My First Million - SaaS CEO QUIT His Job To Start A Trash Company

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Episode 537: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk about alternative New Year’s resolutions and Sam meets a SaaS CEO that quit everything to start a +$1M trash collecting business.  No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Shaan's apology (6:00) “F” New Year's goals (8:00) Gen Z Bingo Cards (10:00) New Year's anticipations (12:30) Year of Obsession (14:30) New Year's reflection (20:00) The magic word (22:00) Lone Star Trash (31:30) Marketing advice for trash daddies (40:30) Birdie (45:30) Sam needs advice (53:00) Camp MFM — Links: • Year of Obsession - https://twitter.com/zachpogrob • Anti-MBA - https://www.theantimba.com/ • Spencer Scott’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/AKASpencerScott • Harry’s pre-launch email - http://tinyurl.com/ycw 6xc25 • Birdie - https://www.birdie.design/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ 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. — Other 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

That's a great idea. I'm glad I brought this up. I should do this. I love how you were like, you gave me a great idea, but the thing you said was completely different than what I said. That's how this works. That's how this thing works. That's a little yes and there for you. To all my fespians out there. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On a road, let's travel. All right, we're live. Sean, what are we talking about? You're kicking it off.

Well, maybe you should introduce yourself. I don't even recognize you because it's New Year, new you. Am I right, Sam? Save me. New Year. New Year, same shit as always. Yeah, nothing will change. I purposely didn't set any goals this year. I'm just going to go with the flow. Why? What do you think? Well, I want to talk about New Year's resolutions and stuff. At first, I have to apologize. We did not put out a lot of content over the last week or so.

Normally, who cares? No big deal. And I thought, well, you know, this is good. Let's take a little break, spend time with the family. You're a new dad. I'm an existing dad. Let's just be quality home bodies here and family men. Family first, right?

But the thing is about family first is that the time I need podcasts the most is when I'm with my family. This might sound crazy to people who aren't podcast people, but I know there's other people like me out there who you love your family. You spend a lot of time with your family. A little too much time sometimes with your family. You need these little mini breaks. I was taking out the trash and I was,

then I had to walk my dog and I was like, I went to my favorite podcasters channel and they didn't have anything new for me. And I was like, damn, this is what I needed. I needed a little break from the family world just to go and escape. Who's your favorite podcaster? I like Bill Simmons. It's because I like to just listen to basketball stuff or sports things. And so I will, and I've been listening to him since, I don't know, 2006 or something.

He's like the first podcaster ever heard. So I have this familiarity built up. And when there's not a new episode, I hate it. And I realized, we're that person for some people out there. We are there escape from family card or escape from the boring, you know, chore. And I know that it was holiday time, but I bet people needed us more, and we weren't there. So next year, we will be there. That's my commitment to you, guy out there who has to run errands and deal with a bunch of BS.

We should have just done reruns. Can we have done a rerun? And it had been all right? Just our voices, actually, just ASMR of us saying nonsense, just gibberish for hours. Did you, have you ever seen this Louis C.K. Skitt or one of his bits from his stand-up thing where he talks about being a dad. Now that, now that's your dad, you're going to start to appreciate this one joke. It's not even that funny.

You know, some people are like, it's so true. That's hilarious. This is just, it's so true. It's not even that hilarious. What do you say? He talks about, he's like, the greatest 30 seconds in the world. He's like, you know what the greatest 30 seconds in the world is?

He's like, when you put your kid in the car and you, you get him into the car seat, you finally clip it all together. And then you close the door and you have like 30 seconds while you're walking from their door back to your door. And that 30 seconds of silence and solid. is everything in life. And it's so true. This was the first week that I experienced where I was like,

oh, a break would be nice because my baby has been perfect mostly. But like she goes to like a week of growing and she'll cry more than normal. Mostly she doesn't cry at all. And I remember there was a day where she cried for like an hour. And I was like, all right, I understand why people request breaks. Because before I was like, why would I ever want to leave this thing? I'm getting so much dopamine from it. Now it was the first time that I experienced a break.

So I'm slowly understanding some of these things. Did you know how chill I am when my like our nanny will be like, oh, I'm sick or whatever she calls out sick or, hey, my daughter's visiting from college. Can I have the day off? And dude, I get, in my head, I'm like, yeah, of course, no problem. But in my soul, I'm like, enrage. I'm like, how dare you make me spend all day with my kids? How dare you?

I have to look after my own? Like, you know, this is an injustice that has happened. to me. Don't you feel guilt? You don't feel guilt? You're like the guilt being, why am I so reliant on this person? I experienced that a little bit because we have a night nurse. I'm past that. I've fully accepted that that is the way I need to live and that is a necessity and actually a right of mine, a core human right, an American right of mine. By the way, right up there next with AOLI being just flavored mayonnaise, night nurse is beautiful rebranding. It's basically just this young woman who I have no idea what her credentials really are, but she just like plays at her phone while

she lays on the couch next to my daughter. And when she cries at this point now, it's only one night a week or one time a night. And she gives her a bottle and then just goes back to sleep. And I'm basically paying someone a full-time salary to live and sleep on my couch. And because we call it a nurse, I think that there's up to have a medical component. It ain't. It's not. It's called like sleep sitter. And it's a babysitter. We just pair, you know, to help with one, one moment while we sleep, it'd feel a little different than night nurse. Yes, beautiful rebranding. By the way, I think that the Aoli for this is got to be a au pair, by the way. What a word. What a fantastic word. Okay, we can move on. Yeah, O'Pair is a beautiful

one, too. By the way, we're thinking about getting an O'Pair. And I was like, wait, so we just get this like young 23-year-old who's just going to be living at our home. And it's kind of weird. It's pretty weird. What do you think about it? It's weird. Right. Okay. So now I want to talk about resolutions. So in the past, do you do resolution? You said you didn't do it this year. Is that part of like chill yeah. So what I do is I have four categories and I named them all F's because it's cute. So family, fitness, fun, finances. So I'll usually have a finance goal of like I want to make this much money. I want to launch this thing, do this. That's a business thing. Friendship would be the last one and I was so excited for myself there. But okay. Finances works too.

That's fun. That's fun. The forgotten fifth F. That's fun. So fun is like trips. I want to do this with friends, whatever. Family is,

you know, Sarah and I want to achieve this thing together. We want to communicate more. I don't know, whatever it is. And then fitness is, you know, this much weight lifted,

this whatever. Normally I do that. Right now, I've not said it. And I'm said I'm going to do quarterly, but I'm not going to start it for another month. Yeah. Oh, dude.

I'm in the same boat. I have a very, very similar exercise that I do. I think mine are like, you know, work, play, love, and, you know, whatever, fitness or health, you know, something like that. My branding is a lot better. You should do family fitness finance fun. Well, I just don't want to use your thing now because I feel like, oh, I'm going to do Sam's news resolutions today. Just kill me now.

