My First Million - Shaan Challenges Sam to Ignore His Limits, Michael Rubin is the Billy of the Week, and More

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

MFM hosts Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) talk about the power of intensity, billionaire of the week Michael Rubin, how they respond when people pitch them ideas, and much more.  _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (03:04) - The power of intensity (19:03) - Rolling sushi with no experience (28:21) - Billy of the week: Michael Rubin (38:20) - Shaan makes a challenge (46:14) - How Sam and Shaan respond to pitches (47:09) - The De Beers diamond monopoly

People DM us a lot of interesting ideas. My reply to all of them, they go, what do you think about this? I always reply with two things. I always say it's an amazing idea. And then I say, when are you launching? 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. Never look at. All right. Let's start the episode here. All right. I've got actually two interesting things to tell you. The first, this company reached out.

It's a famous publication that you know of, and I don't want to say it out loud yet, but they want us to go to Baja Mexico to ride motorcycles and film a series on like a weekend adventures. Are you interested in that? What for? Like, what's the catch? You want me to come out here and surf and ride motorcycles?

What's in it for you? They just had, I guess I could talk about it. I haven't asked if I could talk about it. It's just like it's a, without giving too much weight, They have just a web series that goes in like on TV. It gets for web and TV.

They have a TV channel. And they have this whole series where they, it's all about like nine to five workers, like normal yuppie jobs. And you have adventures Friday to Sunday. So like what all can you do on a weekend? Okay. All right.

That seems super up your alley and kind of up my alley too. But you know, that's, that's their suggestion. Do you have a better idea on like a weekend adventure? It's an adventure publication. Yeah. I don't do motorcycle.

That's my only thing. I don't do motorcycles. And after Kobe, I also don't do helicopters. But I love surfing. Surfing is a cool thing. I suck at it. But it's fun. So I would do that. Well, if you come up with a better idea, then pitch it. But they like, it's all paid for and everything. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. Let's do that. Why not? Oh, look at your fitness influence or life is already coming in handy. So you, what I wanted to talk about was you're getting really fit to. Do you, and I think it's pretty inspiring. Are you enjoying? This influence or coming from an influencer like you in the fitness world, that means a lot to me. Hardly. But do you, so do you think it's, do you, have you, has your body, or I know your body has changed. As your brain change, do you think? And your attitude? Of course.

That changes first, right? Yeah. The attitude changes first. The brain changes first. The body changes, you know, slowly over time. But yeah, for sure. But I, like, okay, if people, if I took off my shirt, you know, nobody's going to be super impressed with me just yet.

But I'm pretty impressed with me. and that's kind of my own opinion I hold in higher regard than anyone else's. So yeah, basically I went from like, kind of like, I don't know, was I, would you be like he's fat? Would fat, was I fat? I might have been fat.

I didn't think of myself like a fat guy. I didn't see a photo. And I'll be like, what the hell? I look fat here. Then I'm like, every photo I look fat. Maybe I'm just fat. That's kind of what I reached the conclusion of at that time.

You were getting overweight. I think that, like, I think that, you know, there's like a like a definition of obese. Like, you know, it's a body fat percentage. And I guess if we use obese and fat, yeah, I would say you're overweight, but I don't think you're overweight now. Yeah. So, and so now I've been training hard for like a year. I started off doing two days a week, three days a week, and I just cranked it up to five days a week now with the trainer. It was always supposed to be

five days a week, but the days I was supposed to be doing on my own, I was, you know, really half-assing it or no-assing it. So, so I would say on average, I was doing like three or four days a week before. and now I'm doing five or six days a week. Pretty intense. And I got to say, I don't know why you're bringing it up. So I don't know where you're going with this, but it's amazing. And I can talk about it all day because it's like the best thing I've done all year. So, you know, if you're, if you're listening to this and whatever investment you're making

right now and your health, I guarantee you that if you up that investment, you would only thank yourself. And that's kind of where I'm coming from here is like, yeah, I'm, I'm super happy with making this shift. And it's totally great. I have this, the reason I was bringing this up is I had this friend who is incredibly wealthy. Like, I would have to imagine like $30 million wealthy. And he was like, I want to get in shape.

What routine are you using? And I'm like, that's a bad question. Who cares about the routine? If I was you, I would just hire a coach. It'll be like $400 a month. And he was like, wow, that's expensive. And I'm like, dude, you've got one body and one life. Like, I, for me, my fear is when I see someone who's my age or 40,

50, 60 and their body hurt so they can't walk and they can they like struggle to sit down on the floor or something like that. I'm like, that's hell, right? Like you're just, you're in this, you're in this shitty home that's falling apart and you can't get out. And I was like, you know, you just bought this fancy house. Why not also buy a fancy body? And not to like look good, naked, but like feel good. And so I was just thinking about it. And I think we talk about investing. And I'm like, I think that's, that's got to be the best investment. For sure. We have a, we have a, We have a mutual friend. I can't say the name on here because what they said is funny.

But I'll share what they said. So they're wealthy. They're probably like, I think they have like, you know, $100 million, you know, in the bank. And they said this thing. They're like always doing kind of like fitnessy stuff. They're not like, it wouldn't look at them and say, oh, yeah, this person's clearly like, you know, ripped out of their mind or they're not just like super jagged. It's not that.

But they live a very healthy lifestyle. And whatever, wherever they go, like in their day, their workout is like a key. part of their day and they don't sacrifice it. They don't get, they don't get too busy for it. And so I asked him about that and I said, you know, man, it seems like you're really taking the seriously. He goes, yeah, you know, the way I look at it is if you're rich, you have no excuse to be fat. He goes, look, if you don't have the money and you're all your, you're just, you're trying to support your family, you got to work two jobs, you got to shop at certain stores, you know, McDonald's, you know, you got to eat what you can afford sometimes. Okay, fine. Like still,

not great and you know I want you to not be in that situation but like I definitely understand he goes if you're rich and you're fat that's on you bro and and that's how I feel now is like when he said it I was like you know that's actually so true which is if you had all the resources but you didn't make the investment that matters that's sort of silly right and so uh that kind of trick that kind of was one little seed that got playing in my head I'll tell you something else that's been funny my trainer recently so you're at you're absolutely right in what you said which it's not the workout routine. It's not the, it's not what you do.

It's not the workout program, right? It's not like somebody has some secret formula. For most people, it really doesn't matter. Like for most people, even if you just watch 15,000 steps a day and you ate only maybe 2,300 calories, you're going to like look pretty good. And you're going to feel probably pretty good. If you're not working out five days a week, that's your problem. It has nothing to do with the routine.

It doesn't matter what you did in the routine. Like just start with doing any workout and then make it better over time. And like, yeah, when you're, when you're Sam status, then the actual routine does matter because, you know, you're, you're already at the kind of 99th percentile. You're just trying to optimize at the end and you try to get certain details to pop. So yeah, then your routine matters. But for most people, it doesn't matter.

But I'll tell you something my trainer told me that was counterintuitive. He goes, we were talking about like my body has really changed. My arms have changed. My chest has changed. But my stomach still looks like the stomach of a guy who's not super in shape. Like I don't have like a six-pack. That's not even super flat. And so that's what I said.

I was telling him, I was like, oh yeah but that's all diet right and he goes he goes you know everybody says that he goes um they say you can't out train your diet all the stuff he goes and i get what they mean he goes but i'll tell you what intensity over diet all day and i go what he goes intensity over diet watch he goes don't even touch your diet right now don't worry about your diet uh don't be feel guilty when you eat something don't like count every calorie don't go weigh out your chicken breast like don't do any of that shit all i want you to do is commit to cranking up the intensity when we're here in this part of the gym.

