My First Million - Shaan Goes to LA, The Number 2 Guy Network and Getting Bucked Up

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Episode 482: Shaan leaves his house! In this episode, Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) tells Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) about his wild trip to LA. You’ll hear about an NBA players “cheating agreement” with his wife, the difference between LA obnoxious vs. SF obnoxious, why the Number 2 Guy network is widely underrated, how Bucked Up scaled to $250M / yr, and much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd • Shaan's Personal Assistant System • Power Writing Course • Daily Newsletter • Small Boy Newsletter Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton • Ideation Bootcamp • Copy That — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:30) Sam & Shaan’s Cadence  (5:00) Shaan’s LA trip (9:30) CEO perplexed by sweaty startups (14:45) How CEO turned failing company around (24:05) NBA player’s agreement with his wife (26:10) LA obnoxious vs. SF obnoxious  (33:35) Rich person who donated +$10M to a high school  (37:00) Shaan's VC friend who only goes all-in (42:30) Neighborhoods, not cities (46:00) The best networker Shaan’s ever met (49:15) The Number 2 Guy Network (52:10) Bucked Up: $250m / yr supplement company (1:00:25) The Enhanced Games (1:06:00) Shaan’s Youtube channel idea (1:10:00) Shaan’s Erewhon experience — Links: • Little Big Details - http://littlebigdetails.com/ • Bucked Up - http://buckedup.com/ • Aron D’Souza - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/arondsouza  • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — 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

He'd just come back to it. We're talking about a whole different topic. He's like, Bigot tires. Really? You could just own 12 bigot tires and that's it? He would just come back to a new example of one of these like shitty brick and mortar chains that are like, you know, so easy, sweaty cash flow business. 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. All right. We're going to start the pod. But before we do, we have an announcement. We are looking to hire a new producer. This producer is going to be the person who sits live on these podcasts, helps us edit them and make the videos in a podcast popular, helps us get guests. So we're hiring.

We're hiring. I almost call them a band manager. It's like, you know, the band manager's job is to make sure that the band blows up, right? And so this podcast has grown a lot. It's time that we find somebody who wants to take it to the next level, booking amazing guests, helping us brainstorm great content. segments and be like, guys, people love it when you do the blue color side hustles. Let's make sure we hit those every week and, you know, keep us on our A game. Make the audio, the video tighter, make the YouTube channel better, make it pop.

We want somebody who's great at this. Ideally, we hire somebody who's already a fan of the show and is looking to basically hang out with us a few times a week, see how we operate, loves making great content, loves getting content made, and has the, I don't know, like kind of like the taste and the skills. to put out a great content product. And that's what we're looking for. So if that's you, you can reach out. You can email me.

It's Sean at Sean Puri.com. So S-H-A-A-N at S-H-A-N-P-U-R-I.com. And I'll forward it to our team over at HubSpot that is vetting and interviewing everybody. So we're going to hire somebody this next few weeks. And it's a full-time position. If you're an amateur, you've never done this before, maybe you'll get noticed, but you have to be really good.

We're not looking for people who are trying to take huge risks on. We're trying to find people who are the best. We've already had hundreds of people apply, so we really want the best people out there. If you've never done this before, you could still throw your resume out there and try to impress us, but make sure you do that. If you've already been there, done that, that's awesome too.

So check it out. Email Sean at Sean Puri.com. All right. Let's get to the pod. All right. You ready? The greatest show I've ever done. A lot of people have, we got a lot of good comments on the last show. People were saying, someone asked me an interesting question.

They go, your guys' cadence is really good. You guys, you talk really fast and it feels quickly. And then someone said, do you do something to one another? Because Sean and I are remote. Do you do something to one another to let each other know that it's your turn to speak? And I was thinking, I think we just have, we just know each other all enough that we know how to do it. But there is something that we each do, at least I pay really attention. to you when you do it.

And I try to give you the signal, which is you open up your mouth when you want to say something. And then you let it sit open for a minute. Do you know what I mean? The Zoom hack, because you're like, you're like, and the little is without the sound is basically just

set lighting now, but you know, because on the recording, they're not going to see it. So it's a silent signal, whereas if you were doing that in person, it'd be a little strange. But yeah, it definitely works. The hard one is during interviews. Because during interviews, the guest is talking. we don't know when they're going to stop.

They're opening up probably a bunch of like paths you could go down. Like they mentioned three things. They said it was really hard. Then they said they met a guy who was the guy. And they said that it really changed the perspective. But how? What did it change? And so you're like, and then we don't know who's going to go.

We're both pretty insatiably curious. I have a bad habit of just like talking too much in general in life. And so then it's like we don't know which path we're going to go. And we don't know who's going to decide. So a team interview, I think, is really hard. That's very hard. The interviews are easier in person, but what we do this now with just us, I think it's way easier on Zoom because I've gotten so used to it.

Also, I've recorded in studios like you have done lately. You're going to talk about your trip in L.A. I cannot stand when there's a third party there because I'm constantly trying to entertain her or him like the person there. But yeah, what people don't see is we do a good job of opening our mouth. just a little bit. So the other person knows when it's done. Pro tips for everybody.

Yeah, that's what you learned after three years of intense podcasting, one of the top-ranked business podcasts in the world. You don't get these kind of insights anywhere else. Oh, my God. Someone was like, you guys are so fast-paced. I'm like, yeah, it wears me out. I usually always have to take like a 20 or 30-minute nap. I just close my eyes and lay down on this couch.

That guy's definitely just listening to us on 2X and is like, wow, these guys are strange. You know, he doesn't know he hit the button on his app. So you just went to L.A. Last episode, I asked you about it. You said, I'm going to do a whole thing where I tell you about it. I love these things because you're very observant. You have great observations, and you don't ever leave your house.

So when you do, you're extra, you have great observations. Boy meets world. And the thing about you is you've got like a child's like awe of the world because like you're so sheltered and you live in such a bubble. And so you say these things that I'm used to, but I love just hearing it anyway. A Sam far backhanded compliment. One of the finest. Yes, all those things are true. There used to be a website back in the day.

I don't know if you remember. I don't know if it's still up. Probably is a little big details. Did you ever see this website? No. And it's a great little blog. It's a Tumblr blog, actually. That's like Tumblr's not even around anymore.

But what they did was- Last post, 2017. They would just, it was like a swipe file. So they would just capture any example of like a small thing that a company did well. So, like on a Google Doc, on a Google Doc, when you go to share it and you don't name it, it just takes the first line of what you spoke about. And it makes that the title of the Google Doc as opposed to just naming it untitled document. Yeah, exactly.

Or like it says on Google, if you Google the word curning, every word that shows up in the results has a large amount of curning, right? Like the font. Or it'll be like, you know, the error, like the 404 page of this site, instead of just saying error, has this really fun fucking poem or whatever it is. And so I love this website. I love the name, little big details. I love this site because it just gave me a bunch of inspiration back in the day when I was more of like a PM product designer type guy.

But third, little big details are the secret of life, right? I've said this before. It's the moments in between the moments. Like it's not the big moments that matter. It's the moments in between those moments that matter. This is the product version of that. It's like here's the little things. remember the first time I used Slack and our designer typed a hex code.

They were like, oh, yeah, it's going to be color, you know, number 8, 8, 3, 3, 3, 4F. And then it just, it automatically swapped that to the color swatch so we could see it. It added the color swatch to it in line. Right. And we were just like, what the, like, it was a mic drop moment in our, and our every, like, our design team was like, okay, I fuck with this product. Like, they, like somewhere in this, a designer was like, you know, it'd be cool.

It'd be cool if you could actually see the preview of the thing because nobody knows what these numbers mean. And like, I don't even know how they did it with the emoji size thing. And it was just like a little big detail. And there was a bunch of those with great products like Slack that kind of like, we were in the first 100 users of Slack or something. And so it was very clear that like this thing might become a thing because the care that they took to this. So anyways, the things I want to talk about, the LA trip, they're not the big moments. It's not, oh, I met with this famous person and here's the groundbreaking insight. I tried to find a bunch of the little big details,

a bunch of the moments in between the moments I think were interesting in their own way. This is for two reasons. One, I don't really want to brag or I can't really talk too much about the people I met and what they said because it'd be kind of airing out those private meetings. But two, I think there's just a lot of interesting stuff in these or at least I think there could be.