All right. So I agree with what you normally do, and I normally do the same. but I don't know why I had an extreme aversion to it this year. And so I looked up some alternatives to New Year's resolutions. The aversion, I think, came from a bunch of thread boys on Twitter. I think, honestly, there's just like a lot of content on Twitter right now of people being like, just wrapped up the annual review of 2023 and my predictions and plans for 2024. And I was like, oh, this is too much for me.

I need to just get away from this. And no one hits them. And in general, I would say, if I try to think of, all right, what is the new stuff I'm going to do? It's such a small boy attitude to be like, yeah, I waited until the, I waited until the first to do the things I wanted to do. It's like, no, like, anything I wanted to do, anything I realized I should do a decision. I just made in that moment and started doing it immediately.

I just did it on November 21st instead of January 1st. And so I think what are your alternatives? Okay. So a couple of alternatives. terms, you tell me if you like these or not. So, saw this on TikTok. This is definitely such a sort of Gen Z approach to life. They go,

New Year's resolutions, goals, ugh, what are you? My dad? Bingo card. New Year's Bingo card. So here's how a New Year's Bingo card works. I don't know how many things are on a bingo grid. I think it's like 16 squares. So you just come

up with 16, but also leave a couple blank if you can't think of them. Gen Z, that's how we roll. you just come up with some things that you might do this year. It's a maybe. It's a, huh,

might go, might go backpacking through Central America. Might not, though. Might start dating somebody. Also find alone. And that's blank. You just come,

you know, you come up with squares of things that might be fun to do this year. Got it. And then you just see if you do them. And if you do them, bingo, you just try to shade it in.

You shade in the square. And you see, Yeah, you get a bingo card. And it's a low pressure, but it's like an actual little vision board. And I was like, I think I kind of like this. By the way, on my bingo card this year, if I were to do it, they're in Houston, they're doing a zero G flight and it's five grand.

And they take you up into this, have you seen that? They take you up into like a 747. That's like empty and it's like full of like pillows and you float for like 20 seconds at a time. That's going to be on my bingo card this year. I'm scared of it. But I might do it. Might do it.

What an attitude. What a new attitude. What a refreshing attitude to the new year, right? So the Gen Z bingo card. All right. Here's another one. This comes from the psychology world. Here are my New Year's anticipations.

What is that? You just say things you're looking forward to this year. You just brainstorm. You just say, oh, man, I'm looking forward to that. That would be so fun. That would be amazing. And the reason why is the psychologists did a study. And they found that actually,

more joy is derived from the anticipation of an event versus the actual event itself. And I just had this with my kids for Christmas, like we did the Elf on the shelf thing. And just in general, the whole build up to Christmas day and the idea of Christmas morning and opening up all your presents. Like,

I got 25 days of joy out of that from them because the anticipation. And then on the day of, you know, they woke up, they started ripping presents open. They didn't even know which one to play, which toy to play with. And it was over like an hour.

And then they were like, okay, can we have cartoons with breakfast now? And I was like, yep, all right, I guess back to the routine. And it was kind of done.

And I just realized these people are right. New Year's anticipations might be a thing because instead of planning and committing like some, some brute alpha saying, I'm going to do this. You just say, oh, I can't wait to have X,

X experience. I can't wait to do why and that that might be a little bit more fulfilling. What do you think? Eight. All right. Eight. I give that an eight. That's pretty good. Wow. Okay. I thought you were pretty good on the bingo card. Bingo card is cool. And I, you know, anytime you said, if you say I read

a study that said this, it's like saying, it's like when a restaurant has a sign that says world's greatest cup of coffee, I have a rule that if I see a restaurant that says, world's greatest blank, I always go to it. That's my rule. Because I think if you have the audacity to say that, then I will give you I'll try it.

So that if you say, yeah. So like hearing them would say a study once said just makes me weak in the knees and gets me all hot bothered. So I'm into that. You know the funny thing, by the way? So I saw that. You didn't see a study on it. That's so. I was like, for the first time ever, I was like, yeah, I'll take the special.

Right. Like, you know, the way to read the specials. You never ordered the special. I was like, let me read the study. And I scroll down and it said, University of Scranton. And I was like, pretty sure. It's a made up town from the office. I don't think Scranton exists.

And so, oh, Dendermifflin came out with a study this year. So this is probably bullshit. But nevertheless, that's where the study came from. All right, here's another one. There's this guy on Twitter that's, he's made his brand all around the idea of obsession. You know, this guy? No. I wish I'd be the OCD guy.

What is it? Yeah, basically. It's like the good version of OCD. He's like, anyway, he's all about being obsessed. And so he goes, he goes, instead of New Year's Resolution, he goes, my year of obsession, he goes, I believe that a one year obsession can change your life. That's awesome. That's an awesome sentence, right?

That's like actually a pretty powerful sentence. I did. I read it. I was like, I'm in and I closed the tab. I was like, I didn't even want to, anything else you say is going to make me like you less than that first sentence. Morgan Housel, the guy we had on, he had this great quote. He said, people don't remember books.

They remember sentences. and I try to make like memorable sentences. That's a memorable sense. That's a beautiful sentence. And I think that that is so true that one year of obsession really can change your life. If you just said this year, I'm going to be obsessed with X. And you just started to just rev up that engine of obsession, whether it's around, you know, working out or it's around having fun or it's around, you know,

this company that you're going to start or whatever it is, creating content, whatever it is. I think that's just an amazing attitude. Dude, for some reason, it's different than a resolution. That's the best. I would even say the year of like identity where you, I mean, obsession is actually better, but it's like a year where you change your identity. I remember like, do you remember like three or four years ago when I was kind of pudgy and I was like, this is the year I become a fitness influencer.

And I was joking, but I was like, I was going to make fitness part of my identity. Right. It's the same thing. Obsession identity. That's a, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful sentence. That's a nine. That's a nine.

Okay. You're in on that one. Okay, the other one, forget looking forward. Do a New Year's reflection. So just forget the kind of to-do list of here's a bunch of promises I'm going to break to myself, which is what the New Year's resolutions tend to be. Instead, just triple down on the reflection. So really take a walk down memory lane.

Open up your camera, go through your camera roll, go watch January, February, March, April, write down with some of your best experience. were, you know, just do a little bit of a journal entry kind of to end the year. Send a few thank you notes to people or moments or, you know, people who or, you know, experiences that you had with people just talking about how great they were or, you know, how much you appreciate it having them. Reflect on, you know, maybe everybody, I think everybody always says, oh, man, I learned so much and I grew so much.