So he's like, if you're like, let's say, zero to 10, what's the intensity of your workout today? Like on average? I say, oh, you know, it's like an eight. He's like, great. All we're going to do is we're going to take that to a nine. We're just going to make every workout at least a nine on the intensity level. And some days we're going to be hitting nine and a half. And some days we're going to even hit a 10. But right now, I just want you to focus on a nine. And he goes, watch what happens. And he's been so right, which is that it was really hard to just change my diet, but it was that much easier to just crank up the intensity in working out. And it's not that the intensity will all of a sudden shed my fat. It's that when I put the intensity in here,

diet becomes a much easier decision because I really like laid it all out during the workout part. And so the desire to like throw it all away for, you know, this like pleasure, these chips or this whatever, like it's just not there. And now I at first I thought he's full of shit. I did not believe him. But now that now that I'm actually trying it, I just said, hey, let me let me, let me follow what you say. You're my coach. I understand what he's saying. And this is now applied to many other things in my life. So now even in business, I was talking to Ben about one of our business plans. And it's like, oh, should we do this or this or this? It was all about the plan, the how, the route, you know, what is the strategy? And I basically said, fuck the strategy.

Let's just take our intensity up. He's like what? I said, whatever strategy we're doing, let's just agree that like right now we're probably executing any of our strategies at a seven or eight. Let's just execute any of these bullshit strategies at a nine and a half. Let's just see what happens. And this is just working in all areas of my life now. Because now when you put a nine or nine and a half intensity, you kind of like want to figure out the right plan. It's like, if I'm going to put in this intensity, it better be on the right thing and your brain will solve the, the, which path should I choose problem in a different way because of the intensity. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a little mind hack. This weekend I went to F1, Formula One racing in

Austin. It was like the hot thing to do. And I went with this guy. Have you heard of, what's it called? Jungle Scout. You know Jungle Scout? Yeah, yeah. We've talked about it. It's the tool that basically if you go on Amazon and you want to see what products are selling, how much of this Instapot gets sold every week. Jungle Scout's this little extension you can click on. It'll tell you how much sales the products on Amazon have. It's kind of expensive, but it's a cool product. So it's a big business. If you just Google it, like you'd have to, if you could put the pieces together that they're not far from 100 million in recurring revenue. Big business. And it started as a Google Chrome plugin, which is interesting. This guy, Greg, he's Neville's a good buddy. My buddy's Neville.

So that's how I got brought into this thing. I went with him and he's very nice, very kind, easy to talk to, but incredibly intense. And here's just a tiny example of when I see this and I'm like, I like, I always see like, whenever I'm around certain people, I always notice this when intense people do things like this. So for example, the race that just ended. Some people, I don't know how they. they got onto it, but they got onto the track. I guess they went on and it took photos.

And he's like, let's go. And he just starts walking over. And I'm like, well, there's no like gate and like every. And imagine like huge stands. And then you walk down the stands and there's like a fence that's quite tall. And he goes, he's like, well, let's go. I'm like, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no. We're just going to jump the fence.

Everyone was staring at us. He just walks up without hesitation, puts his hands up there, climbs up on this fence and just hops. He goes, come on, let's go. And I wouldn't, I'm, I don't like confrontation that much. I don't like doing a lot of things that like people stare at me. And I was like, what? You just did it.

Like you didn't even think twice. And I've been with people who are like really successful entrepreneurs and they'll be like a line. And of course, this is like jackass. This is like a jackass move. And they're like, no, no, no, we're not waiting in line. We're just going to, we're going to walk in and we're just going to do this. And that's like an example of that intensity. Have you ever noticed like, like, we probably have friends that do like.

Dude, you're like this. You're an intense dude. I've noticed this from you. And the line example is perfect. When we were going to do our live show, remember in Miami and the airport was just packed. I don't know why. It was like six in the morning.

The airport was so packed. We got there early and we were still going to miss our flight. Like the security line was like two miles long. And we waited, we waited, we waited. And then you were like, you just like some switch flipped inside you that was just like, okay, we have all the reasons to like do, like just to miss this flight. Basically, it's like, all right, we got here early. Look, it's just a long line.

There's nothing we could do. You know, the airport is packed. COVID just it's all that circumstance. And then I literally, we didn't even, you didn't even say anything. You were just like, okay, I'm going to go. And then you just left the line. So you gave up your spot, which was like a risk. Because we had waited for like an hour and a half. Yeah, we snuck into the, the pre. The, the, you go to TSA pre check. You're not TSA precheck. And you just hand the guy your ticket. And he's like, bro, there's no precheck on this. And you were like, oh, yeah, my, my, my wife prechecked. It was she, we, it didn't print. Or you're like,

You're like, I'm pre-checked. He's like, there's no pre-check. You're like, I'm pre-check. It just didn't print right. And then he's like, your will just dominated his. And then you just got through the line. And I'm still standing there. I'm still standing there.

I'm like, if I go and say the exact same thing, that may work. And so I was like, I need to crank my intensity up. So I went and I bought Clear at that moment. I went and spent 200 bucks buying Clear. And then I like, clear will, they'll escort you to the front of the line and like take you through TSA. And then it was like, you called me and you're like, dude, you got a sprint because you were at the gate. You were like, you got a sprint.

So I didn't even have my shoes on because of the security line or whatever. So I'm holding my shoes. Didn't even have time to put it back on. I'm in my socks and I sprinted to the gate like I've never spent it before. And I hate running. So I hate ran my way all the way there. But it was your contagious intensity. Another example, we wanted to build our podcast studio.

And I was like, we had kind of been talking about it. And it got to that dangerous point that happens where you have an idea, a thing you want to do. and then you've talked about it, but you're not closing. You're just somewhere in the middle. And this is where dreams go to die. And I think most people, it would just sort of like, it would either fade and you just don't do it or you kind of half ass it. And I remember, like, in a 24-hour period, you just blew up my phone.

You were like DMing me like pictures of every other podcast. You're like, how about this, this, this, this. Just tell me, of these three, which one do you want? I like number two. Number two? And I'm like, yeah, sure, number two. You're like, great, number two. Okay, I found the chair on Amazon.

actually let's drive to these three places and like let's go pick it up today what time are you free are you free in 10 minutes i'll be at your house and you came he picked me up and we drove to ikea then we drove to another furniture spot that we drove to this bootleg spot in oakland it was like not really happening and then and we went to another spot and then literally the sales lady recognized your intensity she came up to us it was a big furnisher store she comes up she goes you guys look like you're you guys look like you're ready to buy I don't know what she said. She said something like, you guys look like you know what you want. And you were like, yes, I'm looking for this red chair

because I have a show and I wanted to pop in the thumbnail. And it's got to look like this. And she like ran into the back and tried to find us one. And then you like got the whole thing done. And somebody, meanwhile, somebody was painting the whole wall. You were like, we need to paint the wall. So you like hired some guy to go paint the wall over the weekend. And by Monday, that was a Friday.

By Monday, the studio was done. And I share this because that's a level of intensity. that you, I know you have that I've observed in all of my successful friends, they have this, this trait are not all, I shouldn't say some people are doing style, but very common that people who are success have this level of intensity when they do something, massive action. And it is contagious. It's contagious to the people around you. And like the lady in the store, there's a, there's this principle that's kind of like this. So I'm reading this book. Sorry to go on tangent here, but I'm reading this book. Which book? You, everybody's heard of it. You've heard of it.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Have you read. Have you actually read the book? Years ago. But it's one of those books that you should reread every five years probably. I should probably read it. It's pretty amazing. I've had the book for like 10 years.

