My First Million - Shaan's Apology To MrBeast, The Answer to 'What Startup Should I Start?', and Steven Bartlett Explained

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Episode 416: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) preview Sam's interview with Harry-O of Death Row records, discuss whether Steve Bartlett is legit, Shaan gives an apology to MrBeast, and much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ----- Links: * TheDailyPump * Steven Bartlett * NP Reviews * Nick Gray * 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: (00:30) - Preview interview with Harry-O (06:20) - Shaan's apology to Mr. Beast (14:30) - Is Steven Bartlett legit? (23:35) - NP Reviews (29:10) - The answer to what startup should I start (40:35) - Nick Gray ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

I have to formally and humbly apologize to Mr. Beast. So here's the situation. All right, let's jump in. I have a bunch of topics here. I got to start with an apology. I have to formally and humbly apologize to Mr. Beast. So here's the situation. We've talked about it a little bit before.

Back when we did Camp MFFM, we invited Mr. Beast. And I should say invited, meaning we invited ourselves to his house, basically, in order to do it. We were like, oh, yeah, we're going to do this. He's like, yeah, that'd be cool. But, you know, schedules crazy. I'm interested, but, you know, not in L.A. Because I'm in North Carolina.

We're like, oh, coincidence. What town do you live in? That's what we're doing it. And so we went out there, had a good time. One of the things that happened was I made them, we were touring Duke's campus. We were on their basketball court. And I made him a bet that I could make a half court shot before he did for $10,000. Very stupid bet.

He stood to gain nothing and you stood to gain everything. Bill, he could get $10,000 also. Oh, I didn't know that you had to pay him $10,000. All right. Yeah, yeah, it was whoever read it first. So put $10,000 up. He's, like, I had learned this over the course of a few days. He's like me, he's a bit of a degenerate gambler.

Like, I think his company, they have like a separate bank account where it's like, yeah, Beast, you could gamble this, but don't touch the main stuff. And that's all money he already won from gambler. So they're like, look, that's your house money to play with. Petty cash. Petty cash. Although I think the petty cash was like seven figures. If I was good, I'm great.

So anyways, bet them this amount, hit the shot, glorious moment. And then it's like, we're so busy there. We just go back to doing the camp. And it's like, yeah, cool. You know, I'll pay you. And I was like, great. You pay me. That's what he does.

And so he didn't right away. And so I was like, and everybody, all the other people on the trip were like, oh, that's always awesome. moment. Did he pay you? And I had to just be like, no, no, not yet, but he's good for it for sure, right? He's good for it. And so that became the running joke was like, no, no, he didn't pay yet, but he will. And I brought it up on the podcast because I talked about this on the, on our end of your awards as like a highlight moment was saying, dude, I bet you I can make the shot in half court of Cameron Indoor Stadium, this hallowed college basketball stadium, and just having the balls to make

that bet and then having the the luck of hitting it was a high moment. And I said the low moment was following up like three weeks later and be like, hey, hey, you get that, but no, no rush, but you got that money? This wasn't a fake bet. This was a real bet, bro. Like, you know, first set it in a joking way like, oh, bitch, better pay my money. Then three weeks later, like, hey, did you pay? And so then I was like, oh, man, low moment was being the, like having to follow up and

being like basically begging for the cash. So did he was cool the whole time? He was just like, oh yeah, my bed. I'll have my assistant pay. And I was like, yeah, no problem. Cool. And so I said that joke on the podcast, and then people have been referencing it like later.

Like people will, I don't know why. Listeners reference it. They tweet about it every once in a while. And so I guess he saw this tweet recently. And this is now like many months. It was like six months later. And he was like, somebody was, somebody tweeted out this whole story.

this whole thread, they go, you know, I realize why the Mr. Beast not paying you stories, like didn't sit right with me. And it's because you, Sean, also stood me up. You said you wanted to invest in my thing and that we should talk. And then I followed up three times over email asking be like, hey, you said you wanted to invest in like, let's talk. Let's talk. And you haven't replied to three of my emails and like you're ghosting me just like he's ghosted you. Not cool. And if you want to, you know, make things right. You should take that call and you should invest in my company. And so he kind of put this out there as a bit of a balzy tweet thread. And Mr. B saw it and he too, DM me. He's like, what are you talking about? Like I paid you like a while back. What do you mean?

And I was like, what? Oh. And I went. Oh, dude. You talk. So I had given him a Bitcoin, like a fresh Bitcoin wallet. Because he's like, I'll pay you in Bitcoin. I was like, all right, no problem. And I'd give him a Bitcoin wallet. And I'd never check this thing. Because, like, you know, who checks like a random Bitcoin wallet you created? He paid me back in November. And so for months, I've been, like, telling this joke about the, like, hey, you know, just, I know you probably meant to do it, but you didn't do it yet. Just, when you get a chance? No, no, no, rush.