So I wrote down a bunch of very vague but slightly intriguing bullet points and you can pick. But I will say here's the structure. I go to L.A. with Ben, business partner, Ben, we do three things. So we, here's the daily schedule. Morning is basically meetings and a workout. That was the goal. Midday was typically recording a podcast live in person with someone that we admired,

respected or thought was really cool. And then the evening was always a dinner with kind of like founder friends who were almost always people who had sold their companies. sold one or more companies in the past. And we did that for five days straight. So we would leave the house at 8 a.m. We would get back around midnight and crash and then do it all again the next day. Oh, my God.

And for me, who's someone who's almost always at home on it. I have two little kids that are under the age of, you know, four years old. So, you know, I'm on a kid schedule. Typically, this was crazy. But it was an awesome, was an awesome experience. So now take it away. All right. So you have a list of,

maybe 20 things. I bolded about half of them that intrigued me. I want to learn about big company CEOs talking about laundry mats. All right. So this is the story. We're out at one of the kind of like after dinner, just like let's go hang at this other place. So we're hanging at this other place. And it's me. It's business partner Ben. And it's our buddy Sue. And we're hanging out and um ben goes hey that's so and so and be looking for us i'm like i don't even i don't recognize the name or the face so i'm like what are you talking about he's like we did a call with him two years ago and i was like what he's like yeah we did a zoom call for like 20 minutes with that guy he introduced us to this other guy and i was like i don't i mean i can't for the life of

me remember this guy and this guy by the way doesn't remember us either right like he doesn't recognize us either. Ben, he's got like, freaking, like, you know how China has the facial recognition software that this running at all times using AI? Yeah, Ben has that. This happens like five or six times during the trip. He would see someone walking by and be like, that's that girl from Twitter. I'm like, what? How do you know this? And so he does it. He's like, hey, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, surprise. And he's like, hey, it's Ben. We talked two years ago on a Zoom call for 20 minutes. And he's like, I think you see the guy kind of like doesn't really know what's going. on. They're having dinner. So we merged dinners.

Wait, did you really? Yeah, we just merge hangouts. Their crew was awesome. So they're their best friends from business school. They went to Harvard Business School together. One of them runs, one of them is now CEO of a public company. Can't say which one, but he's such a funny guy. So assuming multi-billion, multi-billion dollar company. Yeah, over $1 billion. So we're hanging out. And this guy who's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company at the moment, he goes, He's like, yeah, he was like, oh, you do a podcast? What's a podcast?

What is it called? Oh, yeah, I'll check it out. Right. And he's kind of like, he's like one of those people that's like busy actually doing something. So he's like was kind of detached from like the world of like Twitter and podcast and like content creators and all the stuff. But as we're talking, he's like, oh, you know one thing I did see? What's with all these like entrepreneurs who own laundromats? And HVACs and shit.

Yeah. They're just buying laundromats. They're just making like a million dollars a year. We're owning a laundromat. Like what is this? They can't be true. He's like, this is, he's like, either this is not true and they're lying or this is true. What the hell are we all doing?

Why don't we all owning like 15 laundromats? He's like, it can only be one of two situations. So we had this hilarious conversation with this guy. But there's not a third situation of it is true and it's kind of stupid. No, he was like, if it's true that these things are as, you know, sort of simple and cash flowy as pop as they sound, why would we all not just own 15 of these? and call it a day. And he's like, and if it's not true, why the hell are they talking about it like it is? And I just thought it was so funny because it was like smart person.

It's kind of like when you, if you took a really healthy person to like a grocery store and walk through the snack aisle, they'd be like, so this is all just sugar? You'd be like, well, yeah. It's like, so all the kids food is sugar and then all the adult food is like sugar and salt. Like what? Do you eat this? Why wouldn't you just eat normal food? And you're like, I mean, I can't defend it.

It's just the way, I don't know, it's just what it is. That's how he was talking about like entrepreneurial content that he's run into on social media, just like in passing while he's like trying to like go see friends photos. He's like, why is this entrepreneur telling me that they make so much money so easily doing something so stupid and hands off? He's like, it's either not hands off. It doesn't make that much money or we are all idiots.

And it because it is hands off and makes that much money. And I just thought it was such a like, it was so funny the way he was ranting about it. And he was just like kept and then every 15 minutes during the conversation, he'd be like, he'd just come back to it. We're talking about a whole different topic. And he's like, bigot tires. Really? You could just own 12 bigot tires and that's it. And he would just come back to a new example of one of these like shitty brick and mortar chains that are like, you know, so easy, sweaty cash flow business.

I went through this period. So I was public about this. I bought property to do an Airbnb because I was like, you. Let's see if I'm interested in that. And what I've learned is exactly what that guy feels, which is if you can make money on the internet or like through content or software or something like that, the business is so much better. You can create a huge amount of money from nothing.

You need nothing except you got to work on it. With real estate and laundry mat and shit, we're talking like single digits. If you're really lucky, tens of thousands of dollars a month in profit. And it's a pain in the butt, man. It is so hard. And you have to have a ton of money. ton of money to do it.

Like, it's quite challenging. So I understand now, I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I have the skill set. This is so stupid to do this other thing when this other, when this internet thing is so much easier. I feel, I totally understand what he's saying. And so the other great story this guy told. So I try to do this without giving me too much info.

So he, you know, he takes over as CEO of this company. He wasn't the original CEO. He becomes, he gets hired as CEO or become CEO. And now this company has like, it's like has big scale, but it's not profitable. So the stock was getting kind of hammered and the company wasn't doing so well because it's not profitable. And so there's all these theories. So if you if you just listen to like the pundits, they would be like it's a category problem. Like this category can't be profitable because of A, B, C, and D.

They're sort of like, it's more like they're all theorizing about it. And they made it sound like it's just a law of. physics that it's just not going to work bad category like like like like grocery delivery yeah like 15 minute grocery delivery or whatever right yeah yeah and so that was if you just listen to the smart pundits you would have just been like well impossible um and if you listen to the original team they'd be like um you know like yeah it's we're working on it's like no you're not dude every single customer we lose we lose money every time someone buys from us don't you recognize how big of an issue this is. Like, how did you let this go on for this long this way? And he's like,

okay, so first act as CEO, he goes to like the kind of like, let's say the place where the, the kind of the product is, is developed or made. Like it has like a real world product. It's like a, it's a, it's a business that's like tech enabled, but it has like a real world component. Yeah. Similar to like an Uber or a, like Airbnb has like, you know, there is the physical place. So the guy goes and he's like, we're like, we're like, we're like, So what'd you do? And he's like, I just sat there. I got a chair and I sat down in the middle and I just watched for eight hours straight.

He's like, I just looked. I just looked at what was going on. I had no preconceived judgments. I said, let me just watch what's actually happening here. How is it that we are losing so much money for every order that we get, every customer that we get, we lose money? How is this possible? And he just sits there and he watches. It watches.

And he's like, oh. Okay, I see. We got too many people doing too little shit and the manager is not doing what they're supposed to be doing. And so he's like, I like that guy, you're outside for half the time and therefore this person is not doing what they're doing. And these three people are all trying to do the same thing. He's like, I didn't have to like, like, it wasn't a theoretical problem and it wasn't an inevitable problem. It was just a everybody's two distance from the thing problem. Everybody, nobody just sat here for eight hours straight.

It just watched what the hell is actually going on. And they told the story how they actually turned it around, now it's profitable and like so on and so forth. And so I think that's all I can say without giving too much away. But I just love this guy. I love the story. The two things that he said out loud was the like, hey, wait, wait, wait, pause. Time out, time out.

We can all just own bigot tires and call it a day. Like if it's that easy, we should be doing it. If it's not that easy, screw those people for saying it. And secondly, he's like, I'm just going to go sit for eight hours and watch. and just really get to a first, like a clear understanding of what is actually happening before we come to any other conclusions. Will you ever do one of these things? So I dip my toes in it.

