My First Million - Recap Live Event, The Art Of Hosting, Obsession With Time & More
Episode Date: May 2, 2023Episode 450: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) recap their live event in Austin, who they met, learning how to host, managing time, and the legend of Jerry Springer. Want to see more MF...M? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: *CEO Document *Boom and Bucket *Nick Gray * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (01:25) - Live Event recap (07:30) - The most interesting people we met (12:25) - Franchise businesses (19:00) - Nick Gray and the art of hosting (32:15) - Giving Simple Advice (39:05) - Time obsession (50:30) - Jerry Springer ------ 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
At the beginning of the show, we do this thing where we're like,
raise your hand if you're an entrepreneur.
Most of the hands go up.
Okay, keep your hand up if you've launched your business.
All right, like 15% of the hands go down.
Okay, keep your hands up if you have more than $100,000 in revenue.
Okay, so hands go down.
A million dollars in revenue.
10 million in revenue.
30 million in revenue.
We just keep going up to see kind of like who is,
who is the no small boy?
stuff competition of that of the crowd because we're like there's the people who are there they
already kind of know our story and they know our bits we don't know them and so that might be actually
more interesting and there was a guy who was one of the people who's got like he was at the kind of like
30 40 50 million level he's like um yeah i i sell gear to fire departments around the country
and he's like you know like we're like like like hoses he's like hoses and uniforms and you know
nozzles and like you know just stuff for the fire
department. Did he say that he did 57 million in revenue of that? Is that what he said? I don't remember the
exact number. It was something like that. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be
what I want to. All right. We're live. What's going on? I'm back home. The live pot is over. The show,
the show is over. Let's talk about your time in Austin. The live pod, we should talk about a little bit.
We might be airing that episode.
We got to go back and listen to it to make sure that there's nothing that we had to bleep out.
But what did you think about Austin?
It seemed like you had a great time.
Had a great time.
Dude, I know more people in Austin than in San Francisco somehow.
So I think I don't know if that's about Austin or that's about me.
I think it's more about me not leaving the house here in San Francisco.
But when I left my house, I went to Austin, I saw tons of old friends, you and a bunch of the crew.
Had a great time.
stayed started off in a haunted hotel and then moved to a better hotel and then uh yeah it was a good time
you uh came in on something like a wednesday you left on a sunday or thursday and sunday or something
like that tuesday five days tuesday tuesday to sunday you had you spoke at two conferences
you were on the chris williamson show which was uh that guy's interesting but what what was cool
having you here was i felt i felt um
I missed our times in San Francisco, the 2012-2018 era where it was like, it felt like all of us were doing the same stuff.
Then when you came in town, we had everyone, we had like three or four dinners of like eight friends.
And it felt like, oh, wow, this is, it feels like it's happening again.
And actually, it feels like it's not happening to the extent of what we experienced then.
But there are a lot of really special people here.
And it felt really cool, like, to appreciate that.
Yeah, you're right.
I think people should do whatever we did in our kind of like 20s,
which was move to the city where there's a bunch of other people that are chasing the same dream as you.
I think that's an amazing, like you could pick a city based on weather, based on location,
you could pick it based on cost.
Those are some factors.
But if you're in your 20s and you're the type of person who listens to this podcast,
you're sort of entrepreneurial, you're ambitious, I think the move is,
move to a city where, move to a place, not even, not even say city, move to a place,
this could just be a house in the town you're in, where you will be around other people
who are chasing the same dream as you.
It is massively underrated.
You will not only get smarter faster, but also you bond with people, and it's like, those bonds
don't go away.
You will always kind of remember when you were all at the very upstart phase of what you were doing.
And we did this live pod and this live podcast.
And the content, so it was me, Sean, and Andrew.
The content was fine enough, whatever.
But we'll talk about that later, or we'll just air the episode.
But what was cool was I met people.
I think we had 550 or 600 people.
It was sold out.
And I met, and so we stayed out.
Sean and I and Andrew stayed afterwards and, like, did like a meet and greet with everyone.
And you always talk to these people.
And I'm amazed that these people would fly in from all over the place.
I met a guy from Malaysia.
I met people from all over Mexico, America, North America.
North America, who came and they were like,
I came here because in my town, I'm a weirdo,
and it feels nice to be around non-weirdos.
And I was like, what do you mean?
And I looked at Twitter afterwards,
and I saw pictures of like,
so like basically we didn't let people into the venue
until right before it started.
And in the line, I don't know if you saw this.
There was people interviewing each other,
like for their own content channels.
There's like, people are like,
oh, I met this person who's doing this.
I met this person who did this.
I met this lady.
Did you meet this Mexican lady who,
moved to from like Mexico City to
Ann Arbor and she flew down from Michigan.
It was her and her 12 year old daughter.
Did you meet those people?
I did.
I love that.
She was like, hey, love the pod.
This is my daughter.
She listens as well.
We listen together.
And I was like, oh, amazing.
You know, what are you?
I asked the daughter.
I was like, what do you like about the show?
Because she was quite shy in the moment.
And she was like, I just, yeah, I like that.
It's fun.
It just gets me.
laughing and then, you know, I just learn different things and it makes me want to go do,
like, it makes me want to go do stuff.
I was like, you know, that's the, that is the actual sales pitch, right?
You'll laugh, you'll learn something and it'll get you excited to go do stuff.
And the mom was like, you know, thank you for the pod because it's the only, like,
it's the only podcast we can listen to together, that we can both, that we both enjoy.
So it's like become a thing we do.
And, you know, that's probably not that common.
but that was more of my like golden nugget kind of moment
takeaways from the whole thing.
Yeah, she was my favorite person I met.
But anyway, my point is that it was cool that like,
and what you were saying is what we saw
a very micro version of that with 500 people
was like go to the place where those other weirdos like you
and like cool stuff happens.
And that's always really fun.
I met a lady who was like, yeah,
you talked about me in the pod.
And I recently sold that thing for $30 million.
And she was like waiting in line for like 30 minutes to talk to me.
And I was like, what?
Can I wait in your line?
Like I want to, I want to learn about you.
Can I wait in your line exactly?
Let me, yeah, let's do some of the interesting people that we met.
So there was a guy at the beginning of the show, we do this thing where we're like, put your,
like raise your hand if you're an entrepreneur.
And most of the hands go up.
Okay.
Keep your hand up if you've launched your business.
All right.
Like 15% of the hands go down.
Okay.
Keep your hands up if you have more.
than $100,000 in revenue.
Okay, so hands go down.
A million dollars in revenue.
10 million in revenue.
30 million in revenue.
We just keep going up to see kind of like who is, who wins the no small boy stuff
competition of that of the crowd because we're like, there's the people who are
there, they already kind of know our story and they know our bits.
We don't know them.
And so that might be actually more interesting.
And there was a guy who was one of the people who's got like, he was at the kind of like
30, 40, 50 million level.
He's like, um,
Yeah, I sell gear to fire departments around the country.