When you get a chance? You think he's pissed at you? No, I don't think he gives a shit. In the same way that I didn't actually give a shit. I just thought it was funny. Like, like, the other thing we learned at that camp with from. that guy, Hassan menhaj, the comedian, he goes, comedy is all about low status. And I remember that, and I took that. I was like, oh, my comedy is usually trying to be cocky, funny. Like, somebody says

something and I say how, dude, you know, like, you were like, you don't know about pop culture. And I was like, bro, I am pop culture, right? Like, it's more cocky. But actually, what I learned from Hassan was that low status is actually a more, a funnier, more endearing way to, you know, sort of win people over. So telling this story about like, yeah, then I had to follow up and it turned from this cool moment to this incredibly lame moment. That was a low. It's a, it's trying to do a low status comedy thing. But then I realized I'd been wrong the whole time. He paid me in November.

So, so, yeah, whoops. Damn, dude. That's a nice, that's a pretty big mess up. You're just disparaging this guy. Yeah, I was slandering the dude left and right, just saying, you know, at least I pay my. debts, right? Like, you know, I was joking around like that, but

incorrect. He paid. All right. We have an end. Happy ending for all involved. Yeah, I was shocked that you were saying that on air, by the way. I chose,

yeah, that he didn't pay. I was like, this is going to make it's way to him. I didn't just say it. And randomly, people ask, did he pay? And then I'm like, oh, what am I going to say?

Yes. No. If I didn't think he paid, I was going to say, no. I wasn't just like, proactively being like, by the way, call out.

You know, that's not how it was. I appreciate, you know who I, sometimes, you know, it's just the people listening, it's just Sean and I basically in a Zoom right now. We're on a Riverside. So just us talking. And it's very easy to forget that there's other people who will hear this. I find myself saying stuff all the time.

Yeah, you get real comfortable. You get very comfortable. And I admire Joe Rogan. I don't listen to a ton of Joe Rogan, but I do watch some of his clips. And he does a really good job of, he rarely disrespects people. he'll say like oh they just have a difference of opinion it's all good or he'll say someone will bring up

hey did you hear how this person was talking trash and he'll just say oh you know that's funny that's funny he does a really good job of not picking fights and uh i saw on your thing on your list you have this kind of fight that started and it looks like i started it and i don't want it to come off that way but basically um on this pod i try never to like pick fights or if i do pick a fight it's like i'm actually going to go to battle with this and you have this uh what's the guy his name Stephen Bartlett thing on there. Yeah. Yeah.

You want to bring that up. Yeah. By the way, I actually want to say this, you're right that when it's me and you just talking like this and there's nobody else here, it's really easy to get comfortable. You forget, oh, cool, 150,000 people are listening, right? If I was in front of an audience, if I could see 150,000 people, there's no way I would feel as comfortable and as loose making jokes or saying something or like, I'll do this often.

It's gotten me in a lot of trouble, actually. Yeah, you say shit. It's bad. And I decided as long as I'm saying something that I actually think, I'm going to carry on in that way because I don't usually think negative things about people. Well, the way that I do it nowadays, and the pod actually taught me this, which was, if I'm going to talk negatively about someone behind their back, I better be ready to say to their faith. And so I work really hard to only say things privately that I'm okay saying to that person or even publicly sometimes.

And that's the takeaway. I think it was, have you heard the story of like A Blankin? Basically, he like talked trash about some guy. And they're like, I challenge you to a duel. And he's like, shit, I don't want to go to a duel. And so he's like, dude, I'm sorry. I'm afraid. I don't want to fight you.

And then he's like, that's it. I've never talked trash about people. And I remember reading that. And talking trash is easy. I do it every once in a while just because I'm human. But if you're going to do it, we got to be able to say it to their face. And so that's kind of my role that I try to live by, but it's very hard to follow. But all right, you want to talk about the Bartlett thing?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you tee it up because I think you tweeted it out. So what's on your mind? There's, well, nothing. I was just curious. But basically, there's this guy named Stephen Bartlett. He's got a pod that's quite good.

It's mostly a YouTube thing, I think. But pretty good. He's interviews to interesting people. Background is he had a company called Social Chain, which there's a long story. story about it that we've talked about before where he basically owned, among other things, a bunch of Twitter handles, and he could help make a product popular or a TV show popular by sharing it amongst all the Twitter handles, whatever. It's an agency. It was relatively successful. It was definitely successful. He was like kind of a prodigy. It ends up getting acquired.

And the company that acquired it did like some type of reverse merger. It goes public at its peak hundreds of millions of dollars. An article came out on Thursday. And by the way, this guy's Stephen, he worked for Sean as an intern when he was 21 years old, and we've said fun stories about that. An article came out that said this thing was sold for $8 million, and I shared, I go, whoa, this thing was only sold for $8 million. I thought this was like a publicly traded company for hundreds of millions. I'm a little confused.

What's the story here? And people got pissed. Not at me. They got pissed at him saying, this guy's saying he's built up a $300 million company, and they listed tons of evidence saying otherwise. And I didn't actually look into the evidence. I don't know the truth, but people were really angry at that. And it was pretty wild to see.

Yeah, I think the, so you, I think you framed it well. There's basically two things going on here. One, as somebody gets really famous, the target on their back gets bigger. And so he's become more and more famous. He has a very big kind of social media presence. I think he's got like a million followers on Instagram or Twitter or something like that. LinkedIn, he's big as well. He's on the Shark Tank of England.