I never even opened it because I was kind of like, I think I get the idea. And so I actually started reading it two nights ago. And he tells a story of this guy who wanted to work with Thomas Edison. He's like, this guy had a clear idea.

He's like, I want to work with Thomas Edison. He goes, notice two things. He said, he knew exactly what he wanted, not just like, I want a job in a lab. It's like, no, I want to work with Thomas Edison. This guy is an amazing inventor. Because the second thing is, I don't want to work for him. I want to work with him as a business partner. And so he's like, you know, problem is, I have no qualifications. And I'm literally not even the same city. I've never met the guy. I have

no access to him. I don't know anyone who knows him. But he didn't let any of those limitations. Those limitations were sort of irrelevant to the guy. So sure enough, he buys a train ticket. He goes to where Thomas Edison is. He barges through the door and he says, you know, Mr. Edison, I'm here to work with you. Like, I think you're great. And I think, uh, you know, we'll do great work together. I'm here to work with you. And Edison's like, what the fuck? Like, you know, we're not even hiring, but, uh, like, and he said something, Edison has a quote in the book, which is like, even though this man had no qualifications, and I had never seen this person. He's a complete stranger. There was something about the intensity of his presence that told me this person has their mindset on something and they're going to make it

happen. And that sort of reminded me of this like common thing that's, I, I've, I've, seen in a lot of people and in myself in situations, which is once you get to that level of absolute certainty and you carry yourself, people will literally just start to respond to you differently because they just see this person is like on a mission. They are a man on a mission and like, I either need to get out of the way or I need to get behind them and help them do this. And that has like served me. I have one crazy story that served me well. But is that ever happened to you or have you ever seen that in yourself or others? Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he's the one who said, he goes, basically, he's like, a lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.

He goes, basically the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal? And do they just get shit done? And I remember, like, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called T-spring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, was it like to work for Walker, the guy who runs it? And he goes, he's an animal. Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership. And we had been working for weeks and weeks. I'm getting in touch with these folks.

And he just Googled, like, their customer service number. And then just right there in the meeting, he goes, guys, watch this. And he just calls them and goes, hey, can I talk to this one person? Hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do? And that's a very easy example. I have almost the same story.

When I was in college, I had, I've talked a little bit about this before. My very first business idea was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast, casual model, but for sushi. You've done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I had in fact only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that.

And that's why I even had this idea. I was like, oh, sushi's fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life? And so one day I skipped class. And me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment. And I was like, you know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows like chopped, iron chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it because, again, I'm not a foodie.

I was like, why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me. But, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we're watching a throwdown with Bobby Flay. And there's this sushi chef that comes on. And he's like, obviously he knows this shit about sushi. Otherwise, he wouldn't be on the food network. He says, his qualifications were like, you know, I'm in L.A.

I got my restaurant. But I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs. So we were like, oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs. And he had like this swag to him. And we had interviewed three chefs locally. And they were all like, you know, think about like, a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative. And they just looked at us like, you are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi,

like how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no, thank you. And so I saw this guy and he had a big personality, which is why he was on TV. And I said, we need a guy like this. I go, and he's like, yeah, where are we going to find him? I go, he's right in front of us. We need this guy.

And he's like, okay. and so he's quiet for a second and Trevor just Googles his number he's like, she turns his laptop and he goes, here's his number and that's like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it's like, or it's like, hey, that girl over there.

You got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl. So I pick up the phone and I call and I don't know why I said this. I didn't have this planned, but it's exactly what you just said the guy Walker said. He picks, somebody picks up the phone

and I'm so used to getting the run around that I didn't expect it to be him. So I go, I need to talk to Philip Yee. How do I make that happen? And then he goes, so I didn't say, may I please speak to the owner? Which by the way, that's the right way to ask, which is how do I make this happen? Exactly. Because there's always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity. And I was kind of nervous. And so like, I was just in this heightened state. And so that's just what came out. And he goes, is Philip, talk to me. And I hadn't planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like,

Oh, I said, Philip, you've never met me, but I'd like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you'll find it really interesting. It might be something that will extend what you're doing in L.A. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really take that and really blow it up. And he goes, he goes, what's the plan? How old am I at this time?

Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 21. Wow. And he goes, what's the plan? Now, I didn't have a plan. So I go, I go, you know what? It's going to be easier for me to email this to you. What's your email address? And I bought myself two days to, like, create a plan and send it to him.

And later on, you know, so a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us. We're going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm, basically, and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in L.A. He, like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with. Which I don't know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that's a success.

Already it's a success. Already we turn this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I'm starting a sushi restaurant, but, you know, this Food Network chef's on board, or he's like kind of on board. He's talking to me at least. He's flying out here next week. So we've got to prepare for that. I'm not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we finally struck a deal with him, we close the deal. And he's like, dude, you don't know how many people. He's like, because celebrities eat at my restaurant. He's like, you don't know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, oh, this restaurant's so small.

You don't even have a liquor license. You need to expand. I'll put up the money. You need to expand. He goes, and I never did business with any of them. And here I am with three dipshits in college. And I decided to go into business with you. And everyone thinks I'm crazy.

But you know why? And I go, why? He goes, you remember what you first said to me? And I was like, no. And he goes, you called and you said, I need to talk to Philippi. How do I make that happen? And he goes, that he's like, there was something in the way you said it that just told me, this guy's going to do something.

This guy's going to make something happen. And he goes. He goes, if you literally had not said that phrase, I don't think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I'd love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wow, I didn't realize these things make that big of a difference. And I don't think it's the words. I think it's the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time. That's great. I like that. How did it end? We partner with him. We go live on his couch. We train in his restaurant in L.A. And so, you know, first, first day, I go there. He shows me the process for making sushi. So I don't know, have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi? Just like the, yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like a piece of wood. A little bamboo, there's a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down and you got to put the rice on it. Now the rice is sticky rice. If you've ever had Asian food, you know, kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? So there's a little problem. I didn't even realize this is a problem. Right? I'm sitting there watching.

him for an hour. First he says, just shatter me. Sit here and watch me. I said, okay, I'm watching him. And he's just making sushi. I'm kind of getting it, but I don't even know what I'm looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don't even know what you're looking for. You don't know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the next customer walked in, I'll tell you who it was in a second. He goes, all right, Sean, you're up. And he moves out of the way. And I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat. And I don't know anything about anything. I've just been watching this guy.

I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you've ever watched like, what's that, Giro dreams of sushi. Gero, yeah, it's like five decades. The tradition is like you spend five years

just mopping the floor. Then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegar of rice. It's sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So I didn't expect to be doing it.

And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only is you throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down. And I look up and it's Daryl from the office. If you ever watch the office, it's Daryl. And Daryl's a regular there. So he kind of knew like, I get the fuck up for this guy. Daryl from the office is the one.

He's the warehouse guy. He's the black warehouse guy. Oh, black dude. Ben Robinson, I think his name is. I don't know that's his name. Maybe that's his name. It's something like that. Daryl.

I know Daryl. So it's Daryl. So I'm like, oh, fuck. I got to make sushi. And I'm making for Daryl. And sushi, it's like the guy's staring at you. You're two feet away from each other. There's no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it.

I'm making it in this guy's face. And so he- Daryl Philbin. Daryl Philbin. And so I first, I just freeze. I'm just standing there. I'm looking down at the fucking bamboo. I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice.

And I'm like, okay, how did he do this? And then I'm freezing. And then he walks away. And I'm like, shit. Okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back. He comes back up to me. He hands me a shot of sake. And he goes, drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.

And I so I take a shot and then I'm like, okay, I grab the rice because I'm like, I'm going to spread the rice on the seaweed. I grab the rice and immediately I know I've done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it's like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed. And my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, he's laughing.

