My First Million - Tech Startup Ideas for the Farmer Economy

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

Shaan Puri (@shaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) discuss FarmCon 2022, how Shaan got Covid, tech startup ideas for the farmer economy, how to develop value and a sense of mystique in your personal brand, and much more.  _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (00:18) - Should babies pick their own name? (02:50) - Shaan gets Covid (08:22) - How to have Slack meetings (10:15) - FarmCon and business ideas for the farm economy (51:20) - How to create personal brand equity (59:00) - Sam's short term rental crew (01:01:15) - Steady.capital (01:06:22) - American Kingpin (01:11:50) - Announcing the winner of the clips contest ----- 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

So the background is this guy named Kevin Van Trump. He is probably in his 50s, mid to late 50s. And he basically, I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities. But he's got a relatively thick southern accent. Right. So he goes to Chicago. He probably makes eight figures trading commodities.

So he like sounds like this country bumpkin farmer. But like, you know, he's trading like corn fuel. and shit like that. It makes a lot of money. Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day at this point. For like 17 years. He's done that. Is it 17 years? Something like that. It's like some almost 20 years. He's been doing this every day. And it makes like something like in the world of $20 million a year in subscription revenue

just to read. It's more now. I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now. So I've done calls with him. And this guy who's like, oh, hey, check this song bitch out. Like, that's what whole state. Okay, so I haven't talked to you in like two weeks. You had COVID. Dude, I had, I can't even explain what I had. I would apologize because I missed so many recordings.

But in a way, you gave me COVID because I got COVID because I went to this conference, which is, you know, a decision I made. I didn't really, honestly, I wasn't really thinking about it. COVID has just been so present that I wasn't really like, I didn't do the math of like, you know, if I go on a plane and I go to a conference with 2,000 people, what's going to happen? And so sure enough, I go to this conference that Sam hooks me up with. He's like, Sam's like, hey, this conference is amazing. It's called FarmCon.

These guys who run it, there's super cool story. You know, it's awesome. And I was like, oh, I'm in. And I was going to go. And I land and I'm like, yo, I'm here, baby. Let's do this. And Sam's like, oh, I didn't go, dude. I don't want to get COVID.

Well, I can't, I canceled like last minute. I, dude, like, I thought that you knew that I canceled. But, like, how would I know that? Because we, we had talked about you going and we hadn't said, I don't know, we had not really mentioned, like, I'll see you there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I thought you knew I canceled. So I felt horrible.

But like, a week or two prior to, to, that's like when Omnicrom and all this stuff happened. And it's a, it's a farmer's conference in Kansas City. my, you know, I'm from Missouri. And I was like, ooh, I think that, like, that COVID will be there. Yeah, I don't know if I went. COVID was for sure there. It was, you know, the main attendee, the main keynote speaker. Dude, we walked in.

So I walked in, Ben went with me. And so we go in and me and Ben are literally the only two people in the room with a mask. And there's like 2,000 people in there. And I was like, oh, shit. I didn't even really think about it. And I was like, oh, fuck. It's here. And I was like, well, the odds of me getting are pretty high, but I'm now here.

So I got to just make the most of it. So anyways, basically, I go to this conference and everything that could happen to get COVID happened, meaning like, it's like conferences in this ballroom. Great. It's 2,000 people in one room. All right, that's not so good. They don't have masks on. Okay. Next thing to happen, I go to the gym in between like the sessions.

We were meeting Ben wanted to get a workout in. We go, we meet this guy. We're making small talk. And we're like, oh, you're here for the conference? He's like, no, I'm just quarantining here. My girlfriend has COVID, so I'm here. Oh, my God. I was like, bro, I just shook your hand.

And what am I doing? And so then this guy, my gym buddy's got COVID. I was like, oh, great. And then I get on the plane finally to come back. I'm like, all right, I think I might have made it out unscathed. I don't know. I'm feeling okay. Plan gets stuck on the runway for three hours.

So I'm on a plane and a closed tube with a bunch of other people for three hours. I was like, all right, it's over. I got COVID. And sure enough, I get home. and two days later, I get COVID. The dumb thing I didn't do was I didn't quarantine right away, which I should have just done. I should have just said, hey, even if I'm not feeling anything, I've been around a bunch of people. I should just like leave.

But I was like, look, I just left my wife at home with the two babies for like, you know, four days. I should come back and help. And in trying to help, I ended up giving my wife COVID. Then we gave both our babies COVID. And so for the last 10 days, it's just been someone in my house has COVID at any given time. And I've just been literally, I haven't gone to a computer. I haven't done anything. Did Ben get it?

Taken care of it. Ben did not get it. I think Ben had it like a month ago. So he somehow came out unscathed. Did Silly get it? He didn't go. He didn't have to go. He flaked the night of and was like, actually like it's super inconvenient to get there.

I have to like, change my flight has like a stopover. Fuck this. I'm not going. We'll do something else. So was it in you, but you were, even though you're vaccinated, you got sick. I got really sick. Yeah, I got really sick for three days. So let me tell you about my COVID experience.

I got really sick for three days, but it's just the flu with a side dose of paranoia because it's like, oh, that's ain't the flu. This is COVID. And so definitely, you know, fever, all that good stuff, whatever. Then the babies, everybody had kind of the same thing. But the bad thing is, like, I don't know how you are, but I'm like a huge baby when I get sick. Me too. And my wife is like, you know, never gets sick. She's like one of those people just like never gets a cold.

never has a runny nose nothing. And so even with COVID, she was like, she fought it off pretty good. It was like pretty mild. You know, she was still doing like, I think women are generally tougher, particularly moms are tougher when it comes to that stuff.

Totally. But the hard part is when we both get the same thing and I go down like a, you know, bag of bricks and she's still saying. Yeah, she's just like, what is this? Why are you, why do you need so much sleep right now? And I'm like, I just can't explain.