Yeah, he's on Dragon's Den, which is like Shark Tank in Europe. So he's like well known there. He wrote a book. He, you know, he's like doing things. He goes on, he has this podcast. He goes on these like tours basically where he like speaks in front of auditoriums. I call him the black Gary Vee. He's like very much like Gary V in my opinion.

And in the same way that some people not Gary Vee of like, bro, you didn't build you, you know, you didn't build a business. That was your dad's business that you were just the marketing guy for. And he's like, well, actually like the business was really small. and then I started Wine Library TV and it grew much bigger. You know, there's people who come out and say, oh, you're not as you represent yourself. And so when you see this headline that, oh, his agency sold for $7 million. You're like, bro, what? Seven million.

Like, why are you representing yourself as much bigger than you are? And the explanation, I think, is kind of simple. So here's the explanation. His agency was called Social Chain. When they got acquired, they renamed the larger company, which didn't have as much of a public-facing brand. Social Chain Group. And so Social Chain Group was a bigger business that did many things, had many agencies underneath, had some other things that there's a e-commerce.

There's a big e-commerce business that was with it. They sold there like a mattress company, basically. And most of the revenue, like, came from the e-commerce side. And a smaller slice of the revenue came from the agency size. And even a smaller size came from his specific agency called Social Chain. I think when he sold, when Social Chain got acquired or whatever by, the lower larger group. I think they were at roughly nine million a year in revenue, something like that. And that was maybe two years in and it was like a great upstart story. It was like 20 employees

all under the age of 25 doing this cool disruptive social media, you know, marketing at the time. And this is, you know, 2014, 2015. And then, you know, got acquired by this bigger thing. Those guys had an e-commerce business. And so naturally they're like, oh, great, this marketing agency is a good business to have. It'll help our businesses. Plus, it brings in revenue alone from its service business. And I think where he went, so I think the simple explanation is, yeah, his business got acquired. The overall business did a bunch of revenue.

His agency did not. But, you know, he was a key player in that overall group. I think he was co-CEO of the group. The group was, you know, one of four or five divisions. So he was kind of like a division head at a, of, uh, of, uh, of a larger company. Okay, great. Where I think he went wrong is there's like a clip of him on Dragon's Den and the other guy's like,

do you even know anything about business? And he goes, know anything about business. I built a $300 million company by the age of 28. And that's like the clip that the guy, you know, some people on Twitter are circulating being like, you're full of shit,

dude. You didn't build a $300 million dollar business. There was a $300 million dollar business that acquired your small agency. To that, I say they are correct. He did get, yeah, I mean, to me, that's like a very, maybe it's just relatable because I've been in those situations where I kind of like, I feel insecure in a moment. And I can imagine being a young guy on TV and then the other investor says, what do you know about

business? I can see your insecurity flaring up in a moment there and try to say, try to puff your chest out and say the biggest thing you can, even though it's not technically true. It'd be like when we got acquired by Twitch, it's like, you know, I, you know, I, and then I ran a division at Twitch, it'd be like me saying, I ran, you know, I built or ran a $5 billion company, right? That would not be true. That would just be like, you know, puffing my chest out in a way that's misleading.

You forgot the ER. I was a builder on a $3 billion company. You were a builder. Right. I was a part of a company that was, I joined a company 13 years after it was founded. And, you know, I was early. But I, but I, I found. that, for example, I feel

silly about this now, which is that when we got acquired, the deal was set, the deal was a no PR, like no, no disclosure of the terms. But somehow, it got leaked to TechCrunch, and I think a couple others, that we got acquired, and they put a price in there

of $25 million. And the price was not $25 million. It was less than that. But the answer has got to be no comment. But I was like, I could have corrected it. So I could have gone and said, no, it wasn't that. I didn't even have to say what it was. I could have just, in retrospect, I could have just said, it's lower than that, but I can't disclose. Instead, I just said, hey, I can't say anything. I'm not allowed to say anything. And Twitch also said that I'm not allowed to say anything. So I just sat out there. And a bunch of people were like, wow, great exit, $25 million. And I'm like, yeah, that would have been a great exit. It's still good, but less good than that. So that's just that. So, that's not the accurate number. And that's still just what sits out there today is that people think that that's what the number was. And it kind of benefited me, I remember, in some ways.

And every time it benefited me, I felt guilty. And just like, it's also a weak move to like take a representation that makes something you did seem greater than it actually was. So I didn't like that. And but I can under, I can relate to this moment where you like the ego part of you or the insecure part of you wants to. to feel like something is, he wants to say, no, I did a great thing.

So, you know, I understand where he's coming from in that point of view. But I don't really see what the controversy is besides that. I think it's just like, is the dude more famous

than what he did with his agency? Yeah, probably. But he's famous because he's amazing at creating content. And he's a great, like he's a great brand builder. He's built his own brand.

How old is he? He's only 28, maybe. Yeah, he's like, yeah, mid to late 20s, something like that.

So, I mean, I'd say you're doing all right, dude. Yeah, he's pulled it. He's pulled it off. I think the haters have a point. Yeah, he did overrepresent. He did overrepresent in some ways. Yes, that's true.