And he's like, you know, like we're like like hoses.
He's like hoses and uniforms and, you know, nozzles and like, you know, just stuff for the fire department.
Did he say that he did $57 million in revenue of that?
Is that what he said?
I don't remember the exact number.
It was something like that.
It was either $30 or $50 million somewhere there.
He said he had an exclusive right to sell in nine states.
So like, you know, beautiful business, right?
Because he's got a basically a monopoly on selling in these certain states.
He's like won the contract or whatever.
And really profitable business that, you know, who even thinks of that?
Like who even thinks about who's the B to B e-commerce for fire departments?
And it just gets you thinking, wow, how many niche businesses are there?
Because you just kept meeting one after another.
Do you have any others that stood out?
I got a couple more.
We went to dinner.
So we had a dinner the night before.
One business that I really like that I'm eager to see if it's going to work out or
is called Boom and Bucket.
And what Boom and Bucket does is,
I don't know if it's rental or if it's for selling equipment.
But I think is it selling?
So basically if you are,
if you own a,
or if you need to buy a tractor or like anything Caterpillar,
so like dump trucks, I guess,
boom and bucket,
whatever, you know,
whatever has a bucket and carries heavy stuff.
There's a marketplace.
Yeah, it's a really good name.
It's a boom and bucket.
And it's a really cool website.
And so they,
I think the founder, his name's Adam Lawrence.
He previously was the C-O-O of Bolt.
Bolt was like this high-flying startup, one-click checkout startup.
To be determined if it's going to work out,
but they raised something like hundreds of millions of dollars
at multiple billions valuation.
He left there after being there for a while.
Then he went and started a boom-in bucket,
and he's telling me all about it.
I think it's only a year old or two years old.
Still new, so they're still figuring out
if it's going to take off or not, I think.
But really cool business that I actually think.
will work once they can kind of get to, you know, with marketplaces, you need supply and demand.
It's really challenging.
But if you go to their site right now.
So boom and bucket, which also sounds like an amazing name for a bar in Austin.
Like, you know, a bar with like, you know, dollar jello shots and like, you know, the axe throwing in the back.
I feel like that's actually in Austin.
People just have that in their backyard, the axe throwing thing.
That's like, that's what it seemed like.
So.
No, bro.
We all have coal plunges and signs.
Yeah.
That's the thing in Austin.
So the first thing on here is a 2012 Caterpillar 420F.
For somebody out there, they're like, oh, my favorite model.
Been dreaming about that one.
Yeah.
$77,000 ships nationwide.
You click it, and it's basically like, here's the thing.
It was primarily used in construction for concrete.
You know, here's the specs.
We inspected it.
Here's what we found.
That was great about it.
Here's what needs work.
It's got a residual oil buildup on the engine valve cover, no active leak scene.
So they're adding value by doing inspections and do it close up and detailed photos of the equipment.
And then they say, great, you can buy through us.
We will finance it to you and we will take care of the shipping to get this to you.
This seems like a great idea.
I don't know anything about this niche.
So, you know, take that with a grand assault.
But love the name, love the idea.
And I love that this guy went from like the most silicon.
Valley VC thing you can do, like a network effects, VC funded, multi-billion, you know, unicorn,
that's either going to become $100 billion or go to zero.
And he's like, I'm going to move to Austin, grow a mustache and start selling tractors online.
Dude, he had a, he had a thick, beautiful mustache, and he was wearing cowboy boots.
And he looked exactly.
He looks like you want him to look.
He looked like he was in disguise.
Yeah.
He was trying to blend in in Austin.
So this guy's awesome.
His name's Adam Lawrence.
I love Adam.
I've gotten a known over the past year.
So he was cool.
Who else was interesting?
Another one that I thought was cool.
These guys were in the meet and greet line.
They come up and they're like, hey, love the pod, blah, blah, blah, blah.
No questions.
Just want a picture.
Or actually, they have one question.
They were like, you know, we do franchise marketing.
And I was like, franchise marketing.
What?
Say more?
And they're like, basically 5% of McDonald's stores use us as their digital marketing agency
and social media marketing agency.
And I was like, oh,
5% of McDonald's franchises, that's like, that seems really significant.
They're like, yeah, it's going great.
And this is actually the second time I heard about it.
And this is kind of my rule of two, which is if I hear about the same thing from two completely separate people, it's like, well, roll up the sleeves.
Time to go down a rabbit hole.
Well, you know, plug the nose and take the blunt.
But you heard someone talk about the same business or the same, like literally or the same style of business.
Same style of business.
So our buddy, Siava had told me about these business.
There's two businesses called.
One's called Scorpion Marketing and the other is called
Ferocious Marketing.
Okay, I see a trend.
Normally seems like a little bit of an overcompensation,
but they actually sound like badass businesses.
Yeah, I need like a, I need like a like a rabies LLC.
You know what I mean?
It's like, like typhoid fever
marketing or something.
I need something like that.
I love that.
Hey, we're from Dengue.
Yeah, you're the boys over at Dengue fever.
we're happy to help.
We make it hot,
you know what I mean?
Gang is Khan Incorporated.
I love it.
We killed the competition.
So,
he told me that one of those two,
I don't remember if a Scorpion or Ferocious,
does over $100 million as just a kind of like Google
pay-click plus,
you know,
basically Google ad agency plus maybe Facebook ads as well for franchises.
Like they go to every, you know,
Goodyear tires in America, and they're like, yo, you need to have a good presence online.
This is what we do.
We help good year tires franchisees, make more money in your location.
You pay us, whatever, 10 grand a month, and we take care of your website, your marketing.
We'll make sure you're visible on Yelp and then Google when people are searching for tires,
blah, blah, blah.
And that's what they do.
And then they go do the same thing.
They did in tires, and then they'll do it in Jamba Juice.
And then they'll do it in one franchise after another.
And so I kind of love this model.
I think that this idea of generic agency, but agency that is tailored towards franchisees,
I think is great.
Why?
Franchisees all are going to have the same problem set.
You're going to have a cookie cutter customer.
I love that.
Typically, if something is a franchise, it's got scale already.
So you know that niche is sort of validated.
Third, it's the easiest marketing pitch in the world once you get started, which is that,
Yeah, we do over, you know, 5% of McDonald's franchisees use us, or we're the largest agency
for McDonald's franchisees.
We are the number one.
We serve over 150 store franchisees.
Guess what?
The 151st is way easier to sell to once you got to the 150, right?
It's like it becomes a snowball in terms of your marketing.
Your operations can get streamlined because they all, again, cookie cutter customer,
they all need the same thing.
And then lastly, that type of customer, a franchisee, they've basically,
basically put their net worth on the line to own these franchises.
They typically are not like these brick and mortar franchisees.
They're doing that because they're not super tech savvy or online savvy.
And so I think it's the perfect kind of customer.
And you could just provide clear ROI from month one.
And I think you could do this in a lot of niches.
Like I think you could do this in like senior living.
Like my father-in-law has a senior living facility.