In fact, I saw this meme that was so perfect. It goes, is this guy. He goes, you know, it's so good that women have to give birth and go through labor because now they understand what happens when a man gets a cold. And that's how it is. I'm a huge baby about it. And she like toughed it out, no problem. So that was kind of embarrassing.

Did, so how many people, how many full-time employees work at your company? The D to C company? Maybe like seven, eight full time. And these, in America, Americans full time and you, and you like are running meetings. Not all Americans, but, but, you know, people who, this is their main job. They work full time. And when you, not counting the warehouse staff. And do you, like, do weekly meetings with them and run it like a company?

Or is it really, Sean, if it's run like Sean, like very autonomous, everything done via Slack? Very autonomous, everything done via Slack. We have one meeting a week that's in Slack. And I just say, hey, get in this channel right now. We just did it. It was at 10.30. It's like, all right. Get in this channel right now.

And I just say, all right, everybody here. And then they just like emoji react. And then I'm like, cool. This is like a real meeting, meaning like don't go open 10 other tabs. Like when I say something, I want a response within like a second because it's like a live chat. I was like, but calls are annoying. We all agree calls are annoying. So let's just like, dude, like you just humor me.

Let's try this meeting style. So we do it. I kind of like it. And basically I just say, all right, what's everybody's main priority this week? Like what matters? everyone's like, oh, we got to do this, this, this. I say, then I'll be like, that doesn't really sound like that matters that much.

Can we punt that? They're like, yeah, I guess so. And like, we disagree on here's the three or four things that matter this week. You're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. And then it's like, cool. I tell one guy, I say, hey, check in on Wednesday. And everybody just say how they're going on their things for the week. And then check in on Friday and say, how did we do for the week?

That's it. And how much time does your wife spend on the company? It spends a good amount of time. Like, she's, you know, she's a stay-at-home mom, I guess, like, first job because, like so during the day she doesn't really work on it too much just kind of like on her phone in between you know just like watching the baby but then at night she basically works from 10 p.m. when the babies are finally knocked out to two or three a.m. pretty much every night she does that and she works on the business and does the designs and all that stuff so when you guys

are both sick how bad like who's we did no work you just like you just have a a person who you trust and you say just handle it yeah we're like you know just you do what you can do and then whatever doesn't get done doesn't get done. We're not going to worry about it. We're not going to add a stress to our life that says this week we also have to work. It's just impossible. So let's talk about this conference for a second

because I have been telling you about this guy for a long time. And I think that you humored me and the audience has humored me. And they've like, oh, that sounds neat. But when you got to meet him, did you understand what I was saying? Dude, this guy is amazing. This guy is amazing. And what he's built is amazing. want to go through, I have a bunch of thoughts, but let's start with them. Okay, so the conference

called FarmCon and the family's the Van Trump family is that's their, that's their name. So it's Kevin Van Trump and Jordan Van Trump. That's like the two kind of like core principles. That's the father and son. And I'm just going to describe what happened when I got there. It wasn't like a normal conference. So a couple unusual things. I go in and there's a normal stage like a conference, you know, like they got that freaking wallpaper behind it. That's like every sponsor's logo on step and repeat banner. Okay, cool. Everything's normal.

But the main speaker, Kevin Van Trump, is sitting not in a chair. He's got this like mahogany desk that was put onto the stage. And he's sitting in it. He looks like a judge of a courtroom. So he's got this humongous like oak wood table that he's sitting behind in his thing. And he's got a gavel, literally. And he's talking into the mic. And he, it's like a free form agenda.

So he'll be like, like, he would just say something that he would be like, I walked in. And he's like, you know, that's why I don't hire any Ivy Leaguers. You know, Ivy Leaguers, here's a problem with Ivy Leaguers. And he'll just go on a rant. There's like five panelists that are sitting there. And then he'll just like, do tell this story. And the crowd loves him. I loved him.

He is an amazing, charismatic speaker who is smart and very real. and he's very, he's just a very good speaker. Like his style was so, um, likable. I couldn't, I can't expect. So the background is this, this guy named Kevin Van Trump.

This is all from memory. I met him four or five years ago at a conference. And since then, I've kind of brought him into our circle of friends. He is probably in his 50s, late, mid to late 50s. Um, and he basically,

I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities. but he's got a relatively thick southern accent. Kansas City, Missouri isn't really considered the south, but it can be pretty country. But I don't know where he's from. So he goes to Chicago.

He probably makes eight figures trading commodities. So he sounds like this country bunk and farmer, but like, you know, he's trading like corn features and shit like that. It makes a lot of money. Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day at this point. For like 17 years.

done that. Is it 17 years? Something like that. It's like some almost 20 years. He's been doing this every day. And it makes like something like in the world of 20 million dollars a year in subscription revenue just to read. It's more now. I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now. So I've done calls with him. And I'm just in this guy who's like, oh, hey, check this song bitch out. Like that's what he'll say. And he's like he's like pointing at his new Picasso. So I've done video calls with him. And he's got like this like beautiful like. chopper in the background, like a fancy customized motorcycle. He goes, oh, we just picked up this old bitch. We just got this song bitch here today. We really love the Picasso's. And that's how he talks. And he's now his family, Kevin or Jordan, his younger son runs like this other business. But in the commodities world, this like farming world, they are gods.

And I've met a bunch of people who like them. And they're like New York-ish type folks who have like $50, 100 million dollars and are like traders and they like revere him and they love him. Dude, so, so have you read any of his newsletters? They're so good. Yeah, must pay subscribers. First, they're like, you know, it's like a 20 page PDF. So it's like not even like a short thing.

It's like a long thing. And it's like he basically is writing about what he thinks is going on. So in the market. So he'll be like, you know, bean futures or, you know, rice, corn, these different commodities. He's talking about what's going on is really important for people in agriculture because if you're a farmer, and you're growing corn, you've got to decide,

do I hold this corn and try to sell it myself? Do I need to take on some insurance in case the price of corn drops? And should I sell all of my corn in these futures market? Or should I hedge? But should I take a hedged position against what I'm producing? And so you have to decide what you're going to do with your crop. That is your, like, for most people,

investing is this like side thing. It's like you do your job that earns you your money, your business that ends you your money, and then you invest in the stock market and whatever. They're two separated things. For a farmer, these are not separated. This is part of the like core thing of what you do is basically managing your risk. And these aren't guys that have like a farm that like they just like get by. These are like folks that like supply the corn to like McDonald's.