And he goes, you know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water. and I clap. He goes, that clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like splashes the moisture off your hand. So you're just enough so that when you touch the right, it's not going to stick to your hand. And so I was like, oh, shit. And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watch Lost, the guy Hugo from lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It's crazy. Anyway, so that's part of how that story ended. Have you heard of, I want to talk about intensity and Billy of the Week because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I've ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?

Michael Rubin. Is that the fanatics guy? Yes. So he's interesting because he's a young guy. He's probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he's early 50s. And his name's Michael Rubin. He's been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he's worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he's worth a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money. And yet he's like pretty under talked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading, reading about him. So basically, he's in the news now, but I'm going to, explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents' basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got $2,500 in bar mitzvah gifts, and he leased an office or a shop near his parents' house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors. And his dad had to pay him, give him, bail him out for $37,000. And he was basically said, like, I'll bail you out, but you have to go to college and you got to stop this

nonsense. So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semester, he drops out and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts his business called KPR Sports. It's an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. At the age of 20, at 23, in 1995, he purchased 40% of the women's shoe company, RICA. Have you heard of RICA? It was around in the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSI, GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands,

and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at age like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was Shop Runner. Have you heard of Shop Runner? No. Shop Runner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores.

He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn't have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has, and then he started Fanatics. He sold Shop Runner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically if you buy like a Rams jersey, it's made by Fanatics. And they basically work with the NFL. They're like the official merchandiser, basically, of like all major stuff. sports. But here's where shit gets really, really wild. So Fanatics turns it now at this point,

I believe it's three different large businesses. So there's the main fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, MBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it's not publicly traded, it's nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading car division. Have you seen that? There just no news because- I'll do this. What is it called? He raised, it's called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically he raised $350 million at a $10.4 billion dollar valuation.

And so basically there's companies like Tops. Everyone knows Tops. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Tops plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are. But if you're listening in a baseball card, you totally don't know. Panini is huge.

So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in Evita. So it's a fairly big business. until you're like $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it could be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has the second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion evaluation.

And so he spun all of these off. And now he's also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, He's homies with Meek Mill. And he, like, helped get him out of prison. And he spends a lot of his time. Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform.

Incredibly prolific. Very, very, very, very confident. Very fast moving. Very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. And I'm not a lot of people. The door is open for him to come on the pod.

This guy, this guy's cool. I've seen a lot of his interviews. And I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It's like if you want to do sports and music, it's like actually so hard to win because it's like, oh, yeah, I'm passionate about sports. Great.

You and, you know, one, two billion other people. And so it's really, really hard to do what I'll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jersey, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me. It's very impressive. And when I was watching interviews with them, so Gary Vee, is a partner on this, on a couple of this things.

Like, I don't know if he's an investor, if he gets a small stake. I don't know how the thing is, but he's mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I've hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I've hung out with him in person. And he has the same energy that I've noticed Michael Rubin has, where there's basically like this thing that I have and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don't

have a lot of it, where it's like, well, you know, I can't. can't do this because of this, this and this. And I've noticed with Gary, he's talked, like, one time he told me, he's like, I want to, my next thing, he's like, I'm going to create all these restaurants and they're actually going to be completely free. And the way they're going to make money is Amex or whoever's going to sponsor it. Like, he was just brainstorming. He's like, but I'm going to do that.

And in my head, I'm like, well, that's really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. But I feel like nine out of ten things he does, I would say, that's a really dumb idea. And they work. And, you know, he said he's going to come out with these. What's his NFT thing? It's a... V friends.

Like, if he told me, I'm like, Gary, this is really dumb. Or, you know, like, this is not going to work. And it's been incredibly lucrative and very successful. And they don't have this limiting belief where it's like, this won't work for this reason or this reason. It was just like, well, why not? Like, it logically, it makes sense that I think this can work. Anyway.

This is very timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I've noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I'm thinking about something or I'm doing something. and then somebody who's like, like-minded, they're almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories.

So the same exact thing. All right. So I told you I'm reading, Think and Grow Rich. There's a section in there that I remember. You know, it's just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes,

to be successful, one needs to be success conscious. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. I don't think most people would know what that means. But the interesting part is the second line. It's what he says after that. He goes, he goes,

and people who fail, all, fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations, right? They take the perceived limitations that they're feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you're saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, oh, I need to do this, but I don't have the time, but I don't have the money, but I don't have the experience. But this person said they were getting back to me and they haven't got back to me yet. But this, but, you know, the port is closed right now and so the shipment's going to be delayed. It's like there's always these limitations that

feel very real in the moment. And then what's successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves. And even when somebody says no to them, they're like, okay, cool. But like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say.

How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again? But this time I'm going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass and wine. Now you're going to have a different answer. They don't take no for an answer on any front, you know, on their own limitations. They don't take no from themselves.

and they also don't take no from the world. And so I noticed that. So yesterday we were finishing up our workout. And we have a kind of like, you know, like, we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, man, I've read this great thing. And I know I could share it with him because he's the type two that like to eat this stuff up.

And he goes, oh, that's great. And I go, but you know what? I don't want to just sit here and say that's great. Because what really means when I say this and we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. is we kind of do this thing where we're like, yeah, that's true. Other people fuck that up, but not me. There's like this inherent, like, yeah,

other people really need to get this, but they don't get it. I get it. So I said, no, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and lats and whatever else. I said, let's get a rep right here. I say, let's get a rep right now. What's something that you want,

that you just have some random limitation that you, it's not even like you haven't been able to overcome it. Honestly, you're just not even aware of it. You're not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you'd probably find a solution to it. But you don't really do it. I said, I'll go first. I said, man, ever since I went and worked out at Sam's gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that.

I already had the weights. I already doing the workout. But it doesn't feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He's got the floor finished properly. He's got this. He's got the fan on the wall. He's got the music system.

It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that. And I said, I want that. And what's my limitation? I hired this one contractor. He's been really slow getting back. to me with a quote. It's like, well, I can think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now. But like, I just kind of hadn't put my awareness on what was, what was a random limitation that

was standing in the way of me and something I wanted? And I told my trainer, I said, you got to do one now. What's, what's something you want that you have a limitation? I said, let's get a rep. And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don't just be like, yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out. It's like, no, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a, get a, get a rep. doing the thing. And so let me ask you, let's do it live. What's a thing you want in your life? And then what's the thing you want that you're not kind of like, it's not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. It could be something with your relationship, work wise, money wise, fitness wise, whatever.

Something small, something in your house, whatever. What's the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what's the limiting, what's something you've just let limit you for no reason, that Gary Vee wouldn't, that Michael Rubin wouldn't. Okay, this sounds silly. It should sound silly. It's perfect. It's usually the silly things. I've had a fear of camping for a long time. And I want to spend more time in the wilderness because I like the idea of it. But like I'm kind of afraid of like being out at nighttime in the woods by myself or with like a small group.

Okay. Great. So you want to camp and then you're afraid. And then so if you shine the light, what's the limited, what's the thought that goes in your head? Is it I don't have X or I'm afraid of why? What is it? I've just not, I've just, I've not bought like a, camping equipment. I've not looked at where to go. I've not told a buddy or two that I want to go do it. And I've not, I've just not planned anything. Make it more personal. Why haven't you planned anything? What's all the fear? Fear of what? Fear of being out at night in the wilderness by myself. And that's the perfect stopping point. Because whenever you say the fear out loud, it sounds really fucking stupid. It's like, I'm afraid of being outside at night by myself. First of all, I'm not

going to be by myself. I'm going to be with somebody because it's more fun with friends. Secondly, like, whatever. It's not that scary. I could do it. Right? So like, that's the best part of like when you finally find the thing and you say it out loud, it just sort of dissolves because it's like, well, that sounds silly. Like, yeah, it doesn't have, it doesn't have as much power once I say it out loud.