And he is like,
He basically like the entire business is just, how's our occupancy?
You know, occupancy's at 55% versus 65% versus 75% versus 75% versus 85%.
That's like this, that's a swing of like $10 million just in that question right there.
Oh, wow.
And so I'm like, great.
Hey, dad, what are we doing for?
Well, how are we filling that occupancy, right?
Like, you know, what are we doing?
And he's like, well, I don't really know how to do online marketing because most people
who owns Cedger living facilities are not the most.
tech savvy. He's like,
so we need like a come die with us,
he's like,
we host coffee and donuts like brunch for the local hospital nurses
because that's like their number one source of deal flow right now.
And then there's these search engines like like place for mom.com or something like that.
And you know,
you try,
you tell them,
hey,
I'll pay you for leads,
but they just don't bring you that many leads.
And so somebody who can basically solve the search query for like,
you know,
senior living Austin or memory.
care, Austin, or whatever, the person who can rank you at the top for that search is going to be
the difference between 55% occupancy and 75% occupancy, I think. And so I think if you found a niche
or a franchise like that, doing the sort of digital marketing for it, I think becomes very appealing.
Yeah, you just have to run it, which can be challenging. Running those companies is very hard,
but getting customers, I think, is actually easier than servicing the customer.
It makes running a company easier if you had a good way to get new customers.
It is like the number one like, you know, Advil for all aches and pains when it comes to running a business is, well, at least we're getting a bunch of customers, like, you know, easily.
We have a reliable way to do that.
Every other complaint from there is like, you know, just a little bump and bruise.
Another interesting person who you met for the first time was Nick Gray.
So Nick Gray was like the, we asked me to like MCR event and then he ended up just attending.
every other, like, dinner that we had.
And he, like, emceeded it hardcore.
And what's interesting about Nick Gray,
is you guys should look him up is he's in, like, real time.
You can watch him, like, become an authority on this very strange topic of, like,
hosting small gatherings.
And he might be able to turn this into something substantial.
And just to give you an example of what happened, we had this, like,
fancy restaurant booked for this one dinner.
It got rained out because it was like the table was partially outdoors.
So we went to this kind of crappy bar.
And then we moved to a,
another bar next door that was also somewhat outdoors, but had a roof.
And Andrew, one of our guests was like, oh, man, is it going to be cold?
And Nick was like, yeah, it might be cold.
Hold on.
And he ran to a shopping mall across the street and bought like a $100 long sleeve t-shirt.
It goes, I got you.
And how impressive is that?
He was the ultimate party host, which is no surprise because that's what he does.
So his, I don't know him.
You don't very well.
I just met him.
and I just got my first dose of Nick Gray,
and I can't wait for my second dose.
So basically, it sounds like he ran a company called Museum Hack,
which was basically a kind of like a night adventure company.
So you would go to a museum,
the tour would be hosted by a local stand-up comedian or magician
or somebody who's got some showmanship.
And basically he paired showmanship with something that needed showmanship,
museum tours.
and it was a good company.
I think it was making a couple million dollars,
like maybe one, two million dollars to your profit.
He sells the business, takes the proceeds,
invest it into, I think,
did you say all of it into Tesla or like just a lot of it?
So previously he had made money because he,
him and his family started an aviation parts business.
So they made like the screens that go in like private jets,
like the navigation screens.
With the earnings that he had from that business,
he invested it all in Tesla.
And there's these funny pictures of him during the New York Marathon years ago.
And he would hold up signs that says, buy Tesla.
Because he was trying to show up everywhere and just Tesla bomb.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then he killed it on that.
And then he started this museum company with his proceeds.
He put it into Cloudflare, which has not done well.
But you'll see him all the time.
It's really funny.
You'll see him, like, someone will be like, what's the best service for this?
And he'll just reply on Twitter.
I hear CloudFlare is really good.
You should check out Cloudflare.
Like he's like promoting it.
And with his book, he does the same thing.
He's at this book called Two Hour Cocktail Party.
If you go on Google photos and look at the reviews of any bar in Austin, he's been there and he's reviewed it.
And when he reviews it, he takes a picture of his book in front of the sign or the food of that restaurant as like guerrilla marketing.
That's all he does.
He does little things like that kind of told me about this guy as this kind of like super social guy that's in Austin that's like now doing this thing called a two hour cocktail party.
and he sold like, I don't know, 10,000 plus units of that book.
And he was like, and I couldn't tell at first.
I was like, well, is he an idiot or a genius?
And I think this is a common game I play where I feed somebody and I'm playing the idiot
or genius game.
And the case for idiot was like, wait, so he like sold his company and that was all in on
this just perfecting this like owning this little.
sub brand, this content brand around hosting a two-hour cocktail party.
I can't tell you the last cocktail party I hosted.
So I was like, he spent three years writing that book.
And he was all in.
And then all the things you told me about the way he was promoting the book.
And books in general are not a great business model.
So I was like, what is this guy getting at?
And that was my like, is he an idiot?
But very quickly, I've shifted into, no, this guy's a genius.
And here's why.
So first of all, it's a real problem.
hosting a party, hosting any kind of party,
forget like a specifically two-hour cocktail party,
but hosting a dinner party is something that is valuable if you do it,
kind of stressful when you do it.
And there's a difference between bad, good, and great
that comes into a bunch of details.
And the details are things like when you invite people,
how do you prep them for it?
What does the email you send beforehand?
That reminds people even that this is happening,
what it's going to be about and how they should show up.
And that when they show up,
like,
how do people have to introduce themselves?
Oh,
he's a big,
yeah,
got to have name tags.
Name tags help because whether you,
name tag Nick,
you got to have name tags.
Okay,
what else do you have to have?
He's like,
well,
you kind of want the event to flow
versus just having it be like,
well,
whatever happens,
if we break out into,
to random clicks of people that already know each other,
or a giant group where it's kind of awkward,
you know,
what's going to happen?
And so he's like,
has his little sister,
He was like, I'm going to have some unstructured time and some structured conversations.
And then back to unstructured after the structured, because the structure gave us all something to talk about in the unstructured time.
It goes into little things like, hey, you know, if you host something at your house, like, nobody knows what the trash is.
And so they're opening all your cupboards of your house trying to find shit.
Now they're just going through all your shit.
And then they just leave it on the counter.
And now your house is, now the party's looking like a college rap party.
Just put a label where the trash is.
Let's just do that.
And he's got all the little reminders and tips and tricks for our.
hosts. Okay, so solves a real problem. That's kind of stressful and kind of valuable if you do it,
right? Like, we've both been to parties where the magic happens. The conversation just gets really
interesting. You meet three or four people that you're like become really good friends with.
You did this, actually. Like, that's how we met. You hosted a dinner party at my office. And so, like,
you know, the right dinner party can lead to some really great things and the wrong one is just
forgettable. Okay. So now why do I think it's actually genius? I think he's got a
a win-win scenario.
And what I mean by a win-win scenario is that
whether this becomes a big deal or not, he wins.