And we're talking like they have turnover of 20, 30, 50 million dollars year. Like there's that. Yeah. He's like, you know, you'll meet the guy. who makes all the rice for Chipotle. It's like, whoa, that's crazy. That's crazy volume. And then I would meet people who were like,

what you call gentlemen farmers. They're basically people who don't need to farm. They just grew up that way. And they're like, yeah, my family, I like living on a farm. I want my family to have a farm. I farm on my weekends and nights. Like there's one guy.

He's a CEO of a large company. And he was just farming for fun, you know, nights and weekends. And that's why he was, you know, like there. And it was like such a bad use of like time. But it's not, it's not a bad use of time because it's a hobby. It's a pleasurable thing for him. This manual work is like how he relaxes. How many people were there?

So there's about 1,500 people. And so let me explain this guy, their business. Okay, so they have what I'll call three separate components, maybe four. Okay, so there's the newsletter, the paid newsletter that basically you subscribe to you, pay $1,000 a year. And I think, I believe, I might guess, based on some triangulation is that that's making about $30 to $40 million a year now in annual subscription revenue. And he's writing that, you know, like, we'd be hanging. hanging out. It was like maybe midnight. He's at the hotel bar or whatever we're hanging out. And I was like so like, you know, who on your team writes the letter? He's like, he's like,

I wish, you know, I write the letter. He's like, I'm going to go right up to my room right after this. Go write that some bitch. And he's like, you know. That's how he talks. He's like, I don't know what the fuck I did this. He's like, I created a job for myself. He's like, I told my kid, my son, I say, you need that the best job in the world is investing. You should invest. Don't do what I did. I created a job for myself. And I have to write. write this thing every day. But I love it. And it's really ugly. Have you seen it? It's like it's not mobile friendly. It's just a PDF.

And it's like 3,000 words with like PowerPoint. It's all substance over style. There's a few memes in there, which I like. It's like, you know, just some here's some jokes. And I think that's very on brain. But it is good. The writing's great. The writing is really great. And the insights obviously matter.

Otherwise people wouldn't be paying for this thing. They're genuinely getting value. And at the conference, he's a god, dude. People love this guy. They respect his kind of like knowledge and his content. And then they just really like him because, again, he would say, I literally wrote down verbatim things that he was saying because I was like, this is just like, this is so entertaining.

Like, for example, I'm just going to read you a couple of quotes that he was saying. So he's like, I hate hiring Ivy Leaguers because they're too afraid of failure. He's like, they're done so well their whole life. They're not used to looking wrong or looking silly. You know, go try NFTs. Go, go put your hands on the wheel. Go get, go, go fall. Go scrape your knee.

He's like, that's how I grew up. He's like, my dad would take us in the car. He said, no seat thumbs, baby. That's how we roll. He's like, we're going to take some risks. We're going to get skinned up. We're going to break some bones. We're going to fall off the bike.

He's like, that's how you got to treat your kids. Even if they're smart kids, you got to. He's like, because one of the big concerns is how do you get your kid. You're 60 maybe now. You've got your farm. Your kids, 30. They don't want to take over the farm. or maybe they want to,

but they don't know how to do anything. And so he's like, he's like, you got a segment off a portion of the farm, let him fail, but let him have the skin in the game. He's like, you know,

I want to have kids that don't melt down when the rug gets pulled. I want to be able to go to them and say, hey, things have changed and we're changing tonight. And he's just like going on this rant. And dude, I'm sitting there in the crowd

and I'm like, World Star. I'm like, this is such a hype monologue and it had nothing to do with whatever they were talking about like Bean Futures, five seconds before that,

but he would frequently go on these and ever, Every time I'm just nodding my head. I'm like, preach. Like, I was at this dinner with them, and people were, like, it was kind of like these guys that organized this dinner, they're paying for it. But then they, as, you know, like, sort of what's, what's the, what's the catch? It was, we're going to pitch our idea to Kevin and a couple other guys who we want to invest

in it. And they pitched their idea and he's like, cool. So who's the, who's the audience? Who's the customer for this? And they're like, well, you know, we've done extensive. psychographic research here's a they slid over this thing he's like psychographic i don't know what that means man what the fuck you're saying who is the customer and they're like it's it's not demographic he's like it's a psychographic profile up he's like no like name them do you know five people who want this product like

would this guy want this product hey you over there at the table would you want this product and the guy's like no i wouldn't want it and and the and the guys are like kevin you're not like being open-minded he's like i'm trying to help you all he's like i've heard this idea 10 times. And I invested in this one. It failed. I invested in this one. And why did it fail?

Because there was no customer for this product. And he's like trying to give him real talk. And it was so good. And the whole time I'm just like, wow, this guy's core business instincts are very strong. And his delivery method is fearless. I just, I'm trying to do the impression because I want people to feel like what it felt like to hear this guy off the top of his head. It's so different than corporate America.

It's so different than New York. York SF where everybody's hedging every word and packaging everything and trying to deliver it it and trying to make these fucking, you know, like criticism sandwiches where you say a positive thing than a negative thing than a positive thing to like, you know, deliver the blow. Whereas he would just say the thing. And he did it in a way that came off great. I loved it. All right. So you have a list of a bunch of shit that you've learned here. Let's just rat them off. I found them to be all wildly interesting. Let's do a couple things. So the rest of his business. So he tells me, so he goes, I'm doing, I got the, I know for sure his business was doing in the $25 million range years ago.

Right. So there's the newsletter component. Yeah. Then he's like, well, you know, the employees, by the way. I think he's, right. And he's like, you know, I don't, there's never been a sponsor. 15 years. John Deere comes to me. They say we would love to sponsor.