And my thing, like it's on paper, it's successful. It's just like, it's emotional baggage. What do you think about yours? Or are you ever going to do anything like that? You mean a business that has real world sweatiness? Yeah. Yeah, like for our e-com thing, we ran on warehouse for a while. So that was like, you know, ultimately my problem.

If things went wrong and I spent many weekends, you know, like breaking down a pallet and reorganizing the warehouse and making it work and looking at the numbers and being like, why is this person's, you know, maybe we should measure their rates and like, this guy's picking 80 products per hour and this one's picking 40. Is it a person thing or is this guy just lazy or what's going on? like and just dealing with all those issues. You know, one guy threatened to kill another guy today at work.

All right. There's nothing in the handbook for that. You know, this doesn't make me money, but I think it can lose me a bunch of. Did you really have that incident? You had that incident? Got a call.

That was, hey, um, this one guy just threatened to kill the other guy. Like, what should I do? Like, it was a kind of a serious threat.

He's mad. Like, I don't think he's going to do it, but he did yell it in front of everybody. And I was like, well, I think you got to fire that guy. right now and I don't know why you're on the phone with me.

And then the other person, like, why is that guy going to kill him? What did he do instead? Like, you know, can we just replace all these people with somebody else? You know, it was a, it was not a, I mean, there's, there's, it's a very hard thing. It's hard. Like getting warehouse crews that are happy, productive and kind, you know, and reliable is not like a thing for anybody. I have a friend who runs at e-commerce store and they go, I'm shutting down my warehouse tomorrow. Like, where can I move?

And we're like, oh, what happened? What happened? He is. Someone just shit all over the floor in the warehouse for no reason. And we go, dang, like, what did he do? She goes, she, what did she? Why did she do it? I was like, wow. Just for a woman to just shit on the floor in a warehouse, he's like, what? What happened? What did it take?

Was it a spite shit or was it an accident shit? I mean, the intent matters. I asked all the wrong questions, apparently, because I didn't ask that one. I had 10 questions, but that wasn't one. What about the NBA player? All right, NBA player. So we meet an NBA player in L.A. This isn't my story.

I wasn't there for this, but Ben related to me was very funny. He's like, he talked about like, yeah, so is it, it's kind of like, what do you say to these guys, right? So, like, they get a bunch of fan boys and you don't want to be a fan boy. In general, I would say there was really two. earnings. The first was, um, we go to this thing. There's a bunch of NBA players, but who cares. And like, you know, they're cool. I, I think they're cool. I think they're cool. I think it's cool what they do. But like, uh, it's hard to like, what do you do? They're not going to be your friend. Like this is like a very unlike, like what do you think

is going to happen here? Like, you go in excited. It's like, oh, this person's going to be here. You know what they're thinking. You know what they're thinking, which is like, damn, Sean, you're pretty tall. You ever lace up? Like, You know, we, we need a fifth. Like, are you interested? Like, that's what you want to happen, right? Yeah, exactly. It's like, we've been waiting for this, you know, this Indian guy with no athleticism.

Like, you know, would you like to become my best friend and come on the road with us? Like, you know, what's going to happen here? You're like, meeting Drake and to be like, hey, you're really like, you're really good at speaking. Do you happen to have a mixtape on you that I can check out? You want to just, let us hit the studio quick? Yeah. That's what you want to happen. So I think the realization was we got excited to go to this event, but it's also like, cool, this event is cool, but that's not going to happen.

Nothing's going to happen. That's awesome from this event in that way. Two things happen. We meet a team owner. Again, Ben runs facial recognition software. He's like, that guy's a minority owner of the Philadelphia 76ers or something like that. I was like, how do you know the minority owners of this? He's like, I recognize him from something I read.

Ben. And I was like, and nobody's talking to this guy because nobody knows this all kind of like older looking dude. So we go up to him. We're like, hey, you're blah, blah, blah. Normally when Ben does this, the person is so elated that somebody kind of knows them, that you're a fan of theirs. Nobody's talking to them otherwise. They're kind of like, they know they're actually pretty dope, but nobody at this event knows they're dope. This was the opposite. This guy just totally big dog dust and made us seem like we were pieces of shit. So we're like, oh, cool. I asked you 10 questions. You gave me exactly 10 words as answers.

So one word per question. And you left your AirPods in the whole time. And then you looked at us at the end like, if you asked one more question, I'm going to fucking slap you. And so we had that. Parted and walked away. And then we had the basketball player experience

where Ben takes a phone, Ben's like, oh, look, I got this photo with this, like, famous NBA player. And we had a realization. The realization was this. It's dope.

if these guys were our friends, but it's not going to happen this way. The only dope situation is not that we meet them and we're a fan of them and they recognize us as a fan, but that they're a fan of what we do and we're a fan of what they do. That's the only cool version of this is do something dope so that they have respect for you as you have respect for them. So you should actually spend your time instead of chasing them

to meet them and get a picture with them and whatever, just do dope shit, become a magnet where other people, people who are awesome will respect you and want to meet you and want to talk to you or have something that they you know some common ground that they can find peer versus fan bar yeah so like showing them your calves was not going to like cut it like oh like i run a 5 440 does that do anything for you can you jump high can you jump high those calves are like a great yeah uh i wear i wear a fit bit we have so much in common um so all right next thing was And the player's like, right?

So I have nothing to lose at this point. So we're like, so like, what's it like? Just like having, you know, tons of chicks that want to be with you. Like,

how do you do that? How do you navigate that? He's like, he's like, he's like, I got a wife. I got kids. And so he's like,

he's like, I told my wife. I said this. I don't know. Anytime somebody has that voice. Yeah. I'm in. Only good things come after that tone.

He goes, I said, baby, you're happy, right? Yeah, I'm happy. Maybe you got the house of your dreams, right? Yeah, yeah.

Baby, I gave you three beautiful children, right? Sure, they did. They're beautiful children. He goes, baby, you can buy anything you want on this credit card, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baby, you got to be called my wife, right? What more do you want, baby? What more do you want?

I just had an open conversation with my wife that, like, look, you're going to have a bunch of amazing things in your life. and so am I Oh my God I hate that by the way I hate that Of course you hate that I mean it's it's not necessarily

Something that's admirable I'm just saying it was something that was Fucking hilarious And nobody is that honest And I thought wow To have the The honesty to tell a stranger That story

Is a confidence level That I can only admire You know Do I do that with my wife? No of course not would I want to even. Oh, I do it with my wife, except it's a little bit different. It's like, hey, Sarah, look, you know if someone comes in this home, I'm going to go and fight to the death to protect you, right? Whatever you want, I'll give you. I'll do anything for you. Take out

the trash, please. Usually it's more like that. It's like, will you be the one who takes out the dishwasher today? Let you do it this week. And tomorrow when someone breaks into our home, I'll die for you. Normally, it's, normally, that's the argument that I make. Yeah. Yeah. These are all not traits, I would say, but I found it hilarious. This falls in line with just a general thing, which was people in L.A. say wild shit. Like people in L.A. are so like name dropy and money dropy. It's disgusting, isn't it?

But they're not even really even aware of it. It's crazy. Like they'll be like, this is made up example, but like, yeah, yeah, we can meet at my place. It's over on, you know, Beverly and whatever. It's a $4.2 million property. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why did you add that at the end? Like completely unnecessary information, complete brag out of nowhere. And I just kept getting sideswiped by brags as I was walking through L.A.

Just, oh, oh, sir, you dropped this. Oh, that's, oh, that's a producer you know. Yeah, that's a name. Okay, here you go. Take that. I couldn't believe it. And I think SF is obnoxious. San Francisco is obnoxious in its own.

way. Which ways? You'll be like, oh, I'm going to eat dinner. They're like, dinner is, you know, actually a necessary study show. I say, what? Dude, I just want to eat dinner. Like, don't, like, make me, like, we don't have to, like, be transhuman right now. Like, you know, we don't have to like, like, not everything has to be a thing or like,

you know, we don't have to use AI to like, you know, go get a smoothie right now. But like, you know, San Francisco is obnoxious in its own ways. But the L.A. version of being obnoxious, I found to be very strange. Yeah, it makes me really uncomfortable whenever I'm there. It's every city is a dick measuring contest, but the type that they measure in L.A. It's like the ruler changes, right? In San Francisco, it's like, how ambitious are you, right? No, you say the craziest thing you're working on.