The first part is,
by doing this,
he is building like the ultimate friend group network.
I think Andrew called him,
Andrew Wilkinson called him a friend billionaire.
He goes,
Nick's a friend billionaire.
And Nick won't brag about it,
but I'd be like,
what'd you do this weekend?
He's like, oh, I was out of friend's house.
I was like, who?
He was like, oh, Matt Mullenwag,
the guy who started WordPress.
I was just at his house all weekend.
And I'm like, what? How do you know Matt?
He's like, oh, I met him at dinner or this.
And he, like, has so many stories like that.
And when you are a friend billionaire, what does that mean?
That means you know a lot of cool people, so you're constantly inspired by the people you're around.
You got your back and who love you.
And you have a bunch of like real connections and like real social life, which I think is like,
I think it's kind of like one of these like silent like epidemics that's going on right now is that most people I know.
have like a really weak and feeble friend group.
Maybe I'm just in that world.
I don't know,
but like a lot of people have this feeling of like,
great,
I work from home,
I live at home,
I eat at home,
I order food on DoorDash,
and like,
I don't see another human being for like,
I can go seven days without seeing another,
another person with a pulse.
Or even if you are seeing people,
it's all transitional transaction.
I'm like,
great,
I live in SF or LA,
and I go to Barry's bootcamp,
and everybody rushes in and does the thing and then rushes out.
And like, what happened?
Where am I supposed to make new friends?
You know, that's not really like that easy for most people.
So anyways, I think that what Nick has is actually quite rare.
So whether all this is, is he makes a bunch of friends, has a bunch of fun experiences.
And, you know, he was showing me this video on his phone.
He's like, check this out.
He's like, last night, after we hung out, I was on my way back.
And my friend texted me and said, you got to check this out.
it's flooding in my area,
but it's created like this almost like fake surfing thing.
Like it was like flooding on some street
and the water was running really fast,
but there was like a lip in the road.
And so you could go on a boogie board
and basically feel like you're surfing.
And they just did that for like hours
and he had these fun videos.
And I was like,
cool,
I was just like on my phone scrolling.
You were doing that,
right?
Like this guy's not only a friend billionaire.
He's like an experienced billionaire.
So I think that's the bottom of the win
of if nothing else, he gets that.
But at the top, I'm like, dude, I kind of think this should be a local franchise.
Like, I think that he should basically turn this into like the modern day Toastmasters.
Like I think if he wanted to, this could be an enormous business.
And it could help a lot of people because he could basically say, look, open up a local chapter like Toastmasters.
And it's just dedicated to hosting awesome get-togethers of awesome people.
I'll train you how to host them, right?
You fly out to me, you attend one of these.
That's part of your training.
And then go wherever you live and start hosting these things.
And, you know, pay your membership dues to be a part of this.
And let's create an international wave of people who want to get better at hosting things and having an awesome social life.
I think he could create the next toastmasters.
What do you think?
So Toastmasters, so for those who don't know, Toastmasters, I don't know entirely how they just
themselves, but I knew it as like a public speaking club. So you spend 50 or $100 a year,
something like that, and you get to go to a local chapter where you like, everyone practices
public speaking. But I think they weave in some type of leadership component where you can like
learn how to lead, but it's all related to public speaking. There are nonprofits. So you can look them up.
So Toastmasters has $63 million in assets of which it looks like about $35 million of that
is just cash. And then they did last year something like $8.00.000.
18 million, 19 million in membership dues, sorry, 25 million in membership dues, and about 30
million in aggregate in total revenue. So like a nice, that's very nice. So it definitely worked.
Yeah, exactly. And I think that like, you know, there's a lot more people who want to be able to
host a party and build an awesome kind of like social life for themselves than there are people
who want to get better at public speaking. And so I think this actually has a lot more legs. And it
reminds me of the game.
I haven't read his book, but the way
Neil Strauss wrote the game and was like,
hey, do you want to get better at,
you know, like meeting women?
If so, you know, this is a book that's going to tell you
a bunch of awesome, you know, sort of war stories plus
techniques that that can help you do that.
And I think that this reminds me a little bit of the game.
It's got the benefits of the game without the sleaze
factor of the game.
And so for that reason,
I'm in.
And I just gave him, I just gave him the thought leader triangle with my hands for those who are listening.
You start with the pyramid of hands going upwards and then on the on the inflection point of the sentence, you got to flip it down.
Did you meet anyone else that was interesting or have any other thoughts about people you met or experiences?
I got a couple high level thoughts.
A couple high level thoughts.
So we did the meet and greet for like, I don't know, it was almost like two hours or something after the show.
Just like people.
are you tired after that?
I had this thing where relief gives me a lot of energy.
So I was so relieved that the show was over
that I felt like people had a good time
and that I didn't, like, my trip was over.
I was going to go home and get to just be in my bed
and not after me.
I was traveling with my two little kids,
which has its own challenges.
I had no less than 10 people reference
the size of the cotton candy that your children had.
They were like,
my wife wanted to see the show,
so she brought my kids who were two and three years old
to the show.
That's like, you know, that's like, you know, opening up a lighter inside of a natural gas factory.
Like, you kind of know this thing could combust any second.
And she just had a backpack of bribes, which I think actually should be its own product from
traveling moms.
It's just a pre-made backpack full of like little dollar store toys that you can give out every
15 minutes to be like, all right, be occupied.
Don't scream and cry and think about anything.
And just unbelievable amounts of crazy candy that they never get to eat.
Like a bathtub size container of cotton candy.
They had a seven layer lollipop.
It looked like, you know, those like, dude, someone told me they're like, we saw Sean's
eating, Sean's kids eating a kebab or like a hot dog or something, except it was like a
sour patched kids.
It was like a, you know, when the shake builds like a 95-story, like apartment for
himself in Dubai, it was the shake Dubai tower of lollipops.
It was incredible.
Yeah, I had a bunch of people tell me about that.
But anyway, what were you saying?
So I would say in the meet and greet line, the most common questions,
and I don't know what you experienced because you had your own line and I had my own line,
so maybe yours was different.
I got a lot of people being like, hey, whatever, love the show, can take a selfie,
and then got one question for you.
And the question, I was like, oh, this is, this is going to be a, it's probably going to be a doozy,
right, that they're using their one shot on this question.
And it would, the most common questions, the most obvious answers, it would be like,
you know, I'm trying to decide between this or this, you know, what do you think I should do?
But what do you want to do?
I really want to do this.
Well, then you should probably do that one.
Or like, I don't know.
It's like, if you like, do you like one more than the other?
Like, do you know, do want one more?
If you did know what you wanted, what would you say?
Yeah, I know you don't know what you want.
But if you did know, what would you say?
And they're like, be.
I'm like, cool.
Do be that.
Right.
Or it'd be like.
Yeah.
And I hate giving that answer because it's like, you know, not that we're someone's hero,
but don't meet your heroes because like, yeah, we just give you the most obvious answer.