No. Trust for the audit. He had these principles. He was like, these people are going to trust me because I'm not going to be selling them to somebody. And so he was like, you know, I'm going to do it this way and I'm going to stick to my guns. And so, and he's never done a, never like run ads to advertise this thing. It's all organic. Word of mouth.

with one person sharing it with another saying, you got to check this thing out, forwarding it to somebody else saying, hey, you see what he's saying about where the market's going? And then that person's like, shit, I need these insights. And so that's an amazing, you know, that's probably 90% profit, 95% profit, like on that 30 million, right? I think he uses, I like what's talking about which email, like it's so raw. I think he uses Salesforce to send it out. Right. Like, that's his email service provider. Like, it's pretty raw. So then the second piece of the businesses. I think that there's now a secondary thing that's happened many, many years in, which is like a big company will come to them and say, hey, you know, let's just, I'm just going to

for argument. It's like, hey, we need, we need somebody who's going to grow soy in this region. So he's just like, hey, I know, like, you know everybody. And so he's like, cool, yeah, I can find you people who can produce what you need. And they were like, cool, if we pay them, let's call it $5.5 a bushel, you know, we'll make it $5.50 and you keep your 50 cents as the, as the, as a broker fee. So I think that now produces as much as the newsletter. So let's double it, basically. Let's tack that on. Now, the third thing is investing. So they basically had this, you know, they're like, well, everybody keeps coming to pitch us, ag tech. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about. We know everybody in this space. So they then started investing. And I think

they just had their biggest hit. There's something called Benson Hill or Benson's Hill or something like that that went public. So, you know, like the first kind of like public unicorn that they seated. And the last one is the most interesting one of all. This is what the sun is doing. So do you know about this? Yeah, ag swag. So here's the backstory that he tells about this.

And I'm not sharing anything private. Like he told this on stage. He goes, I met a guy who he like moved into my neighborhood type of thing. And he used to be, you know, big shot exec at some company. And he's like, cool. Like, what are you doing now? He's like, oh, I'm doing this kind of like either this buyout, like leverage buyout, or I'm going to become a CEO of this company called American Identity.

We make T-shirts and hats. And he's like, all right, kind of lame. Like, you're selling T-shirts now? Like, you've done some big shit. Why are you doing that? A few years later, fast forward, that company, American Identity sells to Staples for $8 billion. And he looks at that. He's like, what the hell?

He's like, that T-shirt company? What, the hats? Custom hats? Like, what the fuck? and he's basically like, yeah, he's like, who are your biggest customers? He's like, oh, yeah, my three biggest customers are Cargill, ADM, and John Deere.

And he's like... Uniforms. What's that? Is that... Are they making uniforms? Or they're just making licensed merchandise. So like, if you buy John Deere, they're just are printing it for...

They're making it for John Deer. John Deere might have employee. They have, you know, 2,000 employees. They want to send hats to... Or a vest with a green John Deer vest or whatever. And so he's like, those are your biggest accounts. Like, those are my...

buddies. I know all those guys. And so after they sell, whatever, him and his son, they create ag swag, agricultural swag. It's the same idea. But now they go to all those accounts and they say, hey, you want vests and fleece and hats and whatever. And you got 100 employees in your office in Brazil. You need to send some stuff too. Cool. We got you. And I think this is going to be a really big business also. And so they are doing very well. He was saying they're outgrew their warehouse. They're trying to, you know, expect. ban and all this. He was telling me,

I want to say any of the numbers for that part. He was telling me some of the, just the square footage they need in the warehouse. And I know from the DDC space, I know if you need that much square footage, you are putting out pretty crazy volume. So that was amazing as well. But what an example of just being a big fish and not even a really small pond, right?

It seems like a niche, but it's like agricultural is pretty huge niche. You know, like my parents are working in this industry. And that's why I like this guys because I got to know them is, But like the thing that people like guys like you and me and people listening to this were these tech folks and we dismiss this. But like literally everyone in America has an onion in their home or a product made of an onion. Right.

And you're going to buy it multiple times a week. That's what my dad does. My dad sells onions. And I remember people I would make fun of them. And he's like, go look in your cabinet. You have stuff that I have owned at one point, I bet. And so it's not as small as we think. obviously it's not like for example the uh the founder of square this guy jimick of i want to talk about

him too he's this he was the keynote speaker so he comes on the stage he was also a very good speaker and i kind of have a high bar for that kind of thing but he's he was very impressive and he gets on the very first thing he says is um just want to say thank you to everybody in this room for feeding my family you know it's like but it's just it's like such an obvious thing but i say yeah of course where all the shit we eat comes from somewhere and in my mind is going to sound super dumb and ignorant, but it's true, which is like, before this conference, I really spent zero percent of my time thinking about where the heck the food comes, where heck food comes.

And if you thought of a farmer, you probably had stupid stereotypes of like dumb idiots. For sure. I was like, oh, and going into this, I was like, oh, I'm going to go meet a bunch of hillbilly like rednecks basically was my. And they do talk like that. I'm from there. They definitely will talk like that, but they like are wearing like a $50,000 Rolex. And when I get there, they're like, you know, yeah, you know, put options on B.

futures and, you know, with Brazil coming on board, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to take this hedged position against corn. And I was like, oh, wait, y'all are like fucking Wall Street traders. Wait, what? And I was like, okay, maybe it's just a couple of these guys. And I was like, and then I would meet guys in the hallway. And I'd be like, what do you do? Oh, we have my own family I was owned a farm in South Dakota for 40 years. Okay, cool. So I was like, do you do this, like kind of like fucking soybean oil futures? And they're like, yeah, you got to. And I was like, how do you know what he's like well we got a broker but like you know it's key to the business got you got to be doing it and i was like holy shit like you guys are more sophisticated financially than anybody i know

like i could go to in silica valley i could talk to engineers or or angel investors vc's and i could be like hey explain to me how a derivatives contract works or explain to me how a how the corn futures market looks nobody would know what the fuck they're talking about nobody would know what to say dude now now okay so you you've you've not made fun of me but teased me a little bit about, like, loving trucks and farmers. Now do you understand why I think it's so cool? Like, these guys are sophisticated and everything, but, like, the people you and I hang out with in our coastal cities,

they don't give a fuck about these folks. And I'm like, man, if you got to make those collide, it would be awesome. Right. And so a couple things, like, on that note. So when I was at one of the dinners, they were talking about, it was the, who's the customer dinner? They were, they were talking about something, and something came up, they go,

you know, how long, he's like, how long we've been here about whole foods and, you know, plant-based this and oat milk, that. He's like, this is still tiny fringe shit. He goes, America eats corn, bread, and milk at scale. This is what America wants. They need, how much volume is the whole food? And then I'm thinking, dude, in my bubble, everybody eats like that. Everybody eats the fringe shit.