Every time he says, I built a company with hundreds of millions of dollars. It's not really true. And he probably knows that. He's a very hateable guy, not because I dislike him. I actually like his content. But I think he's hateable because he's young. He's good looking. He's successful.

he's pretty cock I don't know cocky but like confident I mean you know it's easy to hate people so yeah he's he's in some regards a very hateable guy yeah when you have everything that people want that's what I know okay you've got money fame looks charisma you know whatever body what what else is there you know I'm not sure I'm not sure he's really missing anything so so yeah there's there's a natural visceral reaction some people have to that which is like either A It can't be all good. There's got to be something wrong and I'm going to find it. Or be, fuck that guy.

I'm tired of seeing him on my Instagram feed. What's this financial freedom thing that you wanted to talk about? Let me do. Let me do too. Okay. So I want to do this story about this woman I met who I think has a really cool, cool business. So a couple podcast episodes ago, I said, hey, I got this idea for a D to C business.

it would be best run, I think, by a woman who's like got it because it's a product for women. And it uses my joke, which is like, I don't know how to pitch it exactly. So it's like a normal thing, but beautifully done. Like just imagine like, you know, pens, but just beautifully done. Right. And it's true. Like that's part of the schick of this product. This is just like it's well packaged and well made, beautifully done.

And so anyways, I got a bunch of inbound. And I joked about it. I was like, oh, to our four female listeners, if you're out there, this could be an idea for you. And a bunch of people replied maybe 20, 30, 40 people said, hey, what's the idea I want to hear about it? Here's my background. And one woman had a really interesting background. So her name, I think is what is this? Sarah Michelle, something like that.

She started this business. I'll pull up her name. Yeah, Sarah Michelle. So she built this business called NP reviews. I'm guessing you've never heard of this. But here's why it's interesting. She basically built a course prep business and sold it for more than $10 million in two years. And I just think that's kind of a badass move to pull off.

You don't hear of a lot of course-based businesses that sell at all, let alone sell for eight figures in two years. And what she did was basically she built like Kaplan, like the test prep thing for nurse practitioners. So it's called NP reviews as a nurse practitioner reviews. pass your nurse practitioner exam the first time. Stop stressing and start studying smarter with our proven exam review courses. Exactly. So she basically says, yo,

you're in school to become a nurse practitioner. You have a, the big test is coming up. It's like your version of MCATs or LSATs if you're a lawyer. The nurse practitioners have that same thing. And it's like, great. Take,

you know, work with us and you'll pass. They have a 99% pass rate amongst their students. So they're like, you know, Don't worry. She's like, don't worry. I was in your shoes.

Wow. I was stressed about this. And I pass. And if I could pass, you could pass. I've helped so many people pass since then. And what she does is it's basically a funnel where she's got ads about this, content about, you know, this exam or becoming a nurse practitioner. Which leads you to this landing page, which says, don't stress, we got you. 99% pass rate.

We help you pass your upcoming exam. And then she funnels you to a Facebook group. So basically, it's like. like join the group of 25,000 other people who have passed this exam. And you join the Facebook group and you buy one of the courses. So you can buy this like $300 a month one, $130 month one, $100 month one, whichever one you want that fits like whichever test you're planning to take. Built this thing up, sold it to a company called Blueprint that basically is rolling up these test prep things.

And I just thought that's an amazing exit. And I'm super impressed. And here's why it's awesome. If you go to the bottom right, it says, by Kajabi. That's a $100 a month software that anyone can get. By the president of Kajabi listens. He messes. Oh, I know. Yeah. He DM'd DM'd me as well. So it's a $100 a month software. They have like a 30 day trial. So you can even like not pay and just like get your get courses like spinning up and then making some money. So the website it. It's fine looking. But it's not like you could make this without a designer. The copy is pretty solid. Very clear problem. Copy is very good. Copy is very good.

Yeah, I haven't read it all, but it looks decent. Look at the, like just the headline, just a quick copy thing. So put this up on the screen on YouTube. So go to IPReviews.com. Just want to point this out. So the headline says pass your nurse practitioner's exam the first time. So what is it, you know, leading with the outcome or the benefit you want versus talking about yourself. She could have said, we are a test prep, you know, a six-week test prep program,

get with live online classes and a community, blah, blah, blah. That's how most people pitch their products. They talk about themselves. She talked about the outcome. Then the second thing, stop stressing and start studying smarter with our proven AANCC and AANP exam review courses. Okay, great. Stop stressing. So it hits the emotional, like the emotional state you're in and tells you, you know, the emotion, the better emotional state you're going to be in.

And then after that, she basically is like, I did it. You could do it. I've helped these 500 people do it. here's some testimonials from them, here's some pictures of their faces, and they're holding up their, like, certificate that says I passed. And they're like, thank you, Sarah, you help me pass my exam. And then she's like, there's like a founder letter. I've been in your shoes.

Feeling anxiety, as you prepare for your nurse practitioner boards, you're not alone. The stakes are high, and these tests aren't easy. You need a review course to help you master this. I get it because I've been there. I remember how I felt studying for this. That's why after passing both of my exams, I decided to create a review thing to help others too. Since these launch, I've helped thousands of people, 98% pass rate. Here's how it works. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Join our Facebook group and check it out.