Once I shine the light on it, it's like scurries away. Well, you got to get your gym set up then. It's not that hard. I sent you the link. I know. Yeah, I have everything. The limiting thing was I don't know how to do home improvement projects. Like, I'm never, I'm not handy.

Dude, do you know how to cut like a slice of bread? That's all you have to do when you lay down the floor. Even easier than that, I was like, I could pay this guy to do it. Okay, that'll solve my problem. Oh, the guy's not responding. Okay. And I just let it fizzled there. It's like, what?

No, I want this. Why I want this? Why would I just let this wait? And we all agree that one common denominator in most of the things you want is you've come up with an excuse to wait. Like, I'll give you another example. I hope he doesn't mind me saying this. But I had this guy who kind of was like an apprentice for me for a few months. And I basically was like, he was like, hey, I want to learn about content and stuff like that.

And I said, cool. You come help me research and write stuff. And I'll teach you some things. And after a few months, he went on his way and it was like, cool, go out there in the world. And since then, I think I could say his name. So is this guy, Chris, I don't even know how to say his last name. Chris has his look. I don't know.

It's crazy last name. Redhead guy. He works at Goldman. Redhead guy, exactly. So he was a college student at the time. So when I was talking to be a student at Yale. And it's after he did. Nice guy.

I've talked to him. super nice guy after he did the apprenticeship he grew his twitter following from i think like 2,000 followers he just hit 100 000 yesterday or two days ago and he texts me he's like dude i hit 100 000 like thank you you know i learned a bunch of stuff you showed me kind of like what good writing looks like and i was like dude that's honestly it's fucking amazing like you're a college kid and you did that like that's that's super impressive um and he's like you know but i'm thinking about like where do i go from here i said well it's real simple like what do you want like i'm not i'm not going tell you what to do next. Like, what do you want to do next? And then go do that thing. It's really that

simple. And he's like, oh, you know, I want to start a company. And I said, okay, cool. So did you take that banking job that I was telling you not to take? He's like, yeah, you know, I've been here for a little bit. I don't think that might be the long thing, long term thing for me. I think I want to start a company someday. I said, oh, you're waiting. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've just, you know, like, I said, okay, why don't you just quit your job and go do that? He's like, well, you know, and he gave me another reason for waiting. I said, okay, so why don't you just go do it? And he goes, well, if I did do it, I'd want to do it with my friend. He's really, really smart. Super smart guy. But he has to wait a year because he's graduating. He's not graduated yet.

So, you know, I thought I'd just wait, you know, a year. I said, wait a year, huh? 10% of your 20s are just going to give away? Wow. It was precious asset. Just pissing it away, huh? Just waiting, huh? Wait. Wow. And I was just like, and he's like, yeah, you know, and then also, you know, I'm making good money right now. I want to save up so I have enough runway, you know, money, money is it always like, you know, it does matter at the end of the day.

I said, how about this? How about instead of telling me a bunch of reasons why you're not going to do the thing you want to do, you just start telling me some reasons you are going to do

the thing you're going to, you want to do. Try that. It works much better. Trust me. And I was like, kind of a dick about it, but it's really that fucking simple.

And I notice, and it's not just him. I know this because I do this. I'm guilty of waiting for bullshit or coming up with reasons to wait. And so whoever's listening to this that needs to hear this, don't wait. My trainer says, wait is a weight. Wait is a weight on your back and stop waiting.

So I had a friend who, and we can move on after this, but I don't know, I think people will like this, but I had a friend who on, I do this all the time. So if I have friends or people who I care about, on April 5th, I'm at the point where I've saved enough money to move forward with the prototyping process. I feel like I found the right engineer to partner with. It's a decent amount of money, but I think I could do it. I want to know what your thoughts are on how to launch this. I text it back. I go, if I was you, I would do this, this, this, and this. Right. This morning, I texted him. This was April 5th. I texted up today. How'd the idea turn out? He said, too expensive for me to commit my life savings. The cost in manufacturing and marketing

of a physical product were way big and much bigger compared to starting a software or internet company. Oh, wow. So you started a software company. L-O-L, no. I love it. I was about to say I'm figuring out what to do and what I'm going to stop being a worker be. And then I'll probably, I can't say, I'll probably quit after blank IPOs. Don't even know what city I'll be in next year. And it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. It will never happen. Let's imagine lovingly for this guy. It is going to happen. It's going to happen once he stops thinking that way, right? Once he stops being that way, once he changes, that'll change. And so, or she, I don't know, I don't know what it is. But basically, there's a, there's a funny thing with,

that. And, you know, I, I always wonder, like, do you be a dick or do you kind of like empathize? If you care, you be a dick. And why is that? If you care. Well, like, look, it's like, look, do you want this or not? And oftentimes I say to people, I'm like, do you really want this? I don't know if you actually want this. And I think that you just think it's cool to want this. And I don't think it's cool to want to want to. You either do or you don't. Right. You want to talk about it. Like, if you just want to talk about it, just tell me you just want to brainstorm. Right. Or you just want to shoot the shit. But if you're telling me that you want this, then I'll hold you accountable, actually. I'll say, why haven't you done this? Right. My trainer has a great one. He goes, he goes,

you know, I treat people the way they told me they want to be. So you want to be fit, right? So then if you're going to complain about doing this sets, well, the guy who's fit does this. So I'm going to treat you from the place you told me you want to be. And at any given time, you can come and say, I don't want it anymore. I change my mind. I want this instead. Cool. I'm having. I'm happy to change my treat. I'm happy to treat you differently when you tell me that you have changed your mind, that you don't want to, you don't want this anymore. You want something else. You are totally in your right to that. But let's be clear. I'm always going to ask you, did you change what you wanted? Because if you still want that thing, then I'm going to keep treating you like the person who gets that thing. And that person doesn't do or say these things. And so I'm not going to entertain it. I'm not going to be the shoulder to cry on. I'm not going to be the one who sympathizes and patty on the head and says, I understand why it's tough for you, why it's soul. hard because it's not so hard for that guy. And so be that guy. People, people, uh, people DM us a lot of interesting ideas. My reply to all of them, they go, what do you think about this? I always reply with two things. I think that's an amazing idea. And I always say it's an amazing idea. Uh, and then I say,

when are you launching? Yeah. It's always amazing. Like you're just asking for permit. You're just asking for permission. So I'm going to give you permission. Amazing. There's no reason why this can't work. Oftentimes there's a lot of reasons, but it doesn't matter. When are you launching? Right. And, uh, I do a similar. Mine says, sounds cool. They say, I have this idea. What do you think? I would love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, happen to jump on a call.

I don't even reply to any of that. I just say, sounds cool. Let me know when you launch it so I can check it out. Yes, I always say the same thing. And sometimes I'll reply months later. Like,

I'll save certain conversations and I reply. Do you want to talk about one more interesting thing on the list? I have one thing from this De Beers thing that I've just... Yeah, I've been dying to hear it. Okay, so, okay, so let me tell you this story. This kind of blew my mind. I got to open up my notes for this because I did, you know, proper, proper research for this.

So why don't you put your notes in this document so I can see them? Oh, it's just really long. It's like two pages of notes, so I didn't want to blow it up for this. But let me just tell you this story. I got your full and undivided attention. You can't even read the thing. You got to listen to me, say it. All right, so somebody in my family is, was thinking about getting engaged soon.