So it was just awareness of like two things. One is like, in the future, maybe what we're doing ends up becoming more mainstream. I do believe that. But how not it is is crazy. The scale, the difference in scale of just like, you know, corn versus, you know, the non-whole foods versus Whole Foods is like, to them, Whole Foods was this rounding error. I thought that was hilarious because to me it's like, you know, it's like, I don't know where I shop every day.

It's the main thing. And again, all this is going to sound really like dumb, but I'm dumb. That's, I guess, the answer. When I was there, I was learning. dumb I was about everything. There was so many different things like that that I was learning. Can I just rattle off a couple other things? Okay.

I love this. Jonathan, write us in the chat. Is this? I could talk about this all day. I think this is the coolest shit ever. So I'm going to give you a couple of pain points and or business ideas that I saw or heard when I was there or just am making up because like, oh, maybe this. So one thing is, even though I'm like, oh, these guys are really sophisticated, there's

no way that they want to be that sophisticated about all these like kind of financial products that they have to use for hedging their the crops they produced and the insurance and all that good stuff. So I think that some kind of wealth front type of robo advisor that basically just does all the work for them to manage their risk is is going to be like important because every single one of them is like, yeah, we have a broker, we call and we talk to him and he tells us what he thinks we should be doing and we come up with a position we want to take and then we take it. So that to me felt very old, and I feel like if somebody does a robot advisor thing, that's interesting.

Kevin Van Trump had an idea. He goes, I want to make a Rally Road. And I think we've talked about Rally Road on here, which is basically Rally Road is like this app. You open up and you can buy a fraction of cool memorabilia. So it would be like a sweet old car or first edition Harry Potter signed book set. It's awesome. In my opinion, Rally Road has one of the best apps I've seen in like the last two or three years. Super nice app.

company I wish I invested in honestly I feel like I've been saying that for a year probably should have just done it at this point but really cool product really cool app so he was saying he's like I feel like he's like I think we could do rally road just for our stuff and I was like what do you mean he's like you know just like the the original

motorcycle from dukes and hazards or you know and again all the references flew over my head he said them really fast but like it was basically just cool hick shit and I was like oh that's probably actually a really good idea because these guys got money and they care about this stuff

and there's like a network effect of just speaking to that audience. Didn't I tell you so you know how I used to work for the show American Pickers? Do you do you do I don't, you were not in the market for that because you were in,

were you in Australia at the time? Whatever, but you, if the show was around now, you wouldn't watch that. You don't fit that bill. But do you know that that show American, so for those listening, I used to work for the show American Pickers

and it's basically like pawns stars. We'd go out and watch. What did you do for them? So the main guy in the show, his name is Mike Wolf. He's the main character. He owned this store and it was called Picking. And so you go and you just knock on doors and you go to Barnes and you find old memorabilia and you either sell it in your own stores or you sell it to antique shops or you sell it on eBay. And like the antique shops, they have to get it from somewhere. They get it from pickers. This guy like would buy old bike, bicycles. That's a big market. Or he would buy like a old 1936 Harley for 10 grand and sell it for 30 grand, that type of stuff.

And he owned the store, and he started filming himself pre-Utube for like five years to make the show popular, pitching it to the history channel year after year after year getting declined. Finally, they said, all right, this is cool. He's a good-looking guy, charismatic guy. They pick up the show. He was not rich off the pick and stuff, but he was like making a living. Gets rich because he licenses the show. He owns, he's the producer.

He owned all the rights. I work at the store where we would sell the stuff that he'd, bought his picks. But so many people would come to the store that basically we sold 30 grand a day of T-shirts and shot glasses. And because he was like eventually he wouldn't even sell the picks anymore

because he was like, I need stuff for people to look at when they're in the store. And he probably made, I mean, his business was probably doing $30, $40 million a year off all of his stuff. And when the show was on, when the show was live, it's still live now, but it's past his heyday. When it was live, we were the second

or third most popular show on TV. on all of TV. And we would have people flying from all over the world just to come and look at the stuff. I mean, I helped run the store, but like half the time I was just holding the door and making sure that we weren't at capacity. And the reason I'm bringing this up is this whole rally road for Middle America shit. This is the real stuff. And like buying like these rare baseball cars or whatever it is, that's the fringe.

And rally road has built a great business on top of that. Exactly. And by the way, if you were going to start this, I would, A, at email Sam and CCMe, just so I didn't get to know. But B, I would go to these guys like Mike Wolf. I would go find these kind of like all-American influencers, and I would use them to help promote the app and help get them on board to grow this thing.

And I think this is kind of like you go where nobody else is fishing. I think there's just not much competition to build technology products in that space. Let me tell you a couple other ideas that were in there. So any kind of fintech for, farmers. So part of it's like this wealth front idea, but also just like I've invested in six companies that are all just variations of like, you know, Brex or Mercury Bank. So basically like, there's two startups that were in the, that were serving entrepreneur, serving tech startups.