No, no, no, you say the crazy investment you just made. It's like it's an ambition contest. And New York is like some power contest. And L.A. is basically like a fame, a fame contest or a network contest. Like, who do you know and who knows you? When my wife used to work at Facebook, one time, Facebook rented out the baseball stadium, AT&T Park. And I remember going there and we wore nice clothes, like a suit jacket or whatever.

But then the engineers would wear, it was like a contest to see who could look the most schleppy. So it would be like one guy wearing a t-shirt. It's like, oh, I see. It's like, you're ironic. That's funny. And then another guy would be like just only wearing pajamas and Birkenstocks. Or another guy like only pajamas. But like dress shoes.

It's like, oh, it's cute. You make a joke like, how you think that that means you're dressing up. Get it. I get it. You're like a brilliant guy. You're Einstein. And that's the type of contest that you would see there. Whereas in L.A., it's like Land Rovers, Range Rovers, and fancy cars.

And everyone has beautiful white teeth. And like, have you noticed that there? The teeth in L.A. Veneers. Yeah, what about that? So veneers were, I don't know, just it was a blind spot for me. I didn't even know what the hell veneers were. Did you know how you get them?

Dude, I went down the rabbit hole. I went on YouTube for like three hours. What are these things? You like drill each tooth. So it almost looks like a spike. And then you like put up these fake things on there and glue them on there. So your teeth are like ruined, I believe. Like they're changed forever.

They shave them down. I think the bad version is when they really shave too much and it becomes like a little spikes and you look like a little baby teeth. I think the good version is they just take a layer of the enamel off. And then they basically glue a fake tooth front onto your thing. And it lasts like a decade. And then you get them switched. And you have these pearly white.

They look awful. They look like Barney teeth. Remember Barney? The puppet or the like it was just like one strip of white. Yeah. I think the good version because I was like, again, I went down the rabbit hole. Like the good doc makes them look like they're your teeth and not just like the generic thing.

But I said it really like in LA, I was like kind of enamored by this veneers thing. And I go, okay, I figured it out. There's only two types of people in the world. People who have veneers and people who need veneers. Because once you see people who don't have veneers, almost everyone's teeth are pretty nasty. Like most people's teeth are kind of yellow, kind of, you know, misshaping, whatever.

People generally don't have great teeth. And the people who do have veneers. So there's only two times of people in life. This is now my belief. People who have veneers are people who need them. I'm currently in the people who need them category. Maybe who knows, I'll go do them. But for somebody.

and tell me this. Plastic surgery. I don't think you or I would ever be like, you know what? I wish my eyebrow was a little higher up or whatever. You know, like, dude, I wish my nose was a little different. The cool thing about being a man is like older men can be like pretty smoking to women.

You know, like George Clooney is like a fine wine. You know what I mean? Like people still like Brad Pitt still looks smoking. My wife's been trying to convince me that like Botox for women is okay because she'll talk about like Botox. I'm like, no, F that. Just age. You look beautiful.

Like, it's cool that we're going to age together. Then I met a couple people who get Botox and they're like, it's not that big a deal. So maybe my opinion is changing on Botox. But in general, I would say plastic surgery. I'm like, let it be. Let's age together and we're going to look awesome. So I'm generally pretty against that. Me too.

Totally was in that camp. As I've met more people, I'm like, it's way more prevalent than I realize because I'm in a dude tech bubble. So it's way more prevalent than I realized. And secondly, there's something like, I kind of get the teeth thing. It's like there's, there's grades to it, right? It's like, well, you do get a haircut. You do, you know, maybe you'll shave your beard.

All right. I might buy nicer clothes. Okay, that's the thing. Like, you know, what if you just like, you know, get the, get like a facial treatment? Maybe that makes you skin looks a little better. Okay. It's like a kind of like almost like a slippery slope of the beauty thing. And like, yeah, but what did you see there?

Like fake asses and fake asses and. fake boobs or stuff on men? Everything. Dude, everything. Saw everything. Men with Botox. Fake everything. Everybody's nose.

Everybody had the same nose. So that was insane. The power of veneers. I was like, it's a pleasure to make you laugh. Because I like seeing that smile. No. Don't fall down this trap.

Do not do it, man. Do not do it. So I might show up to one of these podcasts with veneers and a nose job. Who knows? We'll see. What about the thing? Or like, I don't know if I told you this. I have like a deviated septum.

I went to E&T person. I was like, yeah, I never been able to breathe through my nose very well. And they're like, yeah, because you have like a super screwed up thing. Like it's like horrible. And he's like, you should get that fixed. I was like, okay, cool. And I was like, does that change how my nose looks? Well, yeah, they're like while we're there.

That's the thing. He's like, it doesn't have to change how it looks. But like, we're doing the surgery anyways. It's very easy to like, you know, just shape it. And I was like, but does that make me? me lame? And he's like, that's a personal question. Like, I was like, would it be considered? Like, if I did that, would I have to tell my boys, I got a nose job?

Like, what do you like telling us? I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like? I was like, yeah, I need a 360 opinion here on this. Like, you can't just hit me with the medical. I need the medical, the personal, the social. Like, I need all the opinions. He's going to diagnose you as being a douche. Yeah, he's, exactly.

He's like, well, your douche levels will go up if you have a years, but like, you know. All right, maybe last one, but what about the rich? Did you meet with someone who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to high school? Yeah. So rich people do really stupid things is the name of my, my, of this topic, which is actually, they do misguided things to help their kids. So I met multiple people who had donated somewhere between single digit millions to

double digit millions. One person said 100 million plus, well, I, I don't believe it. because where I don't even know. To a high school? I don't even know where that would go to a high school. I'll give you one. I'll give you one famous. Where would even 10 million go to a high school?

Public example, which is that, you know, the Fertita brothers, the guys who owned the UFC before they sold it, the guys who owned casinos in Vegas, they, their kids like to play football, as many kids do. But unlike many football parents, these guys decided that the high school, their alma mater needed a, like a division one college. level football facility and donated tens of millions of dollars. They haven't said the exact number, but you can kind of triangulate it because they later donated like 10 or 15 million bucks to a college.

And it's less than what they gave their high school for their football facility. Oh my gosh. And it's like basically they gave at least $20 million to a high school to build a better football facility so their kids would have a better shot at becoming a better football player. And I was like, this is such a misguided way, such a inefficient way. to help your kids. And I've met many people like this. I know people who are wealthy beyond measure.

And I asked him, why are you still working like so many hours? What are you doing? Why are you taking all this risk? They're like, okay, they're like, my dad, when I wanted to be an entrepreneur,

um, said you're never going to do it. And he refused to give me any money to start. So I struggled so hard at the beginning. Um, when my kids turn 18, I'm going to give them each $20 million and say like, you know,

I will support you in building any business you want. with that. You know someone who said that? This is their literal plan. They're like, and they're saying it bragging to me. Again, crazy brag.

How old are their kids to me? Their kids are currently their oldest, maybe 10 years old. Um, and their youngest is four. So I have four kids. That's $80 million, uh,

you know, allowance that they're creating trust and trust fund that they're creating for their kids to start these businesses. And I told them, I was like, well, you know that like, because you didn't have the resources,

you developed, all these skills, which is what made you successful in business. Like, if you were handed $20 million, I don't think you would actually be who you are today. So I love that you're trying to help your kids, but I just don't think what you're doing, which is working super hard when they're kids, being so busy, being busy that you're kind of away from them, making all this money that you plan to hand them at 18. Like, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but, you know, people, people don't really want to hear that.

I don't think that message was received very well. But, you know, I just found that people do crazy things in the name of like their kids and money. No, I think that that's crazy. I think that's exactly how you create like a future heroin addict. I'll tell you a couple other ones I think are good. Talk to an investor friend. So I have a friend who was a VC at one of the big VC firms. He's left.

He left and started doing his own thing. But he has a style and a strategy that is very different than most people. I find it very fascinating. So if I asked you, I said, what is like, draw me like a picture of the typical Silicon Valley VC. Can you just describe some things about them like, you know, what are they like? What are they doing?