Or the second one is like, I'm doing this, this and this.
And I go, oh, cool, what are the results?
They'll tell me.
I'm like, what were the results last year?
Okay.
Well, just, yeah, keep going.
Sounds like it's working.
Exactly.
Either it's working.
Don't mess it up or sounds like it's not working.
Do you want to like, you're asking me for investment.
And actually, you should be asking for advice, right, because it's not working.
You know, the same thing was like, I'm doing these.
I got these two ideas.
So I got one company, I do this and another company I do this.
And I'm really, it's really hard because blah, blah, blah.
Cool.
Sounds like you're doing two companies.
Like, do you think, do you think the optimal strategy is going to be to do two startups at
once or one?
Like, they're like, yeah, one probably.
Cool.
So which is the better business?
Like, which one do you want to do?
Which one is working better?
And then they're like, well, no, but see, this one kind of feeds into this one.
And I'm like, no, it actually eats away at all of your time and mind share.
It doesn't feed into anything.
And they're like, hmm, I'm like, you know, like Elon Musk can run two companies at once.
He might even be able to run three.
But until you have, you know, like until your palm is like, you know, a physics textbook, like, you know,
unless you're built the way he's built, like, it's probably not.
the optimal strategy for you.
Like, if you're in this meet-and-greet line, I'm just going to tell you right now,
probably don't want to be CEO of three startups at once.
And so the obvious answer for most of them was like,
well, what if you just focused on the one that's that you like more or is working better?
Like, I think that would probably work better than trying to make both of these
these fledgling things work.
And so I felt almost silly that that was the case.
And what were you saying here about everyone was searching?
Because we met like a bunch of successful people, for example,
probably one of the more successful people we met was this guy named A.J.
tell who is like 32 or 35 or something like that.
And he started a dog supplement company, which whenever I hear about that, I'm like,
that's the greatest thing ever because who knows if like the product works.
But he originally sold a portion of the company at like $200 million valuation.
And then a few years later sold it for $650 million in valuation.
And he seemed pretty like Zen like he kind of had his act together.
But still, there was some things where he was like trying to figure out.
what to do next and like he had normal questions that everyone else had and on here you had everyone
searching yeah actually i want to say one last thing about that previous thing about most common
most of the common questions at the simplest answer that's not a knock on those people what i meant is
dude this game is not as complicated as we make it i have the same i do make those same mistakes
and all it takes is just a third party with like a fresh set of eyes just like well sounds like you
just pick the one you want to do right or like suddenly three things try for
focusing on the one and it'll probably work better or like,
you know, whatever.
And so I think that it's useful to almost have that,
be your own coach in that way and save yourself a lot of heartache because it
wasn't a knock on those individuals.
It's that is the common problem.
Um,
is that we,
we don't have complex problems.
We have simple problems and a simple problem doesn't need a complex answer.
It needs a simple answer.
So that was my point there.
All right.
The second thing, yeah,
everyone is searching.
It didn't matter who we were hanging out with.
Net worth zero, net worth 100K, net worth $1 million, $10 million, $100 million,
and the billionaire we had dinner with.
Everybody was searching for meaning, searching for what's next,
searching for what they should be doing with their time,
searching for a better challenge, searching for a way to solve the problem.
It just felt like everyone was searching specifically a lot of people were searching for like direction.
And it really made me like, it really highlighted to me the value of
when you know you when you have a clear direction,
the value of that.
To be grateful for that and find people who are good at figuring that out
because I think if you stay in that searching state for too long,
that shit's dangerous.
It's like an inception.
It's like we can only be in the dream for an hour
before we forget that it's a dream.
You know,
we got to do that thing where we fucking cold plunge ourselves
to get back out of it and wake back up.
It's like there is,
it's okay to be in a wandering mode or a searching mode
or kind of a thinking mode.
like, what do I want to do?
But after six months, after 12 months, after 18 months,
like that shit becomes you get lost in the sauce.
And I felt like there were kind of a lot of people that were lost in the sauce.
Their search was sort of like almost indefinite.
And I think that's dangerous.
That's interesting.
And that's actually really scary.
That's that kind of a, because it's one of those things where if it goes on for too long,
it gets even worse.
And then, you know, you're like, you know,
ass deep in it and you're like, oh no.
Yeah, you forget how to even start the engine.
It's like, this car hasn't been on for a long time.
Does the engine start?
And I think you're good at this.
I think you're really good at this.
The way you are very structured helps you.
Because I think you're very like regimentary.
You're like, for the next three months, I'm going to only talk to people and figure out
what I want.
And after three months, I'm going to have a conversation with myself and shift into the next
gear.
And because you're, this is my read of it at least.
I don't know what goes on in your head.
but my read of it is.
That's exactly how I do it.
Your time box things.
And, you know, there's an argument to be had for like just wandering around and letting,
you know, you can't control everything.
But I think having these creative constraints, these like time box constraints helps keep
you honest.
Like, am I really, am I even learning from my wandering at this point?
Or am I just, have I forgotten like my head from my feet?
I do I even remember what the hell I'm supposed to be doing right now?
And so I think, you know, you had a period post-hustle and pre-hampton,
that was like your searching period.
But it was like, I think you knew you were going to search.
You knew you were going to wander and explore, which meant don't jump into something really fast,
but also don't let that last forever.
Is that right?
Yeah, well, I'm obsessed with time.
So, like, even when I was 20 years old, I had this document.
I think if you Google, like, my name and then CEO doc, you'll be able to find this spreadsheet.
And I would map out, I think I had thousands of them, of all these biographies of people I read,
and I would type in, like, when they started their apprenticeship, when they got successful,
and the time it took to do that.
I was obsessed with time.
And the reason time's important is I think that the constraint is incredibly necessary.
I read this book by Robert Green, and he talked about urgency.
And that was the first time that I learned about the importance of urgency.
And so that's why I'm obsessed with time.
And so usually what I do is I have this thing called worry time, which is very similar to,
like, searching time.
But worry time is like, here's the period that I can worry about these, these,
following things. So, like, it could be like, you know, I'm not sure that I'll make a list of all the
things going on in my life that are happening right now that I'm not sure about. Like, it could be like
this podcast. It could be my relationship. It could be anything. And it's like, all right, on Sunday
from three to eight, I'm going to worry about it. And I'm not, and then I'll like set time aside to
worry about it. And then I'll set it aside and just letting it bleed into every moment of every day and be
this underlying worry or anxiety that just sort of like plagues you. Yeah. So it's just like, you know,
Have you ever used Headspace, the meditation app?
There's this like calm guy myself.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I like calm too.
But Andy, the guy who would narrate it, be like, all right, today we're going to do the meditation,
whatever.
Now, the cloud is above you.
Let's put all of our thoughts and feelings and worries in that cloud above us.
Now let's just walk a few feet away.
Now we're away from the cloud.
We can acknowledge that our worries are up in that cloud, but we're no longer under it.
And we can go back under it when we're ready and worry about it.