One is Mercury, which is just saying, hey, instead of going and using Bank of America or Wells Fargo, just use Mercury as your bank, right? We have a slick interface. It's a mobile app. You never got to talk to a banker, you know, free wire transfer. But it's not really a bank. It's, um, They're partnering with another bank and they just layer their branding on top of that bank. They're on top, exactly. But they've done really well. They're now valued over a billion dollars. You know, this guy who built it, Imod, he's kind of in our friend's group.

He's awesome. And, you know, he's great. He came on the pod. So, you know, so Mercury is bank for tech startups. And then Brex was Visa for tech startups. And same thing. Not, you know, they're built on top of the Visa rails or the MasterCard Rails or whatever. But it's just a credit card for startups.

and it was taking advantage of, like, hey, we understand startups. So, like, for example, you might be a startup that's raised $10 million of venture capital, but your credit card limit is $5,000 because the bank's like, dude, you have no income, no history, no nothing, no credit. Like, you know, we can't give you money. And they just raise $10 million. I have the money in the bank, like in this big point. Or they won't cap points on ad spend because they know that startup spend most of their money

on the ad spend. Exactly. Or things like, you know, just. the fact, like, hey, you can fill out the application online. You don't have to talk to a human and it'll be like sent to you in two days. Or like, you know, you want this to like easily auto fill online. Like there's do little stuff that it makes it like work well for that audience. So Mercury for Farmery for Farmers on board.

Brex became a multi-billion dollar thing. Mercury did. And I've now invested in versions of either Mercury or Brex for teenagers, for teens in India or business is in India for Canadians. Creators is the one that everyone talks about. For creators. I did that one too. Make this for food creators.

It would be so much. better to do this. Yeah. It's going to be crater. That's what we call farmers. We're going to rebrand farming as the creator economy. They're just creating food. Yeah.

Yeah. Seed creators. Dude, it's so much, that would be such a better company. And they're spending a lot of money, right? Because like all of it, the equipment, the like, you know, the fertilizers. These are like huge bulk purchases. My cousins, I have an aunt and cousin who, it's a mom and son, they have 15, 100 acres with like a thousand cattle or so. And I've gone out and hung out with them. And so they

basically raise bowls to, it's called buck and bowls. So like at a rodeo, the bowl that is like, it's called that that bowl is bucking. And at a rodeo, the guy, the cowboy who stays on wins money. And the bowl that bucks the hardest wins money. And you can also make money by if you have a really good buck and bowl, you get money by getting its semen out there. And all the females, they kill. and turn into beef. And they make a living doing this. They're probably millionaires, but they are fucking hard workers.

And when they walk around places, like during a workday, because like when you're a farmer, you're constantly driving to get feed, whatever, they'll have 20 Gs on them in cash. Wow. Like they just have just like fat loads of,

like you just need, or like when they go to the rodeo. Rappers and farmers, dude. When they go to the rodeo, I've seen them, they have like a, they've had like 10 grand on them because they got to like buy this

while they're there. They got to do this. They got to make their bet. Anyway, these farmers, have fuck loads of cash because they are, they're still doing stuff with cash. So like,

this is an interesting. It's a great market. Yeah. The other one, if automation. So I think the number one thing that was on everybody's mind is automation. How do we, how do we get more automation?

So I think from the beginning, technology has helped farms, which is like, you know, before there was tractors, everything was like, you know, horse pulled,

you know, or whatever. And then tractors come out and it becomes a big deal. And John Deere is trying to do self-driving tractors. And everybody's trying to do, automation. And so I think if you're sitting at MIT or you're at Carnegie Mellon and you're in some robotics lab and you're like, okay, I can keep making like, you know, things that I understand that from, you know, there's gadget that like turns off my light switch in my room because I don't like

to get up once I lay down. Yeah, so that's what I'm going to do. It's like, dude, instead, go to a farm for like three weeks and just watch what's going on. And then from there, come up with the automations and stuff you want to pull. I've invested. and a few companies in that space. So it's automations and precision agriculture, they call it. So I think automation falls under precision agriculture. That's like the term, I believe. And it's incredibly interesting.

So like you talk about like automated car, autonomous cars, autonomous tractors is incredibly intriguing. Right. And there's also like sensors. So just like soil quality is like the soil health is like one of the most important things. If your soil health is bad, your crop is fucked. And so just.

just being able to come up with models where you can go put sensors in the ground and get real-time soil health data and alert people, hey, this plot in this area is not going to grow very well because of this. That also seemed like a big deal. So those are some ideas. The last one is family succession planning. So one of the biggest things was like, how do you pass down your farm? Because if your kids don't want to do it and increasingly, you know, kids don't want to do it, what the heck are you going to do with this farm. And so there's like places that you can sell farms. So I think that was one opportunity. There's creating your estate, your will and all that stuff. There's renting it out to other people. There was just a whole bunch of stuff around, okay, if billions of dollars of farms is going to

trade hands in the next 10 years, who's going to be in the middle of that? And I think working with, remember one, we had one episode where we talked about picking your customer and we were talking about this company, user voice or user testing. Which one did your mom work for? User testing. And I was like, I think that's so cool because it gives people like your mom, like moms who raised kids and can't have full-time jobs. It gives them work. That's admirable. That's exciting.

That's incredibly motivating. I think I would easily put farmers in that same situation or in that same category where it would be really exciting and fun to work with those guys. Right. Right. Totally. There was a couple startups that I liked. One was called Acre Trader.

So these guys, now they've raised like 60 million bucks. I think Peter Thiel invested in them. And basically it's just fractional. land ownership of farms. So the idea is you can buy, I could go on there today, and I could put down $1,000 and buy a piece of a farm in North Dakota, and I can make 8 to 11% a year on that thing.

And I could diversify. I could own pieces of five farms in five different states. I do five different things. And then there's a farmer on the farm that does the work that's leasing the farm from you. You're just owning the land. And these guys, I think the average farm that they were doing was like $2 million in size. And they did like 80 farms last year or something like that.