You know, like the average VC, let's say, average VC. A tall looking white guy who wears a sweater and brown shoes or shoes that have white soles like white bottoms. And they basically meet tons and tons of people of tons of coffee meetings. Yeah, tons of coffee meetings. Lots of introductions from other people who come from. really amazing universities. And they'll pass on most of them,

but then they'll invest like 50 to 100 companies, smallish checks, and then never hear from, they don't really talk to the founder often unless things are going really bad and they bitch out. Yeah, exactly. They say they're going to be value ad.

They invest in dozens, maybe 40, 50 companies over their lifespan of like a couple of years. They're taking tons of coffee meetings. They're super agreeable. They'll only kind of smile and say nice things to your face. Typically, cast a wide net.

They love going to meet marketing events. They'll say that like we're a founder's first company. We're founder first. We're founder friendly. We invest in world changing ideas. Yeah. All of them only invest in the best somehow. Every single VC only invests in the best.

They do all those things. This is an investor friend that has a Twitter egg profile picture. They go to no networking events that are like VC, run and or like kind of generic founder events. They do go to random events that are like, oh, I'm going to this biohacker meetup in downtown Oakland where people are going to like shoot themselves up with DNA. It's like, okay, I'll go to that. Like they go to those types of events.

They have a strategy, which is basically, here's what he told me. He goes, every year one company becomes like kind of the center of the universe. And my job is to have invested that company three years ago. And I go, wow, okay. I like that. So what did you give me examples? He goes, well, like, you know, back when we met, I met this person in 2012 or 2013. They were like, you know, Stripe was actually the center of the universe at that time.

Stripe was the company that like was the clear breakout. Recently, he's like most recent ones last year would have been Open AI. So open AI before kind of like early chat GPT or before releasing GPT3. Right now, I go right now, who is it right now? He goes, OZMPIC. OZMPIC is the center of the universe right now. And I was like, oh, interesting. So not just like tech companies.

Last time I talked to this person was maybe three years ago in earnest. And I was like, so what are you up to nowadays? And generic, usually the answer is like, oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. This person said, I quit my job. And I am just hunting down a way to own a piece of only fans. I go, what? The porn thing? And he's like, yeah, only fans, I think is going to be massive.

I think it's, you know, it's one of these. It's the center of the universe right now. And people are, it's going to be the center of the universe. People don't realize it. I think it's going to be one. I think it's going to be the one of this like this year kind of cohort. This is going to be the company that matters. So my only mission is to add so much value to the owner of only fans that, um,

I can invest in it or own a piece of it somehow. And if I don't, whatever, at least I was helping that rocket chip go. And, you know, previously it might have been SpaceX or Tesla was like, you know, the company. And Bitcoin, Ethereum, like those are like some of the other ones that had their, they own that year. There was no more valuable company that was like creating more value that would

then in the future be realized. And I just thought it was awesome. I thought it was an amazing. I'm just so happy that this person's a friend that like, thinks so differently, operates so differently than the average person. person. Has he been successful? Has been successful? And he told me, I was like, I go, so what's the strategy here? He goes, oh, I'm trying to make all the best investments I can so I can make the worst investment

of my life and buy this like soccer club in Europe that I grew up loving. And he's like, I'm trying to make the best investments ever so that I can make the one worst investment ever. And does he use other people's money? In the past, he did. I think now he's doing a lot of his own or he'll raise SPVs. I was like, oh, you invest in this company? Cool. What? What? How much do you invest? He goes, $100 million. I go, $100 million. I was like, you don't have $100 million.

He's like, yeah, I raised $100 million SPV because I believe in this company. And you just, it puts your own conviction and ambition and check. You're like, so what's the company I believe most in? How much have I plowed into that? And why is that number not $100 million? Right. Like you can only like self-check when you hear stuff like this in a good way. It's a framebreaker.

I said, where did you get the $100 million? He goes from one LP. I convinced one person. They were actually already convinced, actually. That person was kind of already convinced that this was a good company. I busted my ass to get the ability to put $100 million check in, and they put the money in. What did you put $100 million in? Can you say?

I can't say. Has it worked? Again, you bake these things three, four years ahead. And we'll find out like, did that company, was that the right place to concentrate like a laser beam of conviction? So I loved that conversation and meeting that person. So that was one that I think is great. Let me give you one more that I think is. Oh, here's a quick one.

Neighborhoods, not cities. You're, I think, a great person to talk about this because you've been traveling around trying to find cool places to live. You don't pick at the city level. You pick at the neighborhood level. It's actually what is the best neighborhood to be in, not what is the best city to live in. That was just an obvious understanding to me once you go to a place like L.A. or you've done this in New York or Brooklyn.

And it's really hard to do that, by the way. Like the idea that, like, let's say that you're a normal person, your home is likely going to be the biggest purchase of your entire life. And it will unfortunately be the, for most people, it'll be the largest portion of their net worth. And it's pretty insane that you make that decision, a 20 or 30-year decision off one, maybe two, one hour visits. Right.

Like for a open house. It's insane. And you did this, I think, way back in the day, I think you created one of these for San Francisco. I think it was the roommate infographic for neighborhoods in San Francisco. It's like, if you live in this neighborhood, here's who your roommate's going to be like, which is so brilliant because it's, A, about neighborhoods, and B, it's about people, because people is also what makes your experience when you're in a city.

It's not the environment. Yeah, basically in 2014, we had this app, and in order to make it popular, we launched in five cities, San Francisco, Boston, Manhattan, L.A., and Chicago, I believe. And what we did was, we're like, all right, in order to make things go viral, we have to name as many names of local restaurants and local people that we can think of because those people will share. And if we name like 50 of them in each one, that's 50 people sharing in that city. That's how we'll get popular. And so we created this thing called the stereotypical roommates of Los Angeles, stereotypical roommates of San Francisco. And if you Google them,

you could find them. And we just made like an infographic that made fun of each neighborhood and all the brands and places that they shopped at. And that way you could like figure out what restaurants were like that neighborhood. But those restaurants and the people in those neighborhoods would share. And here's the thing. At that period, I don't think I'd, I'd never been to New York. I had never been to Boston. We just looked at Yelp. We just went to Yelp and look at what are the most popular things. And we found the jokes that people were making about it. And then that's how we made the infographic. And it went like crazy. I think we got tens and many, many tens of thousands of downloads for the app in the first day. I saw that before I ever met you, I read that thing when I moved to San

Francisco. Somebody shared it because it was so funny and like kind of like, oh, that's funny because it's true. So it was actually useful too because it was like, it was a little bit stereotyping, generalizing, but it was true for the most part. So I thought that was so, so good. And I kind of wish somebody did that for every city now. Like just keep doing that. Exactly. Whenever I go and look at new neighborhoods, I try to always go to a bar and I say, what's the stereotype of this neighborhood? And I'll ask the bartender or whatever. I'm like, tell me the stereotypes. And they'll be like, oh, a lot of gay people. moving in. And I'm like, all right, up and coming. Got it. That's what that means. Like, gentrifying or like, oh, like, what's the stereotype in this neighborhood?

Tons of strollers. I'm like, all right, rich young families. All right, got it. What else? You know what I mean? Like there's all these like things. Yeah, there's like codes. It's like that's like, you know, if you're in the government, it's like, oh, it's a 38, 333. That's the government code that means X. This is the same thing. It's like when somebody says critically acclaimed, code for not profitable. Thank you. Moving on. Yeah, or boring. For the everyday man, got it. Okay, yeah.

I got a couple other quick ones for you. Rattle off one more. I'll give you a networking hack. So Tim first, back in the day they did this blog post called How to Build a World Class Network and Record Time or something like that. I loved that.

I remember reading that and kind of like getting inspired by that. So I don't know if you know this, but Business Partner Ben, I think is the greatest networker in the world. Actually, I have now come to realize this. I had no idea. I had no idea what was going on until recently. I've now learned this. He is working the phones and he is just like,

it's so funny too. What he does is he just checks in on people. Like just this morning, he texted my friend from college that I had been introduced him to once. This is one of my best friends from college that were helping buy a business. And he goes, yo, yo,

I remember you said that the closed date was supposed to be 731. Did it end up closing? I was like, bro, how did you remember to check in? Like, he's the, he's the perfect boyfriend, basically. He's just fucking checking in and supporting everybody. Like, Bar Shop, you can probably attest to this. And all of our, we work together.