And so that's kind of where I came up with like,
worry time. And so I have worry time. And I also do the same with like searching time. So it's like,
all right, I'm going to search for this. And then in three months, I'm going to say, did I find it or
not? No. Okay, fine. We'll give it another three months. And then once I find it, it goes,
searching is done. We are no longer searching. So I actually turned off, like this is just a very
small example. I turned off the Twitter DMs of my Twitter handle because I would get all these
interesting opportunities. But I said, nope, we are done with opportunities. I have the opportunity.
we are going to pursue that.
And then at a later date, we'll open back up to pursue new opportunities maybe, but right now,
there's nothing new.
And I, like, my wife and I were joking, but it's not really joking.
It's like my rule right now is no new friends.
I don't need new friends.
I have the friends that I want.
That is perfect.
I'm not going to go out and hang out with new people.
No new friends because, you know, like the searching time is done for now and we'll open
it up at a later date.
Auditions will come at a later date for new ideas and new friends.
Dude, that's great.
I love the way you said that.
I do a similar thing, but without, I hate the word time.
I'm the opposite of you.
I want to get off the concept of time altogether.
But in reality, the result is actually very, very similar what I do, which is I focus on
the word constraint.
So how can I use a constraint to my advantage?
I love this because naturally, I'm always constrained.
I don't always have every resource at my disposal to do what I want to do.
Let's say I'm traveling and I don't maybe have the time or the equipment to get to the gym to do the same workout that I was doing before.
Then how do I get excited about the constraint?
Okay, I got this wall.
I have the floor.
I've got my suitcase.
Interesting.
I can air squat the suitcase and then I can do these like I could do a push-up challenge where I'm going to do 100 push-ups in the next five minutes.
And I'm going to see, you know, how far under that time I can get.
And you know, you do that and you've used a constraint to your advantage to have a better experience.
So I always have this thing, which is I'm not going hour to hour.
I think that's a really, I think time creates a lot of stress in people's lives.
So I want to use constraints without the stress of time.
So what I say is like, all right, I'm trying to have an experience right now.
What kind of experience do I want?
I want a sweaty workout experience.
Okay.
How can I now use an constraint to ratchet that up and make it even better?
Right.
And that's how I want to do things.
So I'll do the same thing where I'll constrain myself.
All right, I'm going to turn off DMs or I'm going to do a no new friend season.
And I'll use these words like season to sort of time box them.
But without the sort of urgency or stress of like the thing you did where you're like, how successful were these guys by 30?
Dude, that would have just made me feel miserable.
So I had to like tweak that a little bit for myself where I didn't want to always feel perpetually behind in life.
And so my way of doing that was
Focus on, all right,
I'm about to walk into this room,
what kind of experience do I want to have,
and get good at choosing that,
and then be like,
how can I use a constraint to level that up,
to enhance that rather than feeling constrained
by lacking some resources
that I otherwise would want to make this happen?
I think the time thing is important
because you do compare yourself to others.
And comparing yourself to others,
everyone says is bad.
I actually think in some ways it's really great
because you see what's possible.
Just like if you're like an athlete or you're like,
I want to be like this athlete.
I want to be strong,
but I want to be stronger than them or faster or whatever.
But whenever we do these events and I meet all these amazing people,
like an AJ,
like a Suley,
like an Andrew Wilkinson,
and I hang out with them and I think,
I'm behind.
I'm way behind.
And that's the...
And that's dangerous.
That's the thing I referenced earlier day when I said,
there's the science of success and there's the art of fulfillment.
The comparing yourself will help you in the science of success.
It will motivate you.
It will put a chip on your shoulder.
It'll get a light of fire under your ass.
But it's not going to help on the art of fulfillment side.
And so what some people try to do in life is be like, let me solve the success thing first
and then I'll do the happy thing after that.
And I think what you do, if you look at, remember back to my everyone is searching thing,
what ends up happening is people solve the success thing to try to throw a bunch of money
at the happy thing.
It works to an extent, but not all the way there.
They're kind of disillusioned, and they just sort of fall back on, well, let me just go do more success shit.
At least back then when I was only focused on success, I felt better.
And I know how to do that, but more than I know how to be happy.
And so, or, or it's like, I thought this number would give me the answer.
Turns out I was just one more zero.
It's actually five times.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's actually, it's actually 150.
I was just wrong.
They said, it's always three times more than what you got.
Like people always think, three times more then, then I'll chill out after that.
I'll really move on to that next phase.
And I think, while I don't think that's a bad path, I don't think you end up in a bad spot,
I do think there's probably a better version of it, which is like, can I do happy and
successful at the same time?
Is that possible?
Well, we were talking, and I'm going to add him here, but it's nothing crazy, but we had dinner
with Andrew.
Andrew, you know, his company as of Friday, I don't know what it's today, was worth
$850 million in Canadian.
And I was like, we were talking about like what's next and or like, we were talking about like
just personal, like motivating facts.
And he was like, oh, I was motivated because I wanted to feel secure financially because for some reason I always felt insecure as a kid. And, you know, everything comes from like issues you had as a child. And I was like, do you feel secure now? And he was like, you know what? Not really. And I'm like, wow, you don't, we're still not going to feel secure at that number. Like you always need more. And I always, and I couldn't decide if I felt negative about that feeling or positive. But I have realized that that might be the learning is that like you don't feel secure. A lot of
people don't feel secure regardless of what they have or what they don't have.
Like, it's the, it's the same feeling of it's not enough.
Like, it can be taken away.
I view it a little differently.
It's more like the security doesn't come from the money.
That feeling you want is it going to be, is it going to change when the money changes in that,
in that way, right?
Like, I feel secure now and I have one, one billionth of whatever he's got.
Right.
Like, it's like, you know, he, why?
Because I just view, I just view it differently.
I have different.
that he's got, right?
Like, but on the on the financial one, I'm like, as long as I still got my wits about
me in my two hands, I'm always going to be fine.
If I got my brains, I got my hands, I'll always be fine.
So what do I care?
I can lose all my money in crypto.
I can lose all my money in this.
This business could tank podcast.
I could say the wrong joke and get canceled on the podcast tomorrow.
Still got my hands in my brain.
All right.
I'll be, I'll be all right.
And so if you, it's like fitness, right?
Like if I put you in any fitness test, I think you would.
feel pretty secure, right?
Like, yeah, I don't think I could be like, Sam, we're going to do a work.
Like, I think if you invited me over, you're like, let's do a hard workout.
You know, I'm not eating that morning.
I'm like, I don't know, I got to be light on my feet.
I got to do, hey, was creatine working one day?
Let me take some of that.
Like, you know, I'd be stressing out because I don't have the fitness security.
Whereas I think if I invited you over for a hard workout, you'd be like, we'll see.
Right.
Or even if somebody, even if David Goggins invited you for a hard workout, maybe,
maybe at that stage you would feel a little bit of the lack of security.
But I think for most people in most situations,
you would feel pretty secure.