So I was like, okay, that's actually pretty good. Like they basically buy the land and then fractionally sell it off. And they take a broker fee plus they take a like management fee of 0.75% a year on top of that just to manage the, just to be the property manager of the land. So it sounds like this conference is badass. You changed your perspective on some stuff. For sure. In fact, I actually just want to say conferences in general. I think that the general rap is conferences waste of time.

You'll see that a lot on Twitter, especially from smart people. People say that. I think the exact opposite view. I think conferences are pure fucking alpha, meaning I think there's so much gains to be had at conferences. Number one, you leave your routine. And that's just freeze the mind to just get out of the like, get yourself out of the weeds and get somewhere else.

Then when you meet somebody at a conference, there's like just meeting people in person. Like it's so crazy. You don't have to do anything with them. By the way, you know that I met Kevin. And I spoke at a conference and I was just hanging out in the lobby and Kevin Van Trump came up to me. And he was wearing cowboy boots and a Ramones T-shirt. And I thought that he was like a weirdo.

Like I did think that he was legit, but he was like talking like a big game, not like bragging, but kind of. Like he told me his business. And he had like a hundred thousand dollar watch on. And I was like, wait, you're telling me. He's like, yeah, I got 20,000 subscribers. I was like, oh, sake, you guys make money through ads? He goes, oh, no, paid subscription. I was like, wait, who are you?

So I. By the way, he remembered you. he gave a great intro. When he was introducing me, he's like, I met this guy, Sam. He used to work for American Pickers and Bo. And he just gave, he told the whole conference about you and how great you were. It was awesome. And so anyway, I met Kevin at a conference, which now you've been brought into the fold.

This is going to influence you in some capacity. You're going to bring other people into the fold. That's why conferences are cool. Conference is cool. Secondly, go to weird conference. So if you just keep going to the same insular, if you, like, I actually think that going to conferences that are not your industry is something that nobody really does. and I've always done, like I went to, I remember like a restaurant trade show conference. And I've been to a gym equipment, gym owners conference.

And I've been to, and when you go, you just meet a whole bunch of people from a different, totally different walk of life. You see, what are they thinking about? What are they, what are the problems these guys are worried about? Who are, and you, you know, I'm sure out of this, I'll get some investors for my fund. I'll get some new ideas. I'll get some new perspective. And you just makes you a more interesting person.

And so I would highly recommend going to trade shows specifically, but like just different industry niches that are not yours and just go to a sneaker conference and just be like, oh, what the hell of these sneakerheads doing? Like, who are these people? What do they do? I know it's like a luxury if you have the time. But if you work remotely anyways, go to one of these things, spend four hours on the floor and then spend the other five hours or whatever at night, you know, working and just work from

there for the week. Or if you're young and you don't know what to do, what to do. Don't just take a job. Like go dabble, go travel around to three of these. And you'll just have like a totally different lens of things. So I think that's like a hack that, you know, I wanted to bring up. Yeah, it was crazy. By the way, these guys, the farmers, the best thing I got from them was their little one-liners.

Like, one guy was telling the story about this investment. He lost a bunch of money on. People were like, damn, like that. Like, holy shit, you must have lost a lot. He goes, it was a sad day. But you know, that's why Johnny Walker makes a blue. And then you're just like, move on. And I was just like, I'm writing these down.

Like, these are bars, dude. These guys are, these guys are amazing. Can we, um, are we allowed to talk about. I think so. Why not? All right, let's talk about, so do you want to give the bad? We might want to bleep out his name. So let's, let's bleep out his name.

Well, let's talk about this. Well, let's, let's, let, we'll ask him after this. But we, um, he, there's this guy named, I didn't really know much about him. somehow I got brought into this group chat that you're in in a weird way I feel like I'm good friends with them now even though we've only texted how does he talk about what happened over the weekend about this app okay so

so basically here's his short story he's built a couple of like products honestly never really had a big hit him and his friends have been working on they were working on a startup or they're working as a startup for a number of years and they were just grinding running test after test and they were really building a lot of stuff in the social space. So he learned a lot of like kind of the,

he like cut his teeth in trying to build the next Twitter, next TikTok, next whatever, right? And they were about to fail. The last thing they built, the Hail Mary was they were like, oh, let's just create this like kind of like quiz app, this like superlatives app where it's like, oh, who at your high school is most likely to, you know,

become a professional dancer or like, you know, go to jail or whatever. And it goes viral. And it's called TBH. And it goes viral. It hits like number one in the app store because the flow is basically you you open the app. You start answering these questions about your friends. Then would text your friends being like, hey, Sean said you're most likely to X.

Click here to see what else he said. I was like, oh, dude, I'm going to click that. And then you click that and then it would go on something along those lines. So TBH goes viral. Facebook ends up buying it. Smart move by n-k. Kind of knew this thing doesn't have like, you know, legs to actually be the next social app.

But it made them like, you know, a good, not like, I don't think it sold for what it was reported. Yes, reported as like $100 million. But it made a lifetime of money. Yeah, exactly. So these guys, they pull it off in the end, right? So they went from like literally, we're about to shut it down. He's like, oh, fuck it.

Let's just launch this last thing. And that thing hits. So then he goes to Facebook. He stays there for like, fucking four four years. So he hits the full vest. And he's the whole time, I don't know, he's probably bored. And he's just on Twitter. And he's like, he's what people call shit posting,

which is basically like, you know, just posting jokes on Twitter. and oftentimes making fun of the tech industry. So making fun of the stuff that people in the tech industry are doing. And so anyways, you know, people like to follow him because he's funny. So over the weekend, so he basically, he tweeted something out last week that was like, hey, I'm working on, I'm going to work on a new project. I finally left Facebook, whatever. I'm working on a new project.

I want to work with a designer. Like, I'm looking for a founding designer. If you want to like, you know, build something amazing, work with a team that's built, you know, built apps, blah, blah, you know, DM me. Something along those. And when he quit and announced that he was quitting at Facebook, it said, I've been at Facebook. They bought my app. I've been there for four years. It really was just, there was a lot happened.