I probably text you, I don't know, a couple times a year, max. And it's usually about something that's like urgent sort of transactional. I'm just guessing that you talk to Ben fairly often. Could you just describe this for a second? Because I think there's something to learn here. of this whole thing. Yeah, I could pull up my text. He probably hits me up like two or three times a week. Like, how's the X project going or how's the how's X going? Yeah, he's a beast. So I noticed this because I would meet people and then somehow afterwards, they're only keeping in touch

with Ben. I'm like, dude, am I just unlikable? I was like, and I think there's something to it. I definitely give off some, some stink that's like, you know, repels people. But Ben has the opposite effect on people. He draws them in. He's like a golden retriever. And he's always smiling. He's just harmless and people like him. And he's helpful. He's just supportive and helpful to everybody. And so he's like, he knows, here's what he's figured out. He's figured out that most people just nobody checks in with them.

So he checks in on how's that your mission in life. How's that going? Does he do it on his cell phone or on the computer? On his phone. Then they reply with like a long ass update. And I'm like, you're basically just saying sup. And then the sup is generating this like highly interesting response. And then what he does is he's just like connect dots.

So he'll be like, oh, you should talk to that guy. Like, oh, you, you really like this TV show. We just met the writer. You should meet him. And he'll just connect dots. And like, he's just a dot connector. And then people are like, oh, that was helpful. Or like, once he knows you're trying to do X, like, let's say he knows, Sam,

you're trying to do some body fat thing. He'll then just start sending you tweets, just little links. Like, he does that to me all the time. And he's also, once again, called like infatigable. Like you can ignore, like you probably ignored the last four that he sent. Don't matter. No hard feelings.

Going to keep him coming. And I'm like, wow, this is just a recipe. So this kind of led me to this understanding of, okay, Ben is world class of this. It's fantastic. But in general, Ben's kind of like my wingman. He's like my number two. And everybody's got like a number two at some. Once you get to a certain level, you get like a number two.

And actually the number two guy network is the most undertapped resource. So why were we meeting these NBA players? Because we're friends with the number two of an NBA player. And it's like, and guess what? Nobody knows that guy. Everybody wants to get to the NBA player. Nobody even knows this guy's name. But he's got all the access.

He's got 98% of the access to the NBA guy has, but he's got 2% of the like, the busyness. Which we did with, with Huberman's guy. God, I'm blaking on his first name. What's his name? Rob, Rob Moore. Yeah, I went out to, I hung out with that guy in L.A.

And he was like, he runs the Huberbent show. He's ever been to the face. But this guy has got all the keys. He's like, oh, yeah, we interviewed this person. They have the keys to the kingdom. If you ever want to talk, let me know. They're the keys to the kingdom. And generally, these people are nicer, less busy.

They're the ones who actually do a lot of the fucking work. So they're actually more interesting people. They also were kind of like the gatekeeper. Like they decide who gets in, who gets out, what opportunities come in, what gets out. And they're hit up way less. They're hit up way less. So they're way more available. And they're very helpful.

They know a bunch of the other people. And so I'm like, oh, shit, the number two guy network, I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but I've had the insight now. And I'm like, I actually get along better with the number two guys, but for all those reasons I just mentioned. And I just think that this is like an undertapped resource. And I get why everybody hits up Ben now because he's the number two guy. And some people have figured out this arbitrage that you should hit up the number two guy because he's, you know, nicer, smarter, better, faster, more accessible, all the things. things. And so this was just a realization for me on the networking side. One of the one of the few like big unlocks I think that I've had. Before we wrap up, did you what was this thing about Bucked Up? Is that someone you met with in L.A.?

I didn't meet them, but I heard I met somebody who told me their story and I was blown away. Had you ever heard of Bucked Up? No. What is it? So Bucked up is a hunting thing? Is this a hunting thing? No, no, no. Okay. Let me tell you. Don't even look it up. Let me just tell you the story. So, starts basically in the early 2000s. There's these two guys, two twin brothers, I think, and they just do affiliate marketing.

So they're like affiliate marketing. They're like, hey, it's 2001. Google is not that competitive. We can basically say, oh, you want leads for your lawyer practice?

Cool, what are you going to pay us? We'll get you leads for that. You want leads for your apartment thing? We'll get you that. You want leads for this supplement? We'll get you that. And at that time,

those guys killed it. Those guys are killing it. Taylor. By 2010, so they've been doing, they do this for about 10 years. They're making money. By 2010, they're generating 25 million a year in revenue with only three employees. That means they're basically pulling in like 20 million a year of profit as well. Yeah, if they're if they're if they're if they're if they're CBCs are low or the cost per clicks for low, which back then they were. Maybe I'm super aggressive. Yeah, I thought it would be pretty low. Maybe I'm super aggressive. Let's say it's eight to 10 million in profit. I think it's a very. Yeah, a ton, which is just amazing three people doing this. So this was like, you know, what there was. doing. My partner, my partner, Joe, by the way, Joe Spieser, my partner in Hampton, he started this. And when he was 25, he sold the business. It was called Epic Advertising. He was the affiliate marketer. He sold a portion of the business for $250 million. That's amazing. And it was all this affiliate marketing stuff. And so these guys, they're doing the affiliate marketing thing. And a guy comes to them and says, this is now like a decade later, right? And it comes to them and says,

hey, I have this supplement called L. Arginine. And the brand's called L. Arginine Plus. And he's like, I don't know what L. Arginine does, but like, it's like a vitamin. I think it helps make you sleep or does it give you energy? I think it gives you energy. Or does it help your brain function better? Who the hell knows? I don't know.

It's one of those. I think you're supposed to drink it with caffeine and it gives you energy, I think. Yeah, maybe. Like right now, Thienin is the one. But back then it was Arginine was the one. And so. Yeah, whatever. The guy goes,

Asahi bowls and shit. It's all the, it's all or a kai berry or whatever the fuck that thing is. It's all a different thing every time. What's that shit called? What's that Brazilian shit called?

A kai? I ain't eat no akai berries. It's like whenever I see the word Knoba. I don't eat purple foods, all right? What's that Kenova? Knoba. No.

Knoba. No, queenwa. No, queen, yeah. It's like what do you call, do you ever use to? call a, I used to think that Le Quinta end was La Quida. You know what I'm talking about?

The Lequita Ed. I don't know it's like Kinta. The thing you said you say it, how do you say it now? Because I think it's also completely wrong. What's it called? Le Quinta. What's supposed to be called? I think it's Kinta, but I don't know.

Lequita. So, so a guy approaches him says, hey, I'm making $250 a day on this LR or anything. Will you guys be my? affiliate marketers quickly in three weeks they ramp it up it's now making like over three thousand dollars a day okay that's pretty good three thousand dollars a day that's like a hundred k a month they own 50 percent of this thing and they buy l arginine dot com to get an exact match they're ranking number one that's doing pretty well but then he reads this article so he's interested in this

supplement game he reads this article that major league baseball just banned deer antler spray never heard of it what the hell's deer antler spray looks it up finds that deer antler has some extract that's supposed to help you with recovery. Damn, it must be, if it's so good that the MLB bans it, that means shit must be fire. Like there's going to be a lot of, so he, he takes, he has the right, what is that Chris Barley thing? Did you learn the right lesson? He learned the right lesson from that news, which was, this shit must be fire and every athlete's going to want it. So he buys Deerantlerspray.com for $8. And he's, he owns the domain. He's the one rank and it goes okay at first not a huge demand but he's kind of he's there and then i don't know if

you remember this but one year before the super bowl ray lewis who was the kill the guy uh no he killed the guy i think the year before but during the playoff run he gets hurt got it and there's a two week yeah there's like there's like an extra weak rest between like the super bowl and the playoffs or whatever i think the story goes ray lewis is hurt but he's got to play in the super bowl and then he plays amazing and They win the Super Bowl, and it comes out that he used deer antler spray to, like, recover during that week and to, like, get rid of the pain and allow him to play well. Demand explodes through the roof, baby. And GNC comes to him and says, hey, we'd like 30 units. And he's like, okay, cool, no problem.