Just a really well done, really simple product, really simple idea. And I think this, by the way, this idea could be done with any, like, trade that has certification. So personal trainers get certified for their, like, health stuff and they take these programs that they have to get certifications for, whether you're, you know, dental hygienist, speech therapist, there's ongoing architect, it could be anything. Ongoing professional education and anything that there's a, you know, a finishing school for, so like med school, nursing school, whatever, cosmetology school, whatever it is, being the test prep for that, and obviously she's not the biggest one.

Like, Kaplan makes a few billion dollars. They offer, they offer prep for MCATs and offer prep for nursing school. But you just carve out your niche and you're the more trusted face. you're the more human brand and it's beautifully done. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess. But HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.

I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better. Dude, this is why I hate that question when people ask me, if you could start over again with nothing, what would you do? And I say, I would do the same thing. And they go, does that still work? And I would always say, of course it does.

Now we have an example, Milk Road, did the exact same thing. Within the last 12 months. And I have another friend named Ben Tassel. Do you know, Ben? He's doing an AI Milk Road now. Yeah, he had a, oh, that's what we're doing. We're calling it Milk Road now. It's the Milk Road of, of, it's the Bay.

Like the Hustle was sort of like the Milk Road for general business. It just happened to proceed it by five years. Andre the Giant was just the Sam Parr of Wrestling. Yeah, that's what we're going to do now. I like that. He's a big buff guy. He's pretty much the same part of wrestling. Triggered.

Well, anyway, like, I say I would do the exact same thing. And now you're an example. You did the exact same thing. And then now there's Ben. And Ben goes, well, I'm just following. He goes, I heard in the pod that Sean said he just copied you. So I'm going to copy Sean copying you. And you know what?

It's working. It's work. He's got this AI newsletter and it's working. And there's a handful of businesses. There's a bunch of businesses. where it's basically the same thing all the time, but a little bit different. And maybe not even better, just a little bit different or in a particular niche. This course business, this is another one of those where it's just the same thing. Her website is, I think it's only like eight or nine or ten

pages. She's got the webinar. She's got like the different offerings, the Facebook group. It's the same thing that you can do in any case. And in some cases, this could be a home run, I bet. You know, I sold a little bit early, but Morning Brew is doing, I think they said 70 million in revenue industry dive sold for $500 million. Those are all home runs. Same with the course business. I think there's a world where you can do the exact same thing. It could be quite huge, although $10 million is awesome. So that's why I think that whenever people ask that question, it's stupid or I hate it because you're just looking for an easy answer and you're looking for permission to not to do something because you want me to say it's outdated or doesn't work anymore.

And my answer to that is, no, no, no, it works. It works. Don't have. permission, just do it. Right. Yeah, there's a, there's a better version of that question. That question is sort of like the question when somebody asked Elon Musk, they're like, and Elon, you're a great inspiration to many entrepreneurs out there. What words of advice do you have to somebody to encourage them to start a business? And he goes, if you need words of encouragement to start a business, don't do it. And that's how I feel about like, if you're really clueless about what ideas should I do. First of all, this whole podcast has hundreds of ideas,

of examples of ideas you could do. Don't overthink it. You could just do any of those. Secondly, you should have a running list of irritations and problems that you experience in your professional and personal life, that you're like, God, if somebody made a way that made this better or made this easier or made this faster or made this cheaper,

I would buy it. That's a great source of startup inspiration. If you're just like, I don't know, maybe Sam will tell me how to be a, successful person. That's not what successful people do. Now, having said all that, I'm doing it again. I have a little example of this. Okay, so I've talked on here about my personal trainer. And my personal trainer is my buddy, Jay. You've met him before. Awesome guy has become a great friend and has delivered a ton of value in my life. As you know, I basically was not working out and was like, you know,

on this steady climb of like, yo, I'm going to gain 15 pounds a year. What was your, what was your, what was your peak weight, 250, 220? Not too,

probably like 230 was my peak weight. And not like, oh, I'm bulking. It wasn't muscle mass. Let's put it that way. And so anyways,

I get in touch with JAA and I'm like, hey, I want to make a change. He's like, awesome. How often are you working out right now? I'm like zero times a month.

And he's like, cool, okay, let's start there. And so, he came over and took me from like zero to now working out five days a week eating better you know seeing a bunch of you know great gains and results getting stronger fitter healthier more mobile all those things i'm playing basketball again my life has got a lot better and so i'm like dude you help me with this one area i really wanted help in in my life uh how can i return the favor okay

i know i'm paying you but but how can i help you even beyond that and so he's basically always wanted to have his own successful business and he's like he's like i see what you do I think that's awesome. I want kind of the same. I'm thinking about e-commerce or this or that. He goes, I want that. I want that. And I go, all right, dude, I got it for you.

I have a idea that I think will work, that I think will make, it'll be successful, which is great, because that's what we want. We don't want to fail. The second thing is it will lead to a lifestyle that I think you enjoy. It's not a ton of front work.

It doesn't take a ton of capital up front. And so I'm basically, check this out, I'm helping him create a milk road for personal trainers. And so basically it's going to be a newsletter that goes out every morning to other, like it could be fitness enthusiasts, but I think starting market is just other trainers. So train the trainers is the thing I keep saying.