And so I think it's everybody's chasing a feeling.
They think the feeling comes from a thing.
The feeling doesn't come from the thing.
The feeling comes from you and comes from practicing having that feeling.
And I think until people grok that,
they're just not going to have the type of feelings they want of happiness
and all this of the shit.
Speaking of which,
we have a very sturdy audience.
I was putting my hand around,
people's backs take a picture.
Oh my God.
Yeah, we had a whole bunch of broad backs.
A bunch of deadlifters out there.
What's going on?
There is a bunch of sturdy-ass people.
Maybe it's a Texas thing,
but there's a bunch of big old boys that we were talking.
And women.
Like, there were so many strong people.
I probably said that at least 20 times.
Like, you know, it's like you're awkward.
The meet and greets are weird.
I don't know what to say to people.
So it's usually like, oh, I like your shirt.
Or you look huge.
you're yoked, but I said that so many times.
Yeah, yeah, we have an interesting, interesting demographic.
There's like, the people that look like you, the people that look like me, and then there's
the people that look like neither of us.
But it's kind of amazing how well distributed.
It's like a bunch of Indian dudes, a bunch of really strong white guys, and then like,
and then the other group, which is a blend of normal people.
We had so many Indians and so many Indians with really thick accents.
So I guess they had just moved.
tier. Do you think that we are, are we popular in India because of the topic or because of you?
Well, I mean, there's a lot of business topics out there. They don't all have that.
I think, you know, like anything. Where's Chimath from? What's he? Is he Indonesian?
He's in, he's from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka? I mean, I don't know. Do they, they probably love him too, but like,
it was like the six million people underwater or something like that. It's like very like,
I don't know how many of them even have access to like, you know, know,
about him, but yeah, if he goes to
Andy, it's like the cult phenomenon on him,
Naval, Balogy, like, they really, really look up to
those people. And though, like, it's like, if you go to
in China, the most popular person was Kobe Bryant.
I said, Kobe Bryant was the star of stars because of some
combination of like, he's got the thing that they want, like crazy,
like athleticism. Plus, they piped those Laker games into China and
like only Laker games for like a period of time. And so he was just
And everyone in China, which is they're a black man.
Yeah, exactly. And he's just like,
look like a god compared to them right and it's like i think you you like people who are
they're like you and so you feel like you could be them and then there's people who are so unlike
you that you're like you are so different i just i i am an awe of what you are it's like the uh biorc effect
so bork you know is from iceland which only has like five million people and like bork's music
sucks but every once in a while she would be like number one on the charts is because like
everyone in iceland would like cheer for her because she was like
doing something interesting in America or like Bruno Mars.
If you go to YouTube and look up Bruno Mars's videos on YouTube,
they have like three and four and five billion views on YouTube because everyone in the Philippines,
because he's like Filipino is like,
that's our guy.
You know what I mean?
So I guess that's why we have a really nice Indian contingencies because you're their guy.
Whereas with me, it's just a bunch of like, you know, like guys from Ohio, but whatever.
Dude, can I tell you speaking of Ohio?
Can I do a little bit here on.
Jerry Springer.
What about him?
He died two days ago, I think.
Yeah.
His story is kind of crazy.
Do you know much about Jerry's backstory?
Wasn't he the mayor of someone in, somewhere in Ohio, like Dayton, Ohio or something?
Cincinnati.
He was really the mayor of, he was the mayor first and then talk show?
Yes.
So basically, his career is like, at 25, he's the advisor to Robert Kennedy during his
presidential campaign, who I think died or gotten assassinated or something.
then he's like,
okay, goes on to do
like kind of like local city politics,
ends up becoming the mayor of Cincinnati
for a brief period of time,
gets fired because he solicited a prostitute,
I think,
and got busted for it.
And so he's like, oh, sorry,
like yeah,
shouldn't have paid for an escort or something.
So now he's like out of the political game.
And he's,
you know,
in his 30s,
I guess.
And he's like,
what do I want to do next?
And so he gets casted onto local TV
to do a,
political show. It's like, oh, you could be like our political kind of like talk show type of guy.
So he does that for for a little bit. And then he gets his own show. So he's, I don't remember what year this is like, I don't know, 91 or something like that. And he gets his own political, he's doing his own political talk show. Three years go by, kind of unspectacular. And then the moment happens. A new producer comes in as like, hey, look, it's a political show. It's going nowhere. Let's switch it up.
and the Jerry Springer show is born.
So the producer comes in,
he's like, look, we're going to shift it towards controversy,
dirty laundry, and basically like,
we'll captivate, we'll make captivating TV by putting scandal on air.
Was it fake, though?
So there's different opinions on this.
I read a bunch of, like, Reddit post to people
who are producers on the show or a good one on the show.
Here's where I think it met it out,
which is they would cast for scandal,
people would say, yeah, that happened to me.
The producers would intentionally not fact-check anything.
And so you could have either been real for you
or you could have just been like, if I do this,
I get to get on TV, I get a flight to New York,
I get to go, basically me and my whatever person
get to go on vacation in New York, all expenses paid.
We get to be on TV and, yeah, that'll be that.
And so for some, I think it was like truly real.
For a lot, they were like kind of like make it up.
Or they would embellish.
So it'd be like, yeah, I cheated, but like actually they weren't best friends.
And I didn't, like, we knew each other first and blah, blah, blah.
And he actually knew about it already.
He's not finding out on air, but like, whatever.
We'll kind of recreate that.
And was it daily or weekly?
So I think it was a daily show.
At its peak, it's higher rated than Oprah.
So he becomes the number one daily show.
And for the first time in people's, so here's some of the kind of amazing things.
It goes 18 years on TV.
Jerry knows it's stupid.
but he's like, this is what people want,
and I'm going to give them what they want.
And I had a few takeaways from this whole thing, right?
So first of all, Jerry, Jerry, like just that's iconic.
It's just so iconic, and I love it.
Yeah, it was the pre-world star.
Yeah.
Dude, World Star, World Star lives in the shadows of Jerry.
So here's a couple of things that stood out to me.
Number one, he gave people what they wanted, not what they, what he thought they should
want. And in fact, he started with what he thought they should want. Oh, here's the latest on the local
political issues and where we stand and blah blah, blah. And he pivoted. And he pivoted the right way.
And I think as entrepreneurs, there's a great like Gary Halpert quote, what he says, no more,
never has more money been lost than trying to market to somebody what they should do versus what
they want to do. And as a marketer, you got to internalize that. Now, there are some people that are
not in my cult that hate that phrase. They think that's terrible. The world is terrible.