And they're like, oh, no, sorry, 30,000 units. And he's like, oh, what? They're sold out everywhere as soon as they get all this influx of demand. They're trying to keep up. So for one or two years, they're just keeping up with the new demand and being the number one player in this deer antler spray thing. But as they go, they're like, okay, we're kind of limited. It's like very niche. What if we expand this to something a little bit bigger?

So they changed the name from deer antler spray to bucked up. They kind of stay with the deer thing. Oh, my God. They changed it to bucked up because one of the GNC franchisees who they were chilling with goes, yeah, you know what sells really well. But like, you know, it doesn't look that good is these pre-workout supplements. So basically the powder you take before you work out, that- Remember NO explode? Yeah, no explode.

Dude, that thing was acid. That would, that would, you could bermude paint with that thing. I used to take that shit and you would lift so much weight, but it would make you feel miserable after. I don't even know what was in it. Yeah, it felt like your heart was going to explode. It should have just been called like, you know, artery explode and like, you know, one out of ten people die of this thing.

It was crazy. But like that category of pre-workout supplements turns out is a very big category. So bucked up today, they say is the number one pre-workout supplement. This thing does, guess how much revenue this does? I have no idea. 10? 250 million a year, apparently. Bucked up does?

Dude, the flavors, so it's called mother bucker. That's one of their things is the mother bucker. And it just says, like, their slogan should be like strong as an ox. Like, this is like ridiculous. Pump, focus, strength. energy, the mother of all pre-workouts, mother-bucker. That's crazy to me. This is nuts.

You know, sometimes when I'm flipping the channels on TV, I'll see like, you know, Hassan Menhaj and he's just like, you know, this guy who's, he's, he's a comedian, he makes the world laugh. He's so good looking. He's, you know, happy. He's having all this success. And I think, you know, I was maybe one or two, you know, right turns away from going down that path.

When you see bucked up, do you think this? because I feel like you were one or two right turns away from being the creator, owner, and sole proprietor of bucked up.com selling Motherbucker pre-workup powders to people on the internet. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean,

I don't know. With like a 90,000 square foot factory in Missouri. And just like, you know, have a sole patch. A huge antler tattoo on your back and a soul patch. Dude, listen,

the flavors are woke A.F. another one is the BAMP high The other one is The BAMF high stimulation Another one is the LFG Pre-Workout, let's fucking go Another one is called RUT This is hilarious

These are all like really good names Of like really mean dogs You know what I mean? Like I'm gonna have like a really My junkyard dog name Buck Get them Buck That's like what this stuff is You know or like Runt

Yeah This is crazy This is the whole deer Antler? From that to this is kind of an insane, insane story. And they still kill it? Yeah, they're doing really well right now, apparently. I mean, I'm talking to what I know this from one guy and then what you Google about

them, but like apparently just crushing it. Oh my God. I have no idea what's in this stuff. I would like, I mean, this might be a legit performance enhancing drug. Is it still illegal for the MLB? Because maybe I will order it. Exactly. You're like, ha ha, that's so insane, you know, as you check out.

Well, if people talk about performance-enhancing drugs, like, it's a bad thing, but I'm like, I would love my performance to be enhanced. Right. Do you know what I mean? It's the main problem with my performance that it's unenhanced right now. How do I enhance my performance? I really want it to be enhanced. I prefer it to be enhanced than unenhanced.

So, like, give me the PED. So I'm like in favor of some PEDs. Not if it means you break the rule, but. We haven't talked about this. Did you see that thing, the enhanced games that somebody was creating? Was that the, was that just the different sports, but for steroid users? It's basically like, it's like, you know, I feel like every college bro had this like conversation in their dorm room, which is like, they should just do the Olympics, but with the drugs.

Like you could take anything and see what happens. Like, I want to see somebody run like a two second 100 meter dash. And it's like these guys. created it. It's called the enhanced games and it's happening. And I don't know if you've, it came out and it almost looked like satire, like it wasn't happening. So if you go to

it, it's enhanced.com. It's a better version of the Olympics. Yeah, exactly. That's a great, that's a great. We're basically Airbnb, but better. Performance and enhanced. I can't find. Their website.

Websites down right now. The website's down, but Enhanced Games is a planned international sports event where the athletes will not be subjected to drug testing. It's meant to take place in December of 2024. So the guy, Aaron DeSuzza, is the same guy that Peter Thiel funded to take down Gawker, by the way. Okay. Sign me up. Prolific. You know, best LinkedIn ever.

So he... Here's how he does it. He says, athletes are adults. They have the right to do with their body as they wish. My body, my choice. Your body. choice and no government should be making these decisions for athletes,

particularly those around the FDA. Yeah. So here's what he said. He goes, here's the game plan. He goes, every athlete who participates is going to be a part owner in the thing because you're generating part of the opportunity. I assume that if you were an Olympian, you won a gold medal, your life is made. It's not the case. It's sad to see people who have achieved the highest level of human excellence are living an

objectively impoverished existence afterwards. But, you know, the bureaucrats who own these things make millions. The Olympics has 13,000 athletes. We're reducing that to maybe 1,000 with no special infrastructure. So instead of costing $100 billion to deliver this, it'll cost us, you know, just double-digit millions. And, yeah, they have like a bunch of things. You know, here's kind of like their belief system. So it says, the enhanced games will be a competitor to the corrupt and dysfunctional Olympic games.

the first international it'll be the first international sports event without drug testing olympics are about the past it's about grief great gods from history the enhanced games are about the future we're building superheroes and um it talks about how the iOC is corrupt like the committee that runs the olympics and um that you know anti-aging gets stymied because of all the anti-science like you know authorities trying to like take drugs out of out of performance and we're trying to do the opposite. It's my body, my choice. He says, think back 50 years ago.

Being a gay man was like being an enhanced man today. It's stigmatized, marginalized, and illegal in some senses. I don't know about that. Yeah. And then I don't know if it's actually going to happen or not. This seemed to seem. Well, their website doesn't work. So, like, we'll see.

They can't afford their go daddy renewal for the domain. But no, I think I'm, I think I'm cool. with that. I mean, besides Lance Armstrong kind of used to be my hero, and then he got in trouble for lying, and I kind of got upset about that. But besides that whole lying thing, I was like, they're all doing it, and he's doing it as well,

and he's still one. So, like, it's kind of fair. So I do get that. I'm kind of on board with that, and I think a lot of the PEDs are pretty amazing. Like, you know what EPO is? It makes you get more red blood cells in your bloods. You can carry more. Infinite endurance, basically.

Yeah, you have better endurance. And I hear about that stuff and I'm like, that sounds great. Give me more of that. I want that. You know what I mean? And there's some antibiotic steroids that you'll die young. There was this, which I don't like, but there was this one. Have you seen the guy on Instagram? He was only 30, but I think his name was Joe. I forget what his like handle was. It was like Joe like all ripped or something. And he was the guy who you would see flexing and he was so lean and big that you would see. It looked like he had little spiders in his chest because all the little muscles were like flexing. I think his name was like Joe Flex. Have he seen that guy?

No. Well, he died like last week. He died like, oh, that was that guy? Okay, yeah, yeah. I've seen picture. He died last week because he definitely was on the juice. And he was just, it's really hard to be that lean for that long. So you have to be on a ton of stuff. And he died.

And so, like, I'm not in favor of that type of stuff. But some of the other performance-dhancing drugs, like, I actually think that you could, you'd be a healthier, longer-living human being if you took some of that stuff. Or like blood doping. So like in the 60s, this runner in Finland named Lassayvaron, he would like go up in the mountains and no one would see him when he was training. And what they alleged that he did with blood doping, you could just take out some of your blood and you could put it in a refrigerator and that gives that oxidizes it. It gives you more red blood cells ultimately and you just inject it back in your body.

That's considered illegal. That's crazy to me. It's not illegal. It's against rules for the Olympics. But that's insane that blood doping like that is illegal. It's like, well, dude, it's just your blood. you're just freezing it and putting it back in you. Things like that, you can't do.