And so the whole like engagement ring process was going on. And they were asking like, you know, all the questions you have. Because you don't usually, you don't, most people don't buy a ton of diamond rings or something like that. So they're kind of like, you know, what's the budget? You know, I see there's these four C's cut clarity, you know, which one should I care more about? Blah, blah, blah. So and and then they did this thing.

They went to a jewelry shop and they tried some. I said, just go try some on. See what you, see what you like. And I said, you're not going to buy it from there, but go to a nice shop to try things on. So you can see what shape you like, what color you like, what different prices will get you, that sort of thing. And they go and they came back and they said, hey, you ever heard about this lab grown diamond thing? And have you heard of this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Basically, I mean, that's all it is. It's diamonds grown in the lab, right? So just the way that like now you have, you know, for many different types of products for meat, they're trying lab grown meat. So what if instead of farming animals and killing them and, you know, contributing to a lot of, you know, global warming. you could just take a stem cell from a cow's shoulder and grow a filet mignon, right? That's the promise. And there's a company called Memphis Meets that's doing it. And it looks identical to the meat to a steak.

It tastes identical because it is identical, cellularly, molecularly, it is identical to a normal steak. Now, the problem right now for meat is that it costs like $10,000 a pound or something crazy. So, you know, it's not economically feasible yet. And then there's this company I was looking at potentially investing. It's called Vitro Labs. And they're doing this with leather. They're saying, hey, instead of killing animals for leather, what if we could have a cruelty-free leather? Let's just grow the skin in a lab.

And they're signing deals with, you know, big name luxury brands, you know, the sort of who's-who luxury brands that they want to offer a vegan product, but they don't want to sacrifice the quality of the material. So they said, hey, let's get you an identical material, molecularly matching material for that. Okay, so I've been interested in this lab grown trend and diamonds with the latest one. So I said, oh, interesting. Diamond, it's not the new, it's not new. It's actually much more commercially forward. It's like out there and people buy this stuff. It's growing in popularity compared to meats and leather, which are kind of like still in development. So, so I started looking into it. I was like, I was like, is this kind of like bullshit or what's going on? And here's what I found. The diamond industry itself is mostly bullshit. And a lot of people know this, but I dug into some of the history.

And here's what I found that kind of interest me. So before 1870, like diamonds weren't even like a, They were not even a considered rare. So, sorry. Yeah, they're plentiful. Sorry, before 1870, they were rare because we didn't know where to find them. So like, you know, the Maharaja in India would have it in his crown or, you know, some Egyptian person would have it in their garment. But it was so rare that you didn't even see it around.

It wasn't even a thing. It wasn't even businesses around it. But then in 1870, they find this huge deposit in, I think, South Africa. And so now diamonds become this like, they realize, oh, diamonds are actually not in short supply. There's tons of diamonds. They found this huge thing. And so all these miners go in like a gold rush, basically, and they start establishing diamond mines in South Africa. And then like six months later, they all realize like, shit, there's now too much supply.

We're flooding the market with this stuff. And we're all going out of business. Nobody can afford to run the mine because we're flooding so much supply. So the miners, but no, so the miners like, damn it, if everybody else just stopped, I could make a bunch of money. but it's like the prisoner's dilemma. Nobody wants to be the one that stops, so they all keep going and they all put each other out of business.

And so there's this guy, Cecil Rhodes, who comes around, and Cecil Rhodes starts buying up the mines. He's like, I need to aggregate all this supply in South Africa. So he starts aggregating it all. He basically buys mines from,

one of the farms is called something, something, the brothers were called De Beers. That was their last name. So it becomes the De Beers like mining an exploration group or something like that, some name like that.

So that's where De Beers, the Diamond Company, comes from. And so De Beers became this over the next 100 years, De Beers becomes this monopoly. They control 90% of the supply. And the reason diamonds are considered rare is because De Beers owns all the supply and they just limit how much they produce from the mines. They could produce 10 times more. But instead, they intentionally restrict supply at the mining level.

Then they, this is so monopolistic is crazy. So then they created this group of 200 people, only 200 people were allowed to buy from them called site holders. and they said, oh, you were invited. So we control all the supply. So we decide who we sell to. And we only are going to sell these 200. And then you can go sell to merchants. Now they could kind of hold these 200 people accountable and say,

hey, why is this person over here selling at this low price? Cut them off. And like they just cut you off. And if a new mine popped up, they would go like the mafia. And they'll go and just sort of like through violence, intimidation or like even just like market tactics. They would basically like put the mine out of business and take it over. So like let's say you discovered a mine that had a bunch of yellow diamonds.

They would flood the market with yellow diamond supply, crush your economics. You'd go out of business and they'd take over your mind. And so they would just find whatever you produce and they would just flood you. And so all the way up until about the year 2000, they owned 90% of this thing. But I was like, I was like, why is this? So if it's not rare, where does the value come from? And so the story is basically diamond mining wasn't big business right away. It was like an okay business.

It was a good business. and then it started to like kind of like plateau and it wasn't really growing that fast. So in 1936 they say, we got to do something. We got all this diamond production, but there's not enough demand now for the diamond production. So they go down Madison Avenue and they find this ad agency. And they find this one guy.

So everybody who loves diamonds today and every girl is demanding a diamond engagement ring, it's because of this guy George Locke back in the day. And they hire this guy and they say, look, we need you to create demand for diamonds. And at that time, before 1936, people were not even giving diamonds as an engagement ring. It wasn't even like rings weren't even an engagement process. It was like very rare that people would do that.

Most people just kind of did an engagement as sort of a different sort of agreement. And so he does a big study and he says, okay, look, what we need to do is this. We need to get men to buy the diamonds for women. And we need the women to believe that diamonds are the way that your man can show you. So for women, it's like if you want the man to say he loves you, we need diamond to represent love. Diamond equals love. That's like one side of the board.

They said on the other side, men, the bigger, the better. The more expensive the diamond, the more of a man you are. So it became diamonds equals worth. And it was like some like ridiculously obvious statement that they came out with, right? So they had a bunch. So they've done like diamonds or forever is was named. I think one of the most, I think it was named the marketing slogan of the century or something like that.

Of the last hundred years, it was voted that Diamonds or Forever was the best market hook created because it created this like demand for diamonds. So why is that? So there's a bunch of like aspects to this. So first, how did they build demand? Well, it was basically in old school influencer marketing. So they decided, all right, we're going to make diamonds look like the gift of love. And so they went to Hollywood and they went to all the producers and they said, we will give you producers.

Here's a beautiful diamond for you to give your wife. Here's a diamond for you for you for you on your bracelet or your necklace, your earrings or whatever. and they basically said, hey, we will give you these diamonds for free, producer, but you need to have a scene in your movie, the climax of your movie, where the man professes his love for the woman, he needs to open up a box with a diamond ring inside. And then she needs to have an amazing reaction, like she needs to be won over because the guy did that.

And so they went to all these movie producers, and the movies now all have these scenes, and you could go back and watch this montage of before this, nobody was doing this in movies. All of a sudden, every movie, this was the key scene, And the guy pronounces his love for the woman and gives her a diamond. And she says, oh, my God, I love you too. It kisses him back.

And so they, like, use that kind of inception. Then they went to fashion designers and I said, hey, would it be a shame if you didn't say that the trend next year, the big trend is that diamonds are in? Let's call it the trend to diamonds. So they created this thing called the trend to diamonds. And they just got all these fashion designers to ambiguously say there's a trend to diamonds. So now you have the high art people saying this. And then you have Hollywood showing it.