And because I'm like, dude, you are awesome with workouts. You're awesome with mindset stuff. You find all these interesting like, I don't know, links to like cool like, oh, Andrew Huberman said this thing about the supplement and check this out, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, dude, I feel like if you just. kind of published your daily, you know, your daily, what's going on your day to day today as a trainer? That would just be an awesome email to receive if I was another trainer. So we created this format and we created this brand. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to

help him. You have the URL? Yeah. So the URL, there's no side up yet, but I just got the domain. It's, it's so the email's called the Daily Pump. And so mydailypump.com is going to be the email. So go, go register for this because I want feedback on it. But I'm going to build this whole thing in public. So Milk Road, I didn't build in public. I was like, oh, this is a good idea. I'm going to sprint on this. And basically one year built the thing up into the largest crypto newsletter in the world and sold it. And so, you know, had an awesome outcome there. And now that I did that, I know how I would do this in like 10 other spaces. I don't really want to go do that because it feels like I'd be just doing, I'd be on the hamster wheel just playing the same level of the video game, even though it's probably

smart. I have the knowledge now of how to do it. It'd be too boring. I don't want to do it. But this has a different like meaning, right? If I could help him build up this business, I think that will be, you know, like just helping my friend out with something that I know would really be helpful to be impactful to them. And so, so that's what I want to do. And I'm going to share how we build this thing up, you know, sort of step by step. And my, it's been a really interesting process because he's not from the startup or business world. And so, a lot of times at the beginning I was like oh yeah we should do this and he's like yeah yeah dope and then he wouldn't do it and I'm like I got frustrated and I this happens to me with a bunch of

people who I'm like dude you I meet somebody they're like oh I want to improve my situation I'm like oh yeah you just got to do this or I'd back you if you could find something I'll bring the capital you do the work and they're like yeah yeah yeah and then three weeks later I don't hear from them and I used to think oh it's because they're lazy and I actually realize it's not because they're lazy. They're not lazy people. In fact, usually the person I'm trying to help, they're working 10 times harder than me at their day job, right? One guy was a plumber. And, you know, it's like, okay, this guy's doing much harder work. It's not that he's lazy. It's that they're afraid and they're confused. So they're afraid to fail and they're afraid to look dumb if

they do the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing to me. And they're also just confused. They don't know where to start. They just never started something like this from scratch. And for me and you, we've spent now 15 years doing this. It's very easy to think, oh, dude, I just spin up a landing page. I would set this up on beehive and then I would go over here and I would do this and then I would I would not focus on that other stuff and I wouldn't care about advertisers to like get to 20,000 subscribers and like I would scrape this email list. I would do this ad and I would and they're like, dude I don't I've never run a Facebook ad. I've never done a landing page. I've never done any of this stuff. I don't want to

talk about that stuff publicly. I kind of regret it a little bit because like you had this at milk road. I didn't I had it a little bit as well where like people in South America or other countries were just like copy copy. They would like translate it and then just send the email. like 30 minutes later. And in one regard, it's flattering. But another, I'm like, and sometimes it's harmful, but other times it just pisses me off. Most of the time, it just pisses me off. It's not harmful.

But I don't, I've changed. Once we got audiences, I was like, I don't want to talk about this stuff. And so I get nervous about that. Now, I don't think you have, like, whether this thing succeeds or not, it doesn't impact you other than you want to help your friend. So I want to help why you. I think. If I talk about it publicly, it's going to keep me invested in it.

It's going to keep me engaged because I'm going to have to keep reporting the story. And I also think it's easier for me to justify the time because this takes time for me to help. And I already had a pretty busy plate. But if I could say, well, you know what, I'm able to use this for stories as content. Then I don't have to separately make other content. So that's my selfish justification. I also think if somebody was going to copy this blueprint, I wouldn't do it in personal trainers. That's only because he is a personal trainer.

There's 30 other niches where this would work. better than for personal trainers. And I think that because it's specific to him and it's actually fits his, it's authentic and it fits his actual like where he is a master. Like in the same way, I'm like, dude, I don't get it. Why don't you just blah, blah, blah? What I realized was he probably looks at me and says the same thing. He's like, dude, I told you to increase your protein intake and just eat these macros.

You'll get the body you want six months. But here I am at your house and there's a Chick-fil-A wrapper. What's going on here, right? Like, that's the equivalent, right? or he'd be like, oh, you should wake up and do this morning cardio thing. Fasted cardio, it'll only take you 10 minutes. Sounds so easy. Sure enough, he shows up.

I got some excuse as to why I didn't do it. I'm like, oh, I just forgot that like a beginner is always going to go through these stages. And I just got to stay patient with him the way he's been patient with me. Now I do those things when he says them, much better than I did at the beginning. You got to get this page up though. You got to get this page up by tomorrow. I'm going to get it up before this thing. thing is done. But the cool thing that I've been doing, by the way, is I've been posting,

I've been texting him one thing every day. I'm like, yo, you got to just do, I'm like, the way you get, like, you give me a workout of the day. It's like, sit down for, it's like, go to the gym for an hour and you're going to do this workout. And I just got to listen to you, follow your blueprint, and it's going to get the result I want because you've done this. You've mastered this, this, you're a black belt in this. I was like, I'm going to do the same thing on the business side. I'm not going to hope you get, hope you figure it out. I'm not going to leave it to you to figure it out. I'm going to give you one thing a day to do.