And then if you ever say, awesome, what did you learn? the writer's block occurs suddenly suddenly silence sweeps over the room um try to actually suss out like what did i really learn um and what were the big learning moments for me this year this happened and my learning was x and i did like a monster reflection exercise the other day so fun and i think that people should do this in a more intense way forget like the method just just do it in a more intense way I'm going to actually really try to dig in. So I've been doing that every year for a while, and I would just put them in Google Docs.

But now, so like if you're listening, you're listening, I don't know what day of this will go live, but if you go to the anti-MBA.com, you'll see my reflection. And the anti-MBA, that's just my personal blog. I barely ever share it. I don't give a shit. Who reads it?

Not that many people read it because I don't really share it. But I started doing this publicly now just to reflect, and my family will be able to read it in 10 or 30 years, which is awesome, right? Imagine when your mom was coming to Indie, India or coming from India, if she, instead of just telling you the stories, you can read her blog what she thought then. And so I've been doing that a lot lately.

It's awesome. It's really fun. And it's awesome to go through your camera role because your camera tells you exactly every month what's going on. Relationship hack learned for this from Tony Robbins. He basically said once a month, he's like me and my, he's like very easy with your wife to like, or your partner. And just to kind of like get into some routine where you're just like mostly your focus

and energy is in your work or your kids or your whatever. And like that kind of dating time has gone. And people try to do to try to like, you know, reignite the spark with like, oh, it's date night tonight. But like, you're both kind of tired. And you know,

you already have had a bunch of conversations, not that much new stuff to share. It's like, hey, what's new with you? I don't know. The same things you've been going through. You know,

like we've been together. My in-laws were in town and they were like, hey, Sam and Sarah, do you guys want us to watch a baby? And you could have a date night? And we're like, yeah, but could our date night be,

we're just going to go upstairs and scroll on our phone. Yeah. That sounds great. Sam's going to turn it on a bath and Sarah's going to leave the house. Yeah. That was our version of date night. So, well,

I have that all the time. In that case. But Tony Robbins said this. He does exercise called flooding, which is he's like, real romantic. He's like, just sit down and basically,

um, open up the, you know, the camera roll or the videos and just watch together, um, you know, something from like, a year ago, three years ago, whatever it is,

and just kind of flood those memories together. And it will almost rebond you because you'll both, you'll both re-experienced what you've already experienced. And it's a kind of like low, low bar way to, it's sort of like the minimum dose you need to get like sort of a maximum impact in terms of how close you feel with somebody. And I've been doing that.

It's pretty awesome. Don't do it every month, but like I do it from time, time. you should blog this. Just create like a blog that no one that you don't care if anyone reads and kind of forces yourself to write on there. It's pretty awesome. But dude,

whenever I write something, everybody reads it, it's like super popular. Just don't share it. It's just like, you know, like I, you know,

my big thing is I read a lot of history. It's crazy. People used to like journal and diary. Remember when you're a kid and someone told me about like having a diary? And I'm like, dude, that's what like chicks do. I'm not going to write a diary.

Right. Now we're just going to rebranding. call it blogging and it's way more fun. You don't want to back. Do I have it here? I'm not in the other room right now, but I bought not like a journal because you know, most journals are like very small and that's great.

But like actually writing in a journal can be kind of, it's kind of hard. It's kind of limited. I bought one of those artist sketch pads like a huge like thick card stock canvas thing. This thing is amazing. It's a absolute pleasure to write on and draw on. I don't feel limited in any way. Way better than a journal.

I really love this thing. I leave it on my desk most days. And I just have it there. I can take notes on one side. I can scribble an idea on the other. And it's just the idea of a sketch pad is just way better than these like. Yeah, but in 20 years your kids are going to be like, why did dad just make these stupid S's with the six lines?

Like, what is that, what is that doodle? He keeps doing a dumb ass that everyone does. Like, why does it keep drawing cubes like over and over again? Dude, there's no chance my kids care. about what I was thinking when I was 35 years old. That's the reality. Maybe one day, one little thing, but no. All right, last one here for New Year's.

So we got the bingo card, we got anticipations, we got the obsession, we got the reflection. The last one is just, this one's actually not, it's kind of the best one to end on, but the magic word. And the magic word is you pick a theme for really just the month. So forget the year, year's too long. You just say, all right, January, my word of the month right now. The theme of this month is going to be playful, flirting. I'm going to flirt with everybody, right? You just come up with whatever the word is.

I'm going to take every situation, I'm going to try to infuse this word into it, or as often as I can, I'm going to try to have this be the theme, right? I actually think that's great, what's your is going to be, just like pizza? It's typically ranch is it.

Yeah. what doesn't get better with France Ranch That's so funny Yeah I think January's It's just carbs No I think I think that's good

No matter which one of these new years you pick Just remember January 12th January 12th January 12th is National Quidders Day It's the second Friday after the new year By that time I think more than half of people have completely abandoned There's a guy

who the founder of that company sliced pizza, they're like a nationwide pizza delivery thing. He said something like January 12, 2015th. He's like, he's like, hey,

sales will be down for the next two weeks, but then our biggest day of the year is coming. Is that real? Super Bowl of pizza delivery is on National Quidders day when people give up on their diets by the second week of January and they move on. So yeah,

that is what it is. Second Friday of Jan. That company, by the way, he's killing it. Who would have thought? Not I. Not I. Not I. Not I. All right. Let me bring up a juicy topic. I got a big juicy one. I got one that when I was researching this, I kept giggling and I kept laughing. As a bystander, this topic, it is awesome. It has made me so happy.

And let me explain why. So I've got this friend. I met him in Hampton. I think he said that you knew him through one of his software companies. He won some contest we did. His name is Spencer Scott, and he owns two software companies. The software company that I think he spoke to us about, it's pretty funny. You go to your website, so in our case, let's say, MFMpod.com, and you could see who's on your website, and you could video call with them. And it just pops up and it says, hey, you and Austin, if you have any questions, I'm here in real time. You can ask me questions.

Whatever. He's got these software companies. I think they probably do four or $500,000 a year in revenue. He makes a great living. Well, something happened to him, and the way that he reacted to this is just hilarious. So Spencer lives outside of Dallas, and apparently there is an issue where the trash collectors come and they leave their trash bins, like they come and pick up the bins, and they leave them like all over the place.

And so seeing that he's like a scrappy entrepreneur, he went on to- I'm looking at a photo of that. Like, we should post a photo of this on the YouTube channel. There's somebody's trash cans. Like one looks like it got in a World Star Hip Hop fight. It just got beat up. It's on the ground. Another one is just at the neighbor's lawn.

And then one is where it's supposed to be. And he's like, this is how they left my trash again today. And it makes and it made the neighbors really angry. Apparently people, he had heard like people complain about this. And so the group, I guess it's a, is it called Wiley, Texas, page Wiley, Texas. Yeah, it says like whatever his neighborhood is like residence. And then it's in in the little town that he's in. And he explains this, like, in a really funny way.