And that was like the main sort of brainwashing mechanism of the world at the time. No social media, no nothing. And so then the ad agency starts getting clever. They're like, all right. How do we make the diamond proportionate to the man's success? What if it was you have to spend one month's salary on this? And they went with one month salary. And then they opted to two months salary.

And then they had an advertising campaign that said, how do you make two months of salary last forever by a diamond? Oh, man. Amazing, right? And then they were like, okay, look, but hey, we all know that diamonds are actually not that rare, right? So we can't have people reselling these. So they said, oh, first of all, if you make it the ultimate gift of love, the woman

won't want to sell it, the guy won't want to sell it. And then even if they do, here's what we'll do. Dealers, the merchants who sell this, you cannot take diamonds back. because diamonds, even though they are like seen in the world as like a store of value, it's like, oh, just jewelry. It's like, you know, jewelry is kind of like a safe way to store your wealth. It's like a car. If you take a diamond out of the shop, it's lost 50% of its resale value.

And the dealer doesn't want you to know that. So they won't even make you an offer to buy it back. So they banned merchants from like making offers to buy it back because they didn't want the merchant to tell the customer, hey, once you buy this thing, it's worth half. And so they said, don't even make an offer. And so they kind of like killed the recent. sale market and then they created this diamonds are forever campaign so that you would not want to sell your diamond.

And they did this country by country. So like you can look in any country, you can see this chart. So it's like the U.S. goes through this curve where no one's buying diamonds to like 75% of engagements are all through diamonds. And then 90% it gets to like 90 something percent our engagements are done through diamonds. In Japan, they're like, oh, we have no market share in Japan. They go, they do the same marketing playbook there.

It goes from 5% of brides have a ring. to 60% and 20 year in a 20 year period. And De Beers owned 70% of that market share, right? And then they started creating other marketing gimmicks like the right hand ring. It's like if you're an independent woman, you know, you don't want this ring on your left hand that shows that you're kind of owned by this man. Where a right hand ring? You need a diamond on your right hand.

That's the right hand ring. The 25th anniversary ring. The upgrade ring. Like, you know, just show that you were doing better than you were before. And so they created all this, like, they literally fucking created the demand and they restricted the supply. It's kind of unbelievable. So that's kind of like the core of it.

There's some other stuff like, you know, there's like sort of the blood diamonds thing, which is like the bad PR around it, which is that these diamond mines were a kind of shitty conditions to be in. But B, they were like basically using profits from the mine to fund like war in the area, like militia war in the area. So that's kind of like you're basically funding conflict in a way. And so the diamond industry tried to like, after that movie blood diamond came out, they tried to like clean up their image.

But then lab-grown diamonds started coming out. And so lab-grown diamonds come out. It's like, oh, shit. So first, they create a marketing campaign that says, real is rare. And they basically were like, if it's real, that's what makes it rare, which is what makes it valuable. So if it's a lab-grown thing, that's nothing. And they refuse to acknowledge it. They refuse to sell it.

They refuse to care about it. But customers were like, dude, it's indistinguishable from a diamond. The naked eye cannot tell what's a real diamond, like mine from the earth. or made in a lab because materially, again, the composition is the same. It's not like a fake, it's not like a fake diamond. It's the same material. It was just grown in a lab rather than growing in the earth. And so I always get the Schenko commercials. Right. And they say like you don't want to get them from a lab from a lab. It's just like every other one. They're all the same. Exactly. Exactly. It's not special. And so the problem is it's still growing in popularity because they sell for about

30% of the price. So you can get like a way bigger ring that looks identical to a diamond ring that is made of a diamond. But it just happened to have been like, it's like, do I want my coffee sourced from, you know, Canada or from Philippines or from Africa? Like, it's kind of like, where's it's sourced? So some people care, but it's growing in popularity. So then De Beers and the diamond industry, they like did the last kind of like stone cold killer move. For years, they were like lab grown is fake. It's bullshit. Don't buy it.

But it was just growing in popularity anyways. So they were like, all right, shit, we got to do something else. So then they create a brand called Lightbox. And they start producing lab grown diamonds. Everyone's like, oh my God, does this mean that lab is legit? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Lab is for people who can't afford diamonds. So we're going to sell ours.

So they undercut the price like crazy. So normally a LabBron diamond will cost like 30 or 40% the cost. So it's like a 50% discount. And but they started pricing. There's at like a 90% discount of a real diamond just to ruin the market value of the brand perception of Labgoon diamonds. And they said, this is for, they said, they came out in the state, but they said this is for emotionally shallow events. It's like a Sweet 16 or like a Kinsenero party.

Buy the lab run for that. So this is their latest tactic to try to like keep up this big myth, this big lie that diamonds are this rare, valuable, precious gem. And it's like actually complete bullshit. This is amazing research. This is a good one. This is a very good story. And what, but here's the thing where we are. Maybe it will change is us in our 30s, we all do the same thing, which is right.

before we get engaged, we say, this is bullshit. I will not stand for this. I will not pay this amount of money. My budget, I'm going to set it really low. I'm going to get a fake one or I'm going to get a lab girl. I will not buy into this. And then you get into it and you say, fuck it. It's going to make her happy.

She's going to make her happy. Yeah. And we all refuse to buy into it. Well, more and more people are starting to go the other way. But, but yeah, it's amazing that this is still the majority, right? Given now that lab grown is visibly identical and you can get a way better looking diamond for cheaper price, it's amazing that like the utility doesn't overwhelm. But like the branding is that embedded.

It's that strong after so long. And actually there's one other part, which is that eventually, you know, the diamonds do, the De Beers did lose their monopoly, I should say. So like in the year 2000, they basically broke up the monopoly because they're getting a lot of public pressure as a monopoly. the buyers were kind of sick of being like constantly threatened by De Beers. And then people found new mines in Australia and all these other places where they couldn't like, you can kind of just in Africa, you can kind of like coerce people. But in Australia, it's a lot harder to like go coerce a minor in public to like just fucking give you their mind. And so they've changed their business strategy.

So and the last factor, by the way, is there's this guy, the family that kind of like created the real monopoly is the Oppenheimer family. and they've run this thing for years. First guy, Oppenheimer. How rich are they? They're very wealthy. So the business, I think, is like a $10 billion business. I think they sold half the stake for $4,5 billion recently. And I also think they own like 50% of Louis Vuitton or something like that.

They own some other stuff too. But anyways, they couldn't, in the family, there's no one to take it over anymore. No one wants to run the business. Nobody, none of the young generation, they didn't want, they don't want their business. There's no air. And so they're like, shit, there's no air. Business is still good, but it's getting harder, and we don't have somebody to fight it. And so they actually switched strategy.

So they broke up the monopoly. And now they shifted from like 90% market share to 30%. And then they started rolling out their own retail stores. And profits have gone up, but they're kind of like their control has gone down. The power has gone down. And I would have to, if I had to bet, you know, I'm a very amateur historian. And so I've read a lot of these stories. If I had to bet, I would bet that one,

Once you break up a monopoly for a family-owned business, I would argue that the odds are that the family are now actually going to get richer. It seems like when- Because what? What do you mean? Well, so for example, standard oil. This is the same thing. In the 1920s, Teddy Roosevelt said, nope, standard oil, you are the debiers of America.

You own 80% of oil production. You can't do it anymore. So they broke it up into five or eight different companies. And some of those companies are Exxon, mobile. BP, Conoco, and like five or six other companies that you probably know of. And it made Rockefeller get significantly richer because he owned a small stake into each one. And they all competed with each other. And they boost their revenue, boost their profits. And they all made. And he made significantly more money because of that. And that was the big source of his wealth is when they broke up with a company.