It'll probably take you about an hour. I'm going to give you your daily workout each day. And so that's how I've been doing it one day, one little text message at a time. And I'm like his business trainer the way he's my personal trainer. So it's been kind of interesting to see how that's worked. And that's been pretty effective, to be honest. I'm eager to see if you regret this or not. He'll pull it off.

It's going to be at least mildly successful because he's got a massive head start because we're going to be talking about it. But I told him, I was like, dude, I'm. not going to give up on you. I was like, if I was like, you would, you could have given up on me and been like, dude, this guy's not, this guy, you pay him still. Yeah, I pay him. But like, you know, so there's obviously a little difference there. But like, there's a difference between you show up and do the job or you go the extra mile. He goes way the extra mile with me. So like, you know, my kids are raging out. He'll be holding one of my kids so I can get the workout out while he's training me. Or like, he'll come in on an off day and just make the gym better. Just, just a surprise.

and be like, look, I want your environment to be dope because you're going to just get that extra 5 to 10% juice enjoying your environment. You know, a trainer doesn't have to do all that. They don't have to come and rearrange your gym and help you with your kids or show up, you know, stay for two hours extra because whatever, you know, that sort of stuff. So I've got this friend named Nick Gray.

Do you know who Nick Gray is? He's the party guy. So Nick Gray is my good friend. Yeah, he started a thing called Museum Hack where he took, he had another company that like made parts for private planes or something like that that he sold. And then he started a thing called museum hack, which was private tours and museums.

He sold that. Now he's got a new thing called the two-hour cocktail party. It's a book on cocktail parties and how to host the perfect cocktail party. It's honestly quite good. I use his techniques. He's doing this new thing that he just showed me where whenever he goes to a bar or a restaurant

or a museum or anything, he takes a picture of the food or the front of the building and he reviews it, but can you see the go to the MDB link I have in there? Look at what he does. So he posts a review of the place, but he puts his book in the picture. And he's been testing this. And over the past couple months, his photos, there's like analytics on it. They have two million views on his pictures.

And this guy, Nick, he's crazy. So he just tweeted out this thing. He was, I'm going to host a conference for all my ex-girlfriends. He's got a lot of ex-girlfriends because he dates a lot. And he's very charming. And so girls love him. But he's really nice. And so he stays friends with all of his ex-girlfriends.

One time this guy for his 40th birthday party, he rented out a water park. And there was like 30 of us. And I swear to God, I'm not exaggerating. Four of the guests were his ex-girlfriends. And they were all hanging out together. And he's like, I'm going to. So this guy's crazy. But look at this.

Can you see the link to his Google reviews? This is so funny. This is the funny. greatest growth hack I've seen in a long time. So he has a blog post coming out. I would never do something like this. He's got this blog post coming out tomorrow or the next day. And it's, I think if you just Google Nick Gray, G-R-A-Y, you'll see the blog post.

I don't know the name of his website. It's probably just Nickray.com. And he's going to like reveal the results. But he was showing me this. I was like, Nick, I was just out to eat with him the other day. And he had his book with him. He pulled it out of his bag and he was taking a picture. I go, what are you doing?

He goes, check this out. And he showed me his Google reviews. He goes, they have analytics on this. this that my videos in the last couple months have gotten 1.8 million views, 1.9 million views. Is this hilarious or what? That's so funny. This is such a funny. It reminds me of somebody, the story is better than the actual growth hack. So somebody said this about Pinterest too. They go, yeah, Pinterest, man, they were such grinders. I remember they used to go into the Apple stores and change all the default

homepages to Pinterest.com on the Macs that are sitting on the table. Yeah, and who knows if that works or not. I'm like, dude, this guy spending hours driving to Apple stores to try to get like five impressions on his website and think that somebody's going to be like, huh, you know, I went there for an iPhone, but you know what I really want to do? What was that website I saw on the demo computer? I'm going to go sign up and make an account and become a daily active user. That doesn't happen. But the story, the hustle story makes it worth it. And I've done several of those where the hustle story makes it sound like you were going to the end degree.

even though it made zero sense to do so. He has reviews of everything. There's one of Panda Express of Lulu Lemon, of Charlie's subs, vans, the store. Any store that he goes to, he's taking this really good picture of, like, the front. Like, there's a great American cookies. It looks like it's just like an Annie Ann's in the mall. He takes a picture of the front and just has his book in his hand. There's this guy on Yelp that Sarah and I follow because he has his,

he like tests all the good food places in New York and San Francisco. and he had a newborn when he started doing it and all the pictures of his newborn eating the food and then it was like you see the baby get like one year old, two year old, three, or four. I start like getting to know this kid. And we're always like, look, that guy's been there. And it's actually an interesting hack that I think it actually,

I don't know if this one will work, but there's like these weird personalities that I've seen on Yelp and on Google reviews where I start to get to know them. And I trust the reviews. And it's actually a really fascinating platform to hack. And I wanted to bring that up because I've never really seen insights like this and I think it's incredibly fascinating. Yeah, that's super cool.

Do you know what I'm doing right after the top of the hour? Yeah, you have, can you talk, you want to announce it what you're doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did you do this, by the way? How did you pull this off? All right, so we have this guy named Michael Harris, nicknamed Harrio. I don't know. I'm going to interview him and find out his story.