He goes, we've got my neighborhood. It's mostly one of these fancy neighborhood gated. It's a gated community. We've got 24-hour security. Hell, we even have 48-hour security if you take into account all the Cairns that live in my neighborhood and report stuff. Like, we're just full of security. And yet our trash, it's just so annoying that once a week the company picks it up and our cans are left all over the place. So he makes a Facebook post in the neighborhood group and he says, hey, neighbors, is any

Anyone open to switching trash services to a better option? My wife and I are mildly frustrated with cards and we've made jokes that we feel we are like unpaid employees. Every week we play a fun game of where's Waldo trying to find our trash cans, which are either in the ditch or hidden in our neighbors, yards, whatever. And then 150 people commented on that. And so this guy, Spencer Scott, he calls himself, he's like a Jehovah's Witness of B2B sales. Apparently before he started a software company, he would go door to door selling internet.

services or I think phone lines, things like that. So he's just like a door-to-door sales guy. Then he got into software. And he's a pretty scrappy guy. And he goes, hell, I think I'm going to do this. He finds out that the trash company is actually charging something like 50 bucks a month for 300 houses. He does some math.

He goes, this is kind of interesting. And so we start sending an email. Or he makes a new post in the Facebook group. And listen to this. He goes, in order for this to work, we need 200 houses to sign up and commit to switching vendors. And this is a great post, by the way. I know this is a huge ass, and you're going to be taking on a risk on a new startup. But I can assure you, we're going to be light years better than cards. And this is the good part. If we aren't, I'm sure they'll take us back. I've got everything

lined up, including two advisors who've been in the industry for years. What do you say? You want to help us start a trash company with me? And so he creates this website where he just Googled like referral programs. And I linked to the website where Tim Ferriss, he's, he's, he's, actually made a blog post where we talked about Harry's, their pre-launch strategy. And so he made this account. If you go to his website, his website is a, is it Lonestar Trash.com? Great name, by the way. It's hilarious, this website.

And so if you refer a new customer, you get a t-shirt. If you refer 10 customers, you get one free month of trash pickup. And so within like 24, 48 hours, he sets up a stripe account. he collects $15,000 in sales. And so with that $15,000, he says, shit, I'm in business. He goes out and he buys 200 trash bins, because that's, I guess, how many customers he got for month one. And there's a picture of all these trash bins in his driveway. Then he goes on Facebook Marketplace searches within 500 miles, and he finds a trash, like a trash garbage truck for sale for 40 grand.

Apparently, AMX, I didn't know they allow this, but they give you a line of credit up to, 60 or 80 grand for 7% interest. He uses that and he buys this truck without ever seeing it. So he calls the guy and he's like, hey, do a FaceTime with me, whatever. Spends two grand, gets this truck shipped to his house. Now, he's in business. And tomorrow is his first day in business. Tomorrow.

He's got to get up at 4 a.m. It's one day a week. You got to go with him. I'm going to go with them. Not tomorrow, but over the next few weeks, we're going to, I'm going to get a video crew. I think we've got to go do this. But this guy has started a trash can or a trash business.

And so let me see. I have his math here. He was like, I think a bad year is going to be about 150 grand in revenue. I think a decent year will be 250. And I think a great year will be 350. And if it works well, I'll expand to new regions. And it's crazy fascinating that he's doing this. And he's doing it mostly in public where he's like tweeting out all the stuff that he's doing.

And it's just so funny that this guy's doing this because he's like making a joke about it. So for example, he bought hoodies for himself and I guess the one employee he has. And what's the T-shirt say? It says, uh, it says, great days start with a good dump. A picture of his garbage truck. And I had him like interview for, uh, to get information for this pot. I asked him all these questions and I wrote him down. And he's taking a very technical, like, techy analysis toward this.

He's like, look at the SEO for the largest company waste management. They have this many pages. But the second highest in the country only has 650 pages. I think I could rank there by doing X, Y, and Z. And it's crazy fascinating. And get this. So one truck holds, I got to remember this. One truck holds 200 bins worth of trash.

And those 200 bins worth of trash cost $250 to dump. So the costs are going to be the truck. the cans, which eventually pay off pretty quickly, and then labor. So it's a pretty fascinating business, and I cannot believe that he just went all in on this, and he's making it happen. I appreciate people who do this so much. I love this story, and I feel very invested in this. I've invested in a lot of companies, but I feel invested in this.

I need this to work. Lone Star Trash, I feel like we should single-handedly pump this. And to all listeners, in the, where is he, Dallas? He's 30 minutes outside of Dallas. And he explicitly said, he goes, when you talk about this pod on the pod, I'm afraid that too many people are going to go to my website and there's a buy now button. And I'm just going to have to go through all the work and refunding them and telling them we can't service them. So I have to remind people, he was only servicing one region. Right.

He says, my neighborhood has, I think, 400 houses. And then there's 400 houses in the sister neighborhood. He says the trash collecting company is currently charging $33 per month per bid. So most houses have two bins. So it's $66 bucks a month. So let's just do the math here. 66 bucks a month. Just his neighborhood.

That's $26K a month, $316,000 a year. Double it for both. And that's like sort of 600 grand of potential revenue if he got everybody to switch. Of course, not going to get everybody to switch. But I do think he could do pretty well. So here's, should we brainstorm a few marketing tactics for him? But it actually could be potentially bigger than we think. So he goes, he goes, I talked.

He goes, basically, I went on Facebook Marketplace, and I found all these trash guys who were selling these trucks. And I just played dumb with them. I was like, he's like, I didn't even play dumb. I am dumb. I don't know anything about this. And so he makes friends with all these guys on Facebook Marketplace who are selling trucks. And he's like, I fly up there and I meet one of them. And he's like, this guy is in Oklahoma. You would think that he's just a country bumpkin. His business did $9 million in revenue, $2 million in profit. He owns a plane that he flies around in. And he starts talking to these guys. And he learns that there's a small town, McKinney, which is north of Dallas. I guess it's a small city. They just went out to bid for them to get a new trash collector. It was 50,000 houses and the contract is $20 million a year. And that's a relatively small region outside of Dallas. So it potentially could be bigger. And we know we talk about Wayne Hizenga, a billionaire who started

Auto Nation Blockbuster and Waste Management. Now he used to own the Florida Panthers. And then we talked about Bradley Jacobs, who's a multi-billionaire, who started also with trash businesses. Maybe it could be bigger than we think. Well, Spencer, if you're listening to this, which I, I'd be stunned if you didn't listen to this giant segment about your company. Me and Sam, we haven't talked about this.