Because of that, they say, no, shouldn't we strive to be better? Shouldn't we strive to help the world be a better place and not that? Like these sugar-filled cereals and these like dopamine social networks and all this stuff. And so some people hate that that's true and they're fighting against it. As an entrepreneur, I'm in the camp of you are here to serve customers. You're here to give them what they want. If you want to win, you give them what they want. If you want to win really big, you give them what they want in a way that no one else is.
giving it to them, or maybe even that they didn't even realize that they wanted. People didn't
know they wanted this, and you're the first to provide it. But that's the game of business
and to me. So anyways, I think he's a great example of giving people what they want. Two, he pioneered
a new format. So his whole format of like putting this dirty laundry on air and the fights, the bouncers,
the like the pregnancy test for the DNA test reveals like this guy's a goddamn innovator. Number three,
he became number one.
He bigger than Oprah in his prime.
And lastly, what I love was he,
he did 5,000 episodes.
He got his friends to win too.
So his security guy,
Steve, who became like a character on the show,
like their best friend,
Steve says, you know,
the most wonderful things about Jerry.
And Steve gets his own spinoff show later
after the Jerry Springer show.
So I love that he kind of brought friends along the way
and that they,
when he eats,
they all eat.
And there was a few,
few good examples of that.
And the other,
funny thing about this? And people
liked working for Jerry?
People, for what I can tell, yeah,
like it was like the opposite of Ellen.
Like Ellen is seen as this like, you know,
America's sweetheart and then behind the scenes was like,
you know, a menace. And apparently
Jerry was the opposite. It's like he was seen as a
menace to society and actually he was
kind of a sweetheart from what people
said. Now, maybe it was just the guy dies
and no one wants to trash him. But like,
that's what I found. The last thing, though,
that I thought was interesting was that in a weird
way, because this show was really
popular, like in the early 90s,
His show was actually the first show to expose people to, like, to people being gay or trans or like all kinds of stuff that's like LGBT.
Like, and he was like, this is a for a lot of people in America, they had never met or heard of anybody who was in any of those categories.
And so he kind of was like the Band-Aid rip-off moment for for a lot of America on these things, which I think is also kind of amazing.
The real world was kind of like that too.
I went to an all-boys high school.
And I remember being like 14 or 15.
And for some reason, the high school, it was like a good, the culture of the school,
like young men felt fine coming out and saying they were gay.
And I remember like meeting these kids.
And it was like the first time I've ever done that.
And like someone who admitted to being gay.
And at first I was like, you know, back then you would make fun of people.
And then you realize, oh, that's horrible.
Obviously, we shouldn't do that.
and they're my buddies.
And then it goes back to,
and therefore,
because I love you,
I'm going to make fun of you,
just like I make fun of all my other friends.
Full of the full loop,
yeah.
Yeah,
and because I love you,
I'm not going to treat you differently.
We're all boys and we're just going to tease each other over,
someone has braces,
someone likes men,
whatever.
It doesn't matter.
We're going to make fun of ourselves.
And that's the way that young boys show that we accept each other.
That's how we show love.
It was just a mini,
it was a mini Jerry.
You know,
Jerry was first.
You know,
like,
like,
well,
we're not,
not going to make.
fun of this person because of this and that.
We're actually going to do it because it shows that we're going to, it's normal.
We're going to normalize it.
So who knew Jerry was so progressive?
I know.
The guy was a, I mean, we got Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King.
We got Jerry Springer.
He's just one of many in a lineage of pioneers, breaking down social barriers.
Yeah, I saw he died.
Dude, he always seemed really likable.
I remember watching him, like, did you watch it like when your grandma, like babysat you or something?
And that's like what I remember doing it.
I was just home after school by myself.
Yeah, like it was like four o'clock.
When you get home from school, you watch Jerry and Oprah.
I remember watching all.
Or when you stay home from school being sick, you watch Mori.
Staying home from sick, watch Price is Right and shit.
Yeah, I loved Mari.
Mari was the best too.
He's going to die soon too.
I just looked him up while we were talking.
He's 85, I think.
So the legends, the legends.
It's a passing generation, salty earth type of type of people.
Who's doing this now?
Is there like a thing now?
Like, where does this happen?
Does this happen on TikTok?
or like Twitch or YouTube or something.
I don't see this style of content,
even though it's a good one.
You know another great one like this?
My sister still listens to this every day
when she drives her kids to school.
Cheaters on radio.
The show where they bust cheaters?
That's still a thing.
It's a big thing in the FM morning radio space,
which is a very small thing in the world now.
I think that is actually, it was Joey Greco.
You remember Joey Greco, the host?
Is it just one?
I feel like every city just borrowed this format.
Joey Greco was like the more famous host.
And at one point, he got stabbed.
You don't remember that episode where he gets stabbed.
Dude, he like, gets stabbed.
And like, the thing about that era of like the 2000s and 90s,
the reason it was cool was we don't know if it's fake,
because there is no one tweeting, you know what I mean?
You like think it's fake,
but like no one has a platform to like expose like that they went on the show.
And so that's kind of why it's hard to,
recreate some of these things. It's like, we didn't know.
Like, I wasn't sure wrestling was fake or not
until like, you know, five years ago.
Who knew? You know what I mean?
Held out hope?
Yeah.
Truth Fairy and Vince McMahon.
Maybe there's a way.
Yeah, no one knew.
But no, that's a good question.
I'm looking it up now, Cheater.
Yeah, so he was hosted by Joey Greco.
He did the TV show version.
And then the later host was Peter Guns.
Right.
The radio version is basically they call, the wife calls in.
is like, I think my husband might be cheating.
So then they call the husband as a woman.
I don't know how, I don't actually how they pull this off.
I got to ask my sister what the actual format is.
Because I don't know how to trick them that easily.
Because like, I mean, you're not to get a cold call from somebody.
Be like, yeah, I'm down.
So I'm not sure exactly what they do.
Or maybe they called.
Oh, I think what it is is they're like, he might be cheating with my friend Rebecca.
And they fake call as Rebecca to try to like to catch him.
the act and then they just do they hit the button and three-way call merge in the wife and she just
goes off on them on air it's it's incredible content i mean like anybody who's that who's a content
creator out there like if you're not studying cheaters you're not even trying if there's a subreddit
called public freak out you ever go to public freak out i see i've seen public freak out on a
that's my favorite subreddit that's my that's my version that's my version of jerry springer public
freak out and popping where they just pop like zits and shit i love that big fan of that one
and public freak out.
I was on the front page of popping one time.
I had a picture of get 60,000 views.
So it's just whatever.
Can I endorse you for that on LinkedIn?
How do I?
Dude, I swear to God.
I had to get like a cyst removed from my like head.
And I,
right before I went under surgery,
I was like, hey, Dr. Brian,
can you do me a favor?
Here's my cell phone number.
Can you take some picks while we're in surgery?
It sent him to me.
I want to post them on this subreddit.
And he did.
And I got 60,000 views.
I have a folder right here on my safari or my chrome.
So it's called Brain.
And it's like I took like before,
before, during, and after photos.
I was the number one.
I'm popping.
So no big deal.
I think it's literally no big deal, actually.
That's the cool part about it.
I guess that's the episode.
We did a recap and we talked about Jerry Springer.
All right.
That's the episode.
know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off.
On the road, let's travel, never looking back.