But I've thought about that. I think it'd be amazing. There was a guy in Netflix who did it where he was an amateur cyclist and he was like, I'm going to blood dope and I'm going to document this. And this was the whole documentary. And it was awesome. He crushed it. He killed it.

He improved so much. And I thought, that's pretty cool. I think this actually would be a good YouTube or podcast channel. Have you ever gone on YouTube down a rabbit hole of college ethics classes? Have you ever seen this? No. No. Sounds boring as hell, but it's actually kind of interesting.

It's not very interesting because it's not made for YouTube. But basically, if you go, like, you could basically sit in on a Stanford or Harvard ethics class. Well, they'll pose some question, like, should you be allowed to, like, our performance enhancing drugs, should they be allowed in the Olympics or whatever? Like some philosophical question, like the version of the trolley thing where it's like, if you could save five lives and pull the trolley and kill one, would you do it? Right. Like that, those kind of like moral and ethical. and ethical, like, thought experiment questions. And you see people just stand up in a college lecture hall and they're like, I say no because

blah, blah, blah, blah. And then somebody says it says, I disagree. I would say yes, because I think that what about blah, blah, blah, blah. And you just see the debate. I think debate is actually like pretty interesting. And I think if somebody did that well, you could do a kind of like NPR style or gimlet style, like intelligent but entertaining podcast series or YouTube channel that like just gets like find these things like the equivalent of like um somebody i was at one of these dinners in

l a somebody goes i had jury duty and the case that i had jury duty for was actually kind of interesting this guy um this guy goes online and he's in this online forum or community for like kind of like kinky meetups okay nothing illegal about that and um there's a woman there who says um hey me and husband really want to do a thing it's you know here's our thing it's kind of weird but like we want somebody to come over and we want a role play like a kind of like a rape scenario and uh she's like so you know i'm looking for somebody who wants to do that this guy's like that's like that's fun i can do that and she's like cool um so here's what's going to happen you're going to come over to this place i'm going to act surprised i'm going to say no that's part of the bit we're going to do it anyways

you know, we're all good. Was it like a setup? Was it like a different woman? No. The husband was role-playing it. It's bad. So the husband was on this form, acting as if he was the woman,

saying they're both in on it. She wasn't. His wife was not in. Oh, no. So this happens. Now this guy's, so the jury duty was, should this guy be,

go to jail for rape? What a horrible scenario for everyone involved. Lose, lose, right? Like just a, oh, man. but it was kind of like an interesting question. It's like, well, like on one hand,

what a conniving husband. Yeah, he's like, okay, definitely the husband should be in trouble. Like that's kind of a type of scenario. But this guy, like, should he go to jail for like 20 years because of this scenario or not? Like, and the vote was basically like, should this go to, like is like an indictment. So it's like, should he go to, should this go to trial or no, should this not be not go to trial or whatever? And we had this just like fascinating dinner conversation about it. Just hearing everybody's kind of pinning hearing like a little bit of a healthy.

kind of debate or just like a perspective on it. Similarly, there was another one that was like, you know, this couple looks like they're holding drugs, like crack or whatever. Cop starts chasing after him. They throw something away in the trash.

Cop grabs them. They don't have it on them. He's like, I saw you dump it in the trash. He opens up as the trash, sees it there. But who's to say they didn't throw something else away? Right. Should they go to jail? for this like this offense and is like well on what if you're the jury like you kind of do think like

they they probably did it but you don't have like uncontroversial or whatever like evidence that like leaves no shadow of doubt that they that they did it and it's like kind of a nonviolent offense do we really want to punish them you start bringing your own subjective opinion into this versus what you're supposed to as a jury member so anyways i just the conversation was so interesting that i thought, I think this could make for an interesting pod or a YouTube channel. What do you think? You have a good sense for content. What do you think?

I think it would be great. I think you could do a YouTube channel, 10 minute, 10 minute videos where you could dissect some these interesting things and just have one take a side of debate and then people live vote. I think, wasn't there an app that was trying to do this where it was like live debates and you vote on who's the winner? Do you not remember that? Yeah, in 2014. Yeah, I think you could kill it.

It's where it's almost like, remember? you know, drunk rap battles where it's like Napoleon versus like Caesar. Yeah. Yeah, you do this in that situation. I think like it's an incredibly interesting topic. I mean, clearly, if you've gotten into it, yeah, I think it could work. Cool. All right, that's all I got for my trip to L.A. I actually, I had a bunch more, but I think that's enough. Also, Arawan, you've been to this place? Yeah, I went there before and I wanted to buy the most expensive bottle of water they had to see what it was about and it was like 20 or 30 bucks. But it's fun,

fun, fun experience. How's the water? It was fine. It was normal. And I also bought like the most expensive. I wanted to, I was like whatever like the most expensive chocolate is and water.

I'm getting it. I think they have like asparagus there, like asparagus water. That's really expensive. I think this is also a layup TikTok channel. You know, Airwant experiments or the Airwant taste tests. You just go to Airwant.

You see any famous people there though? What's that? That's why you go. But did you see any famous people? That's why you go. no, I was just looking at the snacks. Is that what I was supposed to be doing? Oh, God, this is like, it's like in college when I used to go to the bar and, you know,

I'm there to listen to the music and I didn't meet anybody. I missed the point. You're like doing Long Island I see tasting. Talking to the bartender. I forgot. Yeah, you're supposed to go and see famous people. No, it's a fun experience. That place kills it.

They're expanding, I think, aren't they? They used to be one just in Santa Monica, I think. 13 or something like that. For those who don't know, Airwine is basically like the bougiest whole foods. It makes Whole Foods look like the dollar store. You look down at Whole Foods people as peasants. Airwine is to Whole Foods as Aoli as to mayonnaise.

It's the like just jazz up version. The cool part about it is it has a lot of products that are like almost like it's like a D2C pop up shop. It's like here's a bunch of products that are not the normal things that are on the shelves. So you can try them. and they're all three times more expensive than they should be, or maybe five times more. And I think a layup content thing would be go to Airwan, buy all the chocolates or buy all the chocolates versus the fancy shit.

Airwine versus Walmart. And you do blind taste tests and you like, absolutely, try to rank them and you just give your recommendation. You spend the money on the stuff and you just do like Airwan shopping. You just, you become the Airwine guy. Like, dude, if I was broke again, I'd be back.

I'd be back so fast because I just, know where these little content niches are, right? You just see it and you know it. Like another one is pranks. I hate the pranks. Dude, have you seen this guy who does the, I think it was Jody or something like that? Like, what is this guy's channel? The guy who went to sleep at an NBA at WMBA game, did you see this?

No. No, but I hate the pranks where it's like people like prank, pick a fight with you. And then the person responds and actually beats him up. And then the recipient is like, it was just a prank, bro. So this guy, jvian, or Joe. Jideon. Jadion. I don't know how you say it exactly. I love his video. So he goes, he went to the WMBA All-Star game. He bought four court-side seats. Drop like, you know, like whatever, 25K on these seats. And then he came with a blanket and I guess it looks like, I mask. Oh my God. What an asshole. And he's like, the funny thing is they asked him about it. He was like, dude, I had the idea because I knew this would like go viral, just fall to sleep. Because he's done it before like he goes to a basketball game, courtside. And he brought his barber. And they. put like the the bib on him and he gets a haircut during the game but like if you're just watching TV

you're like is that guy getting a haircut like this is like very obvious and so he had this idea he's he said I wasn't going to do it I thought it might be too mean I told my friend about it I was like yeah maybe you want to do it and the guy was like he's like that guy got so excited because he knew this you go so viral I was like nah fucking I'm gonna do it myself he's like so I did it he's like but then it turned into like a political thing which not how I intended it like he got banned from all NBA events yeah yeah from all NBA events for for doing this but this guy's just so good at trolling the world and it's like that's just like a

it's a niche that will never get old like you can let an asshole though there's just like infinite demand for he also caught one of the NBA balls and try to shoot it from his seat like because he was court side dude he's so

he's so funny this guy all right I think we should wrap up there that's the pie we done 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