I don't know if Sam's cool with this, but we're going to buy your next truck for you, sir. We're going to invest in your company, and we will fund your next truck. And that will be the MFM trash truck. How many other podcasts do you know that will have their own trash? Dude, I would 100. I would put up 20 grand to take this.

We're both in for 20 grand. We'll buy the next 40K truck. whenever he's ready to expand this, we'll come in at a low valuation here, right? Give us a $500,000 valuation. And we as this podcast will then single-handedly promote this neighborhood by neighborhood as you expand. But I think you should do a couple things. So here's a few free marketing ideas for them.

Do you know, can you design the bins? Like, could he paint the bins? Could he color the bins in a different way or design them so that if you're using this trash company, your bins will look different? I don't see why not. I mean, like a bright pink one or something. Like the Lyft mustache back in the day. Remember when you would go through San Francisco and see these cars driving with a fluffy mustache on it?

Like, what the heck is that? And then somebody would have to tell you, right? It was so weird you had to ask, what is that? And then as soon as somebody knew, they were happy to tell you, oh, that's Lyft. It's a ride sharing company. You could actually just request a ride on your phone. And then the driver will show up like that. That's his car.

He puts the mustache on it. That means he's a tag. And it's like, whoa, okay. Interesting. And the lift, I have a lift mustache right here. I admired this marketing tactic so much. I stole a mustache off a car and I have this thing. You'll have to have like he could paint like cookies on on the bin and then the truck will look like cookie monster or something where it's like silly when it like goes into the truck.

The truck and the the bins need to become his marketing assets. And so the bins should look like you've made a choice that you have decided to go with the local providers. who's all about service that's has fun, blah, blah, blah, right? So make the bins fun and interesting in somewhere. Great idea. First step. Second step.

He should go around and basically fly after that other company puts bins out and, you know, let's say they're knocked over or then the wrong spot. He should put a little thing that says, we would never do this to you. We're a new company. Started by a guy who lives here. I was so frustrated and tell your little founder story.

Put it as a slip inside of every trash bin. because you're really just marketing in this 400 house radius, right? So pretty easy. Next thing. I don't know if you know this, Sam. Kids love garbage trucks. Garbage trucks, fire trucks, they just love them. So take the truck on tour.

Like the Wiener Mobile. Do you remember that? The Oscar Meyer Weirmobile? Yeah, exactly. They would go to school. This is the Oscar Meyer playbook. And so in our town, the fire department for Christmas, they always like, they'll bring the fire truck out.

They'll like play music off it. They'll put a Santa on. top, do the same thing. Every holiday, you're putting a, your truck's going to drive around. It's going to be themed and it's going to like, you know, create an occasion for the fact, like when a garbage truck comes outside here, I grab my kids and we run outside because they love to see it. They love to see it. Pick up the trash, whatever. And so use, do something that's going to get the kids to do it. So for example, go around, let the kids ride in the truck or drive the truck or something like that. Or let everybody get out their hose and wash the truck.

So you can like spray your hose at the truck while it's going by. Create some, something that's going to get kids excited to see it, families excited to see it, so that they know who you are, tell your story. So I think if he does this, he could literally get like 80% of the neighborhood on board because the other trash company does no marketing whatsoever,

and it sounds like they're not doing a great job. There's a little bit of an opening here to go in and sell a better service. I think it's just fascinating. I think that, like, obviously the margins are going to be way worse than software, but you have a recurring element here. I mean,

the size of the market. is every home in America. And also, like, just what he's doing, like, you remember how we talked about Pinks? Pinks was a window cleaning company. Yep. And for some reason, they just have cool hats and people have their hats. They sent me one. I wear it.

It's awesome. Like, what he's doing with great days, start with a good dump, like that little silly stuff or, like, the fact that his website is kind of funny and how it has a affiliate program. This is brilliant. I do think he's missing that branding, though, in the, there's no. no like, you know, pinks has got its color, it's got its name, it's got whatever. There's like the two guys in a truck kind of like moving company. That's another good one where it's like, you know, two dudes in a truck.

He needs something like that. Yeah, but keep in mind, I'm pretty sure he started this three weeks ago. So he's like, he's like, look, why doesn't he ever figure it out? Yeah. I decided this was my mission eight weeks ago. I'm all in, like just, you know, you can't stop me down. Also, we'll crowdsource this, dude. If there's a design agency that listens to the pod,

you need to do a pro bono free full branding. Where's Red Antler? Red Antler, I need you to take on this project for free in exchange for marketing collateral that you did this truck, this trash company, this local trash company in Texas branding. We need a design company to let's crowdsource all, everything we need to make this happen. And he said, so I had him fill this out on 1215.

He goes, I came up with this idea 60 days ago. So what's that? That's a, so an octobertsonsors. October 15th, he came up with the idea. And then he got customers that fast. I just can't believe this. It's just so funny. And he's got all these pictures of all these bins in front of his house,

of him and his wife cleaning the bins. It's just, this is art. Also, TikTok. He needs to go on TikTok and tell the story. I don't know if you've seen, but like, so somebody posts this TikTok the other day, they go, oh, you're worried about, oh, like, you know, you want to start posting on TikTok.

but you're worried, oh, what do I have to say, or how do I look or whatever? And the woman goes, do you know what I watch on this app? I watch guys cut sand. I watch women clean houses.

I watch a massage therapist. I don't even get the massage therapist. I watch other people get massage. Dude, I watch chiropractors and fruit getting crushed. Yeah, cracking necks and opening up avocados. Like, you know,

what are you waiting for? And I think that is a, you know, Mark Andreessen did, it's time to build as this rally cry. there's like the equivalent one of like, do you know what I watch? I'll watch anything is the rally cry of TikTok.

And I think he's got to tell the story of like this dad, this father of two who got so annoyed with his trash company that he's just decided like, all right, F and I'm doing this. He says that he goes, his goal is 24 customers in less than 18 months, which is around a million dollars in ARR. He said he's going to hit a thousand cup customers in the first six months.

in his first day driving the truck. He goes, I screwed around with it a little bit to test it out. But I really am just getting going tomorrow for the first time. And then listen to this. Listen to this guy's humor. He goes, I go, are you looking to hire for certain positions? He goes, yeah. In fact, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting at the bar at Dave and Busters,

watching adults play the claw game. Anyone who wins, I slipped in my biz card and give them an invite to make $20 an hour driving my trash trucks. This guy, he's great, man. He's great. He's great. He's full of humor.

