're not that fun. And I think somebody could build the, the college condom brand or the college energy drink brand using these NIL influencers. Yeah, I think in general, NIL, like, I tried to book someone before using like open doors, which I think today is like kind of the winner of the NIL marketplace based with the idea of I can book someone on demand for

anything, whether it be an appearance, autograph, except, better. I think there has to be a startup out there that is doing this now in a really good way locally. So we should find that startup too that is attacking the NIA marketplace in a different way. All right, that's going to be it for the pod. Thanks, Ben, for coming on. And actually, if you like Ben,

you want to see some of the stuff. One thing he's working on right now is we took every episode of My First Million. So we've done 400 plus episodes now. And we had somebody go through and pull out every idea every framework and every tool that's mentioned. And we're categorizing it.

We put it all into a giant air table so that you could basically see, like, what are all the ideas they had? And then you could sort by, like, you know, the ideas that were, you know, all about AI or all about crypto or all about SaaS or, you know, side hustles, right? For example. And then I took the top 10 for each, both frameworks and ideas, and I'm writing about them and expanding them. saying, you know, here's the idea, here's what I would do for each of those. And we're putting it together. So this is going to be like, I don't know, some super PDF type thing. So if you want that, go to go to my website, go to shanpuri.com, drop your email in.

And, you know, I don't know how long it's going to take us to finish this, maybe another week or so. But that's where I'm going to send it out. So go there, sign up. And if you want basically to take the best of from the pod and then kind of updates, you I've been to update and give my commentary on the sort of the best ones from there. So I think that's going to be an awesome resource for people. If you're a fan of the pod, you know, I don't know, it's a no brander.

It's kind of a must have if you've been listening all the way through. There's no way to keep track of all the different ideas that we mentioned on here. So I think that would be, that's going to be awesome. So I'm excited about that. Thanks for Ben for coming on. And again, I'll put the link in the description on YouTube and in the podcast, but it's just Sean Pruy.com and then you can put your email in there. all right guys uh thank you for uh thank you for listening that's it that's the pot