And I would say that if Facebook and Instagram had to compete with each other, it would actually actually make Zuckerberg richer. Same with YouTube and Google. If they had to compete, it would probably make them better and thus the owners a little bit more rich. Exactly. I agree. That's why when people talk about breaking up Facebook, it's like, well, you know what this is going to do, right? They're all going to become more valuable and the services will become better, but it does open up more room for competition. Whereas when they have an absolute stranglehold, then, you know, it may not be as lucrative and it may not be as good of a product, but it's very hard to break, break in. Yeah, That was great.

Well, there's also like an opportunity here, right? Like, as I learned this, I was like, okay, I know this is not new, but if I just sample the population, it's like on one hand, you do two surveys. One survey they did was, hey, did you know about lab grown, blah, blah, blah, here's like, look, you can't tell the difference. Look, it's made of, it's actually the same material composite. It's the same material as diamond. It's just grown from a lab rather than mine in the earth.

And hey, you don't have to worry about the, like, ethics of the mining because it's not, not mine from the earth. 70% of like millennials are like, yeah, I'm totally open to that. That sounds great. But then at the same time, the market share hasn't caught up yet. And so I think that even though this is not a brand new thing, I think that people could create really valuable brand. I'm curious if somebody listened to this, it wants to go and basically take an education-based approach to selling this. Because I think the more you educate people, the more they want to, like, the more willing they are to buy. And if you're the one who educates them, you get that first rider of refusal to sell them, sell them their first lab grown, uh, dot, And I think I would bet that millennials won't do this, but what's the generation after that? Z? I believe they would. And the 18, because, you know, they're so politically correct. And they're very, they, they have a high bullshit detector, I believe.

And for me and my friends, a lot of us were like, this is not the battle I'm going to choose. Right. I'm just going to, I'm just going to, you know, buy my way out of this and we'll fight a different battle. Right. With them, I would argue that there's a good chance that something like that could happen. I don't think it will happen now, but I think in 10 years when the 18-year-olds get in their 20s and 30s. And I would bet money. I would bet my money. I think that that could work as well. So I'm bullish on this too. Yeah, that's great. All right. Do we want to do it? This is a good story.

Yeah, we, that, that, this has got to be our, our YouTube clip. That was a very well research and very good story. Good job. Very much. So that's the episode. We'll see. let's see if this one's a hit. I think it was kind of interesting. What do you think, then? I thought it was great. The De Beers stuff is super, super interesting. And the intensity stuff.

The sushi story was great. Loved it. Speaking of intensity, you dunked on somebody this week, you said? Did you really? Can you dunk? How tall are you? He's Mormon. Of course he can dunk.

So I'm six four. Apparently. It's like the basket. Isn't it? basketball of the like whenever all my Mormon friends they it seems like they always are playing basketball on Sunday all of our churches have basketball courts in them and so even like non-mormons play basketball in our church is a lot now are we talking six four you could do windmills or we're barely scraping the dunk through or what's going on so you know like when I was younger when I was in

high school I could do like tomahawks and and 180s and like pretty good dunks but you know over the pandemic, I didn't, I didn't play basketball for like almost a year and a half. So I didn't know if I still had it. And last night, I just drove. I was going down the lane. It was actually a buddy of mine jumped with me. And I wasn't planning on doing him like that. But I was just, I was there. And I had to do it. I dunked on him. Can you please send me a video of something like this? And I would share it. I'll, I believe it. I don't think you're a guy that would lie at all. But I would love to see this. I don't think that you're a guy that would even exaggerate a little bit. I would love to see this. I don't have. I don't have. I don't have. I don't have. I don't. I don't. I don't have. I don't. I the video of me dunking on the guy, but I sure, I have video of me dunking, so I can, yeah. Can, send me it to me. I would share that in a heartbeat. I would love to brag about that. I, I, are you, you're six four? We've never seen Ben in real life, by the way. You're six four. Yeah. Last company I worked for was all remote and, uh, we had a offsite. We all met each other for the first time. And everyone was blown away. They were like, oh, I didn't know you were so tall. I asked people. Like, if I, if I, if I weren't, if the company told me,

she's like, you have short energy. I can't believe you're tall. Wow. I know. I know. I I know. Dude, I saw this really hilarious TikTok yesterday where this girl just goes, oh, I go around on live streams and I just give people compliments for, I call it, I go, we love our short kings. And she goes to tall guys streams, like normal height or taller guy's streams. And she goes, yeah, we stand our short king. We love our short king with kissy face. And the guys, and she clipped together their reaction.

And they're just, they're all like, we love our short king. And they get excited. They're like, wait, what? I'm six and a quarter. Like, I don't know who you call a short king. And then like everybody gets like super butt hurt about it right away. It like really fucks out their brain. And she goes, it's hilarious.

Just call them like my short king. Ben, please send me a video of you Dunkin on Fools. I would love that. That would make, that would make my day. I'll send it to you right now. Sean, Sam, how tall are both you? I'm six. I'm six ones.

Yeah, we're both. We're both of similar height and weight, I think. I mean, like, when, when people meet both of us, they say, you guys are much bigger than we thought. And I would say that when we're together, we look big. And Sean, you look taller than you are, I think, too. Oh, good. I don't know what that means, but I'll take it. It's better than me called a short king.

Well, I think it's because he got big hair. That's right. That's right. You know what I don't get? Do you guys feel tall at six foot and six foot one? No. You feel average height, right? Like, to me, that's like six foot six.

But like, if you look at global average, or even American average. Like the American male height is like only five nine or some. Yeah, yeah. It's like it's short. You guys are super tall, which I don't know. There's a disconnect.

Then you're a giant. I guess so. Yeah, by that logic. No, I don't, I don't feel tall. I feel thicker than the average person.

That's for sure. And you are. So Ben, when you dunked on the guy, did you like scream? What did it feel like? I mean, I've never dunked on anyone.

I've only, I've dunked a volleyball once. That's the closest I ever got. It was like, actually not even a volleyball. something smaller than a volleyball. I mean, that's pretty good. That is pretty good.

That was like in high school. So, wasn't great. The guy was a friend of mine. I had, we'd been playing some pickup at a Mormon church, actually.

And I just won like four games in a row. And I think like morale is pretty low. So I just played it cool. I didn't say anything. I just kind of randomly. By the way, I'm not being prejudiced. It's a thing that Mormons like,

it's like, I've always known that there was basketball courts at the church. And it's like your church is like a. community event, right? You hang out there after church. Yeah, we have weekday events there sometimes, especially for like youth and like, yeah, people play basketball there. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so it's a thing. It is a thing. It is a thing. Sam. It's a Mormon thing to go dunk on someone politely as you did. Like it's such a

morning to politely dunk on somebody. And then like, and then like to drink a Coke. That's a thing too, right? A lot. Many Latter-day Saints, many, many members of the church do drink a lot of soda because you don't drink coffee or tea, but I don't. Yeah, whenever I go to Utah, like I'll go to the drive-thru at these like soda places and they've got the best sodas, like the weirdest combinations. I love it. I'm, I'm team Mormon, man. I'm an honorary member, I hope. Sam, are you a Coke or Pepsi guy? Coke. Coke zero all the way, all day. Ben, Coke or Pepsi? I've actually never had either in my entire life. What? Amazing. That's amazing. Okay, great. I saw this great Reddit thread that was like brands, if their slogans were true,

like truthful brand slogans. And the Pepsi one was, is Pepsi okay? And I thought it's so fucking clever. It's like the thing at the restaurant, you order a Coke and then they hit you with it. Is Pepsi okay? All right. That's the episode. Let's see. We got to cut those into clips. We had a bunch of good ones. See you. what I want to.