This is awesome. This is a really cool thing that he started as just like a stupid idea, but it's got legs. And I think that this is going to be awesome. This can make, because I think Spencer also wants a bit of fame, a little bit of content fame too. Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just that. I think he, you know, from meeting him, I think he has an urge that I have a very, primal urge inside, which is like, I just want to live, like, I just want to do something different with my life, you know, like, I just want to do something different than the, like, path. Like, okay, I get it. I could do the path. But I really don't want to just do the path. I think Spencer has this, which is what leads somebody to do something like this. And I, my, it sounds like he's already

pretty all in, but triple down. Go even further all in. Rebrand yourself as trash daddy. Tell your story to the world. Like, do the unnecessary. Like, you know, every Sunday have a theme. Remember how Gagin used to do this with Sprigg? He used to put a truffle in every box. Like, every time you ordered, you get a little chocolate truffle with it. Just keep coming up with surprise and delight ways to go,

do the absolute unnecessary because that's what people pay attention to. The things you like. Leaving a toy trash truck in people's mailbox or something like that. Sam, brilliant. I should be doing this, frankly. This is my type of business. Get out of the way. Yeah, yeah.

He said Ryan Graves. I'm the Travis Kalanick. I need to take this thing over. This needs to be my business. Okay, his ass on this. That's so funny. No, I think this is awesome. So what's his handle?

If you look up Spencer Scott, I think his handle is aka Spencer Scott on Twitter. This is going to be a really fun journey for us to follow along. And we're early on this. And we're going to help make this a thing. This is awesome. By the way, Spencer, if you're listening, holler at us. I know I talked to you about this before, but now it's public record.

Yeah, that was awesome. Okay, wow, what a segment. What a way to start off the New Year's. That was amazing. That's what this podcast is all about. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, that's what this podcast is all about. Yeah, finding cool stuff. All right, I wanted to tell you another just like fun product real quick.

This is a quick one. Click this link to this thing, Bertie. Birdie. Birdie. Dot design is the name of it. Dude, I can't tell if these things are popular. Like, is this like a yellow cab where like I've noticed one and they're everywhere or have they always been everywhere? We talked about this type of stuff a while ago.

It's everywhere now. I've never seen one. You've seen one of these in real life? No. Well, go ahead and explain what it is. Okay. So I'll explain to the end of the context into context of this. One of the running jokes on the pod is that a completely valid business model is just X, beautifully done.

and if you're pitching somebody you really don't even have to say much more than that you're like what if it was just headphones just really well done and everyone else or a thermostat you can't argue with somebody who is just saying we're just not going to do it

you know all the bad ways you could do this we're not going to do any of those just beautifully done and Nest is a thermostat that's just this is beautifully done this is an air quality monitor that is beautifully done So go to birdie.

Design and you'll see it. It's this white circle with a small yellow bird, like the Twitter old Twitter logo. And when it's pointed up like a cuckoo clock, that means the quality is good. If the air quality in your house ever drops, rather than beeping like an annoying smoke alarm or having tons of numbers and strange colors

and you're like, oh, God, you get stressed out, the bird just changes positions just to tell you that, hey, the air quality is not. right right now. And then you look in your app and it'll tell you all about it. So this thing is awesome. I think it's big in Europe. It's not actually, they're like just now like, actually, I don't know if this is true, but they're expanding to the to the states now. I think it's bigger in

Europe. I think this is a fantastic idea, beautiful website. The Turinxie is DKK. What's DKK? Some type of monopoly money. I don't know. Yeah. Danish crone. Ah, croner. Yes. How could I forget? So yeah, this thing costs 2,000 DKK, an unknown amount of dollars. $300.300. That's 300. It's beautiful. It's a piece of art. It's wonderful. So we talked about this with Steph Smith. Steph Smith said that these air quality control like monitors, they're going to, she said

they're going to explode. And then she went on and said, she goes, I predict that the subreddit called air quality is going to be the next big thing. It only has 4,000 subs, but it's been doubling every six months. And I think that with wildfires and all this other stuff, that air quality control is going to become a huge thing. And I keep seeing people tweet this constantly. They have these little digital meters. And I don't know what the measurement is, but they say CO2 is this number.

And it looks like a little digital clock. And they're everywhere, man. People are traveling with them. I'm seeing this everywhere now that she told us about this. Yes, exactly. So she was saying like, I noticed that sleep hour slash sleep quality went through this crazy trend over the last like four years where sleep became like, you know, the Vogue kind of health trend. And she's like, I think air quality is going to be next. Look at the growth of the,

of the air quality subreddit, the products on Amazon that are there. And it's kind of like an immature space. And I think this is a wonderful, beautiful product design for a product that's, that's in that space. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the Amazon ratings right now. I mean, some of these products have tens of thousands of reviews. This is going to be a thing, man. This is going to be like the next version of ring, I think. These air quality controls. But the thing about it is, I don't know if this is pseudoscience.

Like, I don't know the truth of is that like, bet your life on it. That's the beauty of these products, right? That's the beauty is it's like a dog vitamin. It's like, I don't fucking know if this works. Like, but I'll buy that insurance. Right. But don't you love your dog?

Yeah. How do I get CO2 out of my house? I can tell you. I don't breathe less. I don't know. Remove the car from the living room. I don't know how to do it. It's coming from me, I think.

Like, don't fart. Yeah, I don't know how to do it. But when I see it, I'm like, that sounds important. It's like the word leaky gut or a juice cleanse. Like, well, if you use those words, I guess I have to do it. Right. I don't know if I have leaky gut, but I sure as hell am willing to like take any product that will stop it, you know, just in case. All right.

I've got one more quick thing. Yeah, you go. I need some advice. So I own a Facebook group. You know, one of my hobbies is I have Facebook groups. I'm one of the only people that actually do that. I actually have three or four. I've got a couple that are in the 60 and 70,000 range.

But I have one that when trends shut down, I just posted in there and I said, I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but here's a Facebook group. I call it, I actually am not going to say the name. of it because I don't want to get flooded with new people joining. And I just said, this Facebook group is going to close down. I just made a new one. You guys can all hang out in there. It's got 3,000 members. Most of them are people who have small businesses doing hundreds of

thousands of dollars. It's mostly like those types, that size of business. I have no intention to monetize it. But I wouldn't be lying if in the back of my head, I'm just thinking, this could be something. I'm missing out here. The group has a lot of, traction, people post every single day. Are you a member of it? I think, what did you call it? You want to give it a plug or you don't want to give a plug? It's called,

yeah, terrible name. I think it's a hilarious name. And it's in the tagline, it's shipping products with the bold, fast fund energy. It's a community of people who build and talk business that are bold, fast fun. The artist formerly known as trends were a pirate ship of people who care about talking nerdy business stuff, showing out projects, asking questions and commiserating with our fellow pirates. and mostly because trends kicked us out

and we're a bunch of D-Gens, we need a place to go to. And so I created this group. It's got 3,000 members, dozens of posts per day. If I wanted to monetize this, which I actually am not sure I will because I don't want to work on it.