So I don't want to like reveal his whole story because I don't know the whole thing. But basically, he's one of the co-founders of Death Row Records. And when I, sometimes Sarah and I, my wife, we volunteer in prisons and we work with this thing called The Last Mile. I've told you about the Last Mile. My friend, Chris, he's a tech guy, started it. It basically helps teach inmates how to do tech stuff so hopefully they can get a job once they let out. Well, a lot of those people are like convicted murderers. It's wild.

And through that, I met Michael. And he basically went to prison for 30 years in his 20s. And before that, he made up to a million dollars a day selling crack and cocaine, I think, and helped discover Denzel Washington and sponsored or funded Broadway plays and things like that and parlayed that into music and thus created death row records, which Shug Knight. And he has all these stories about Snoop, Dre, Tupac. So we're going to talk to him and figure out a story. Are you a little bit intimidated to have this conversation?

Incredibly, because I don't know. You're not like a big pop culture guy, but like basically, like there's, you know, he's a girl. Me? I am pop culture. Dude, you didn't know who Dali Part was. But basically, like, I, there's a lot of, like, I read a book about EZE and EZE and Drey and Death Row had a beef. And I don't know, like, where that stands. Like, if I can say who I'm a fan of and who I'm not a fan of.

So I'm a little nervous because this guy, it's not like our friends or our enemies on Twitter where we're just going to argue. Of course, this guy will never do anything bad. But, like, you know, like, it's a little bit more real. He's more capable, for sure. Don't make the mistake of, don't make the mistake of, like, referencing somebody by first name, if you don't know them. They'd be like, yeah, I was reading about ease. And, uh, is they ease? Yeah, easy, but I don't know.

I'm just trying to seem cool here. It's like what people. Yeah. So they say they're coming to visit the Bay Area and they go, hey, I'm going to be in San Fran this week. and I just have to tell him, I say, hey, man, listen, just as a friend. Nobody says San Fran here. So you're just outing yourself as a tourist as soon as you say that. And that's how I feel.

So I feel I want to be respectful. But I also want to let them know that, like, you know, I've listened to all this music. I've read a lot of books about it, but purely from an academic standpoint. You know what I'm saying? We're like brothers from two way different mothers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, like, that's, yeah, so it feels like a little funky. But, like, I was talking to me the other day because the reason I got in touch with him is he wants to, like, launch some podcasts or he's just brainstorming. And he asked to talk to me. And I said, yeah. And he starts talking. And I'm like, hey, you realize that like when you're talking to me about this drug trade and things like that, like you talk about delegation and empowering your coworkers and

things like that. Like, this is business stuff. Do you want to come on the pod? And so I thought it'd be cool. Yeah. We've had people who made, you know, originally this podcast called My First Million because it was let's interview people who have made a million bucks in many different ways. So I interviewed, you know, a business person.

Then I interviewed a poker player. And then somebody who made it through selling, you know, weighted blankets online and somebody who made it doing, you know, deodorant. Somebody made it doing when 800 got junk and like a whole bunch of different things. But now we have somebody who did it in, in some new ways, selling crack cocaine, record label. And who knows, what else? I think it's going to be amazing. I'm joking around just because I know if I'm.

was in your position, I would feel a little squirmy going into it. Like, just like, how do I not say something stupid? Like, I know this could be great. This is when things are tough. It's when you know it could be great, but you also know it could easily go not great. If you don't build rapport or you don't really know how to guide the conversation properly because it's not your standard interview, right? Like if we brought somebody on who built a SaaS company to, you know, $20 million,

we'd be like, cool, I know the same. I know 20 questions to ask you that are all safe. You're going to give me 20 answers that are all safe. And I know exactly how the conversation is going to go. And it really can't go anywhere that's out of my comfort zone in terms of a question or a topic to talk about. Whereas this one's going to be, you know, the zip code is out of your comfort zone. So you're not going to, I know how I would feel going into that interview. That's why I wanted you to come because I thought it'd be fun since you are, you're even a few more zip codes away than I am.

Are you sure? Are you sure you can't make it? You should. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Death Road records. Names a bit crude, don't you think? Is everything something softer, like Milk Road, for example?

Yeah, unfortunately, I got another thing scheduled at that time. All right. That's the pod. By the way, the gentleman's agreement is working, by the way. I went to a party with a bunch of 23-year-olds. Sounds a lot worse than it is. A friend turned 23. He asked me to go.

Jeffrey's party on an island Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that like the Lolita like taco taco plate? No, he, I had so many people come out to me and said, hey, by the way, I honored the gentleman's agreement. That's because the show we have this thing called the gentleman's agreement.

We make this content for free and, but it's not actually free to listen. In exchange, you got to go subscribe to our YouTube. And it's working. We're getting like 800 to 1,000 new YouTube subscribers a day. So. Yeah, this basically is 3x the number of daily subscribers. we were getting on our YouTube channel. Who would have thought?

Everyone told us to do this the whole time. And we were like, you're an idiot. No one follows that. Yeah, we also, we kind of, yeah, we say it a lot now. But for like two years, we never told anybody to do anything. So we're just kind of, we're due. Yeah, we're due.