What would you do? The real answer is kind of a boring answer. I would absolutely not bother monetizing this. I'm not going to. There's a 1% chance. Some reason why. You have a incredible business that you already own and can focus on.

any ounce of mind share and time share that you spend on not that business on some really secondary business is dumb and wasted. I agree. So that's the first thing. But we are a podcast or we talk about stuff. Right, right, right. Yeah. So for the sake of argument, I'll tell you what you could do.

So I do think you probably should have called it something like the artist's film really known as trends. I think that's like a better name. I think you could simply reboot trends. That's the first simple, obvious idea, right? So let's not, let's not, you know, overcomplicate things. People liked trends. These are people that already were in trends and paying customers of trends.

Trends is now free slash like, you know, different, let's just say. So there's an opportunity to do this. I actually think this is true about many businesses. There is this window like, I don't know, three years after a company has been acquired where you can literally just start the same company again. This is so common. I see this all the time. People can literally build the same company. The guy we sold the Milk Road to, he did the same thing.

He built a company, sold it for $45 million. And then he built the same company, sold it again to another $45 million to the same company. And then finally they were like, hey, non-compete this time. Like, you can't do this again to us. And people really, really underestimate how much you can do this, especially a few years after a a product's been acquired because by that time, the team has changed, the products been folded in, you know, like a whole bunch of stuff has gone awry. So I think that's the easiest thing it could do.

I believe they shut down trends because I think it had 500,000 people on the list, on the email list. And HubSpot was like, dude, like trends charges $300 a year. It probably makes, I don't know what it made, but let's say $5 or $6 million a year. And we have 400,000 people saying they're interested but haven't bought it yet. We can make way more money just making it free and a portion of them will buy our software. And so, but like many entrepreneurs would be like, yeah, but $5 million or $6 million a year with two people running it, that's pretty dope. I would like that as well.

The next thing is I think you could use it for growing Hampton. So the way that Y Combinator uses Hacker News, so Paul Graham basically creates Hacker News. Hacker News becomes the most popular forum or message board for developers. And, you know, he could have been like, guys, we're got to do a job. board and then we got to like, you know, do sponsored posts, then we got to make a paid tier.

That paid tier is going to have certain permissions. He's like, no, no, no, no. I already have one of the best business models in the world where YC can basically invest in young hackers for like, you know,

at that time, they were giving you like $18,000 for 6% of your company or something like that. All he needed to do was just keep the thing free and keep it awesome so that it became. just like a an asset, a marketing asset out there for YC that existed for YC.

And I think that that was the right move and that's what I would do if I was you for Hampton. You've given me ideas. So look, here's how I think about some of these small projects. I think I don't want to spend

a second doing it. But what I love about little projects like this is there's people in my family. There's people who I'm friends with. I'm like, I don't want to spend a second doing this But I will give this to you as long as you keep it awesome and it makes a little bit of money for yourself. You can just pay yourself with all that money.

I don't care. But as long as this thing lives and it's great, I don't need to make a cent from it. I think what I can do is make this a thing where the community stays amazing. And once or twice a month, I can have a sponsor that pays a small enough salary for the person running it to make a living while keeping the community great. That's a great idea. I'm glad I brought this up. I should do this. I love how you were like

you gave me a great idea but the thing you said was completely different than what I said that's how this works that's how this thing works that's a little yes and there for you

to all my thespians out there Sam just yes and it with a huge leap didn't you say sponsor yeah I said the word sponsor oh you're talking about job posts on Hacker News that's why I was saying what Paul Graham

didn't do and then you go, that's what I should. You stop listening and then you said, sponsorship, that's a great idea. For the record,

I'm not going to, I'm not going to spend any more than 10 minutes a month on this thing. I'm not actually going to do anything, but it is fun. This is the point of the podcast is to think about this stuff.

We'll see what happens. But I'm not personally going to spend a second with this. But you know what I mean? All these young bloods that we have in our crew who I would love to work with in some capacity.

And I don't have an option to work with. or something. I'm just thinking about it. I'm just, I'm going to start doing yes, say it to my wife that says like, hey, let's go do this. Yeah, let's do that. And we're going to do it differently than what you said. We're going to do what I said instead. Yes, is my new thing. Yeah, that's a great idea. And also, at that time, we're going to do this other thing. you're like, what are you got to eat for dinner? And I'm like, well, I had Thai for lunch.

So not that. You're like, Ty, that's a great idea. I'm so glad you said Ty. That is so fucking funny. I'm going to yet sand the shit out of people from now on. Well, the beautiful thing about yes-handing people is instead of, they can't like argue with you because you're like, ooh, are you trying to be a buzzkill and not yes-and here? Are you trying to like stop our flow? I guess I got to go with this

it's not going the direction I want but I guess last thing you have Camp MFM coming up on Wednesday I had to bow out because I'm committed to this whole this whole being a parent thing

you know whatever that thing is the whole this all you know being a person dad and all that nonsense I'm committed to it I saw the flyer you made for it and I did I did not have any FOMO

until I saw that the Airbnb founder is going. In particular, the Airbnb founder who interviewed me for my job at Airbnb and then fired me four days later one day before I was supposed to start. He's going. And I would have loved to have gone to see that guy. By the way, he fired me for just cause. He was right. I was wrong. Why? How did you get him? Ben. Ben is the easy answer. So we went into camp MFM this year with a fresh mindset, new year, new us. And Kemp MFM is basically

Sean and Ben, you went and found last year, we did two years ago 15 people, including Mr. Bees, maybe 20 people. Last year we went to a kind of a crummy house that was just huge and you somehow got us all Nike's and then we went like basketball shoes and then we went and

like played basketball. Your version of the story sucks. Here's what happened. Last year. Let me just, yes, Angie, real quick. So yes, but completely different. Last year, Ben was like, why don't you host an event?

Why don't you host like a conference or something like that? There's so many people that are in the kind of podcast audience, Twitter audience that would love to come. I said, yes, but a couple of problems. A, I don't really like big groups of people. Like, I really have a bad time when I go to events with like a lot of people in them. It's just socially not something I enjoy. Second, conferences are kind of boring.

And if I don't want to like if I when I hear oh you're invited to come to a conference either you're going to watch people talk or you're going to get to talk on stage. It's not again, I had that Spencer Scott urge to just do something different with my life. So I said, why don't we do something different? I said, what would I would be the instead of just saying no, let me instead ask what would be the event that I would love to go to. I'd be looking forward to. And I was like, oh, what I would want is just kind of like a summer camp for adults where it's kind of like a summer camp. I used to go in the summers to play at a basketball camp. So I love basketball.

I would just go to something that's super fun. We're going to play. And then we hang out and we talk. Yeah, we do that after. But like the main thing is we're going to play and we're going to compete and we're going to have a lot of fun. And that all the guests, you know, it's a small number of guests, but that all of them are like the 20 most fascinating people I know. We tried it last year. It was amazing.

Mr. Beast, I tweeted out the thing. I said, here's my dream for an event. And I had three bullet points and I put out a Google form. And in that Google form, there was like 200 people replied of which 199 we did not invite to the event, but one of them was Mr. Beast. And I didn't even know he followed us. I thought it was a prank when I was like, oh, yeah, sure, your Twitter handles Mr. Beast. Yeah, sure, whatever. And then his email was like

a real name, but it was kind of like a Yahoo or something like that. I was like, oh, this got to be fake. Then I get a D. So I don't even reply. The next day he DMs me, says, so are we doing this or what? and I like, you know, spit out my drink and I was like, oh, shit. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. We're doing this. Where do you live?

Oh, North Carolina? Funny coincidence. We're doing it there. I was like, I'm going to make this easy for him. We just so happened to be doing it in Greenville, North Carolina. Yeah, exactly. And so we went, you were there. It was a great time.

There's 27 people and we invited this guy who trains a bunch of NBA stars like Kyrie Irving and Trey Young and these guys, he used to train Kobe. and he came down. He basically was like kind of our coach. And it was a bunch of out of shape, you know, business people plus a couple of entertainers. So like, you know, people from the entertainment world that enjoyed as well. Anyways, it was a good time.

So this year we wanted to do it again. But we made, you know, came up with some differences. So I was like, even less people. Last year we had 27 people. This year we cut it down to, I think, 17, which was we really only tried to have 15, but we ended up a 17. We said, well, we don't want to do it with. the same exact group every single year? Because again, the point of this is we're trying to rotate

kind of like, you know, just people, we want to use it suddenly as an excuse to meet people we want to meet. And by the way, you forgot, we all lived, or it was only two nights, but we all stayed in the same air. It was just a huge house. It was like a family's house that had all their, like, like, I shared a slumber part. I shared a bunk bed with Ramon and his son. And then they had like a lake that we were swimming in. It was awesome. It was a crappy, like inside house. But that's actually. actually made it amazing. It made it really fun. Well, it was the best house in Raleigh, North Carolina. But that says more about Raleigh, North Carolina, but it is the house.

So this year, we were like, all right, we're doing it again. And we came up with kind of a dream guest list. Now, why did I say that Ben was the way that we got the Airbnb guy to come? Because Ben somehow just, like, he is the Twitter API. Like, he just consumed so much content that he knows. I was like, you know, it's like an AI search. I was like, who is a super interesting business person who also loves to play basketball? He's like, oh, I think the Airbnb guy plays basketball every weekend.

I was like, how could you possibly know that? And he owns the San Antonio Spurs. He owns the San Antonio Spurs. And I was like, oh, wow. So we reach out to Joe, he finds me his email. I cold email him and I say, hey, you don't know me from, you don't know. My name's Sean, but you don't know me from John. here's the here's this event that we're doing.

I think you would really like it. Yeah, we'd love to have you. And he calls me and he's like basically calls me, ask me some questions, but I can tell it's just like, are you, are you like an insane person?

Like, do I want to be around you for two days or not? And, and so he's coming. There's a, the guest list is kind of amazing. So I'm going to do a recap of it afterwards, but what a, what a thing to manifest.

Like, you know, Jeff Ma came on the podcast and she said this thing. I was like, so you run a venture studio. and Idea Lab. Like, what do you call it? She's like,

oh, no, I don't call it anything. She's like, I have a team of people that are like my little manifestation company. Like, if I want to make something happen,

they just help me make it happen. Make it come, make it go from idea to a thing. And now that's how I think about what me and Ben do. It's not like a holding co. It's like a manifestation code. What is the life we want to have and that we just sort of make it so? And this is one thing that,

you know, I would want to have as my kind of like annual, annual thing that I do. Yeah, but dude, I got to tell you. So, I'm flying out tomorrow, right?

So I'm like, all right, I got to get my haircut and my beard turn. I got to get fresh. Yeah, by the way, your haircut looks quite good. You should do that more often. But you'll notice my hair might look good, but my beard looks untouched. Why is that? What happened? Let me tell you a little story.

So this is a little... I didn't think that. Well, I think that. And so I go to this barber shop. Normally, I have this guy who comes to my house, cuts my hair, and I was like a routine, so I don't need to think about it. But he couldn't come. So I was like, all right, I'm going to go to this place.

I go and this. I'm like, great. Yeah, I got this big event. Just need a little standard F-boy haircut, trim the beard a little bit. And we're good, right? He's like, I don't do beards. And I was like, pretty sure I booked that. What do you mean?

He's like, I was like, this is a barbershop, right? Like, what else do you do if not hair and beards? He's like, he's like, I just don't want to mess it up. And I was like, well, I also don't want you to mess it up. But I need it. All right, all right, whatever. Weird, but okay. And then he's like, okay, what do you want?

for your haircut. I show him a picture and he starts doing it. And, super nice guy. But I noticed that his hand is like really trembling while he's cutting my hair. And I'm like, okay, this is interesting. I feel bad for him. But you know, Sam, I also feel bad for me because you don't want to get a haircut

by somebody whose hand is trembling with the clipper. So I'm like, okay, this is now a high risk situation. I'm about to go to my biggest event of the year. I hired this vlogger guy to follow me around. I'm not trying to have an effed up hair. cut. But I put my faith in this guy. We did it. The haircut turned out okay. I was like, you know what, Beardrum, forget I ever said it, not doing it. And he's like, at the end, he goes, thank you so much. You have been so kind to me. And I go, I didn't do anything. What do you mean? I just sat here, got my haircut. He's like, I was so nervous. I have never done that haircut. And I was like, hey, man. What the hell? What? Why are you telling me this afterwards? got the most basic haircut that every guy ever has. I was like, this is the standard guy haircut.

What do you mean? This is a barbershop? You work here, right? Did I just ask a customer to cut my hair? Most bizarre experience, he's like, I was so nervous. He's like, I've done one of these before, and I totally screwed it up. Bianca, she's amazing. He points out, he points in this woman, Bianchi goes, she had to fix it for me.

She's so good with the clippers. I'm like, why did Bianca cut my hair? What's happening right now? You should tell me she'd start a trash company. fit right in. I was laughing so hard. I was like, what just happened to me?

This is like a comedy skit. It's going to be Wednesday to Friday. I just got FOMO for the first time last night when I saw that Joe was going to be there. I'm bummed. I can't go. Hopefully you do good and hopefully you get some good podcasts. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. I'm just going to try to have a good time.

That's my goal. No, or make videos that give views. I'm Ging. Bingo card. All right, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On a road, let's travel, never looking back.