And I want to give a thread on everything that I learned. And it pointed down, down, like the down emoji. And there was nothing there. Yeah. And it was hilarious. Here's what I learned my four years of Facebook. Nothing. And so, yeah, that was hilarious.

And so people are like, oh, people generally are excited about next to your thing, especially all the kind of like venture investors and angel investors. This is kind of the entrepreneur you like to back, which is somebody who you think is smart, who is a serial entrepreneur, so not their first rodeo, but also hasn't had the big win, so they still have a huge chip on their shoulder and want to make it big. So that's like a great entrepreneur to invest in. And he's pretty well networked and pretty well respected, so people want to invest in it. So he tweets that thing out looking for.

designer. And then somebody else said, somebody two days later just tweets like, I saw a mockup of new app. Like, holy shit, it's going to like change everything. And this guy also is like a shit poster. This guy, I think it's in his hand was like another Cohen or something like that. And by the way, you've seen the image that he's talking about. He's posted in our text thread before. But like, you know, here's an idea. Like, I might make this thing. And if I remember correctly, it wasn't even like It's not a business. It's like a, it's just like a silly idea. It's a high-level idea.

He's still ideating. Exactly. Yeah. So anyways, people then start meming that guy. They're like, I just saw a new app, a new app for the first time. And, you know, this work that I've had on my toe for years just went away. And like, you know, the next person would be like, you know, I showed it to eight children who were starving. And now they're, you know, they're not hungry anymore.

And so this goes viral as a. as like a meme on Twitter. I'm going to read you some of them. They're the good ones. They were great. Let's see. There was guys saying like we're happy to announce that it was Andrew Chen. We're happy to announce that we just led in a $100 million round a new app.

Right. I can't believe they're extending. I just got to a session with my therapist. She ended asking me for tips on how to get allocation into a new company. And so it just became this like meme in the tech industry. And then a lot of people who were seeing it like, what's this app? And so, and by the way, this, this idea, this like kind of like, what quote-unquote growth hack, it was accidental, A, but B, really effective. And they drummed up a bunch of interest in a bunch of hype around what this new app could be.

And so what he did was he created an NFT with like, I think he's sold. 69. He's got, oh my God. He's got this really stupid, like, image for his Twitter picture, but it's kind of like funny. And he made different Twitter images based off of his and 69 of them. and if you bought one, you get early access as a beta user to his app, right?

I don't know. Was that the promise? I didn't know. Yeah, that's the promise. Look at the floor price of what those are. So he goes, ladies gentlemen,

I'd like to introduce Takeda Ship posting club, a collection of 69. Owners will get access to, quote, Brees app, parentheses, there is no app.

It is now available on a busy. And so he links it and it sells out as NFTs do. And I think he made, what did he make off this thing? The floor has dropped. So anybody who bought this, I think, is probably not doing so hot. The floor is now only 0.36, Eath, so that's not great.

But anyway, it's still $1,000. So 69 pictures for $1,000? Okay, not bad. So here's what I want to ask you. I want to ask you a question because you have done something similar. I didn't know no before you and I, you introduced me to him. I knew him as, like, a guy who built an app. but it seems like people revere him.

Like they consider him an expert on consumer apps. Which, not saying that he isn't. He certainly is pretty successful. But also what the fuck. But also like his reputation like is so big where it's like, is anyone that good? That's kind of what I'm going to get.

And you've done a good job of that as well, of creating this like mystique almost out of nothing, right? Not that like you weren't successful ahead of time. but like you've done a really good job of building a brand. I sold my startup for less than what my investors I put in. Now, you know, the way it worked, you know, the team still did well and I made good money off of it. But like, that's not, that's the, that's not the definition of a successful business. Because there's a lot of people that have sold their companies for a lot of money.

We have a, we have a handful of buddies that are like Uber rich. No one fucking knows who they are. And like, even if they told you that what they did, you'd have to, like, they'd have to beg to speak at a conference. Whereas guys like you, you've got like the daily show reaching out to you. You've got celebrities reaching out to you who want to like get on board with you. And then it's in the same thing. Yeah, because you can make it sound good. I could say I sold my last startup to Amazon.

Yeah, technically I did. Technically I made money. But that doesn't make it a like a huge success. You know, it doesn't make me like a thought leader. I don't think that's the right way to say it because you're, you're acting like you're tricking people because you've never tricked anyone ever. And I don't think that has either. But what you've done is you've both done this.

really good job of creating a little bit of mystique about, and what I want to know is you can use the example and then you, how does someone, I guess I'm asking for myself, because how do you create so much of this like brand equity like you guys have? Well, I think in both cases, it's basically you put out, you put your thoughts on blast. So, you know, the real answer. And by the way, I say that not to make fun of a shit, I think did sell for a profit, so good, good for them. I'm saying, I know that I've gotten disproportionate credit for my track record of success when in reality, like the best thing I've built is this DTC company that I don't tell anybody the name of. That's the profitable business that's doing eight figures a year.

But like that's not actually why people, my reputation came before that. So, you know, that's kind of weird, right? So where does the reputation actually come from? It comes from two things. One is you meet people in real life. So like you go meet, you know, investors at these different big funds or CEOs at different companies. And when they're talking to you, they're making an independent assessment of your caliber, you're based on your thoughts. So first, it's like a hand-to-hand combat thing.

You meet a bunch of people. You earn their respect one-on-one by, you know, when they're talking about some deal they're doing or a company they're building, you actually contribute by adding value, by pointing out things or giving them criticism or giving them feedback on what's really great. Or identifying to them other things that are really cool. And they say, wow, this guy really, I got a lot out of this conversation. So you do that with like 300 people. And those people matter, right? Because they have themselves influence and trust.

So for example, you know, like Josh Elman is a good example. This guy was, he was early on at LinkedIn, at Facebook, at Twitter, at Robin Hood, like early as Sean, meaning he was like head of growth at a bunch of these companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a big deal. He's been on our podcast. And so he's got, you know, people have a tremendous. not a respect for him because he's had a tremendous career. Well, both and I have, you know, in separate occasions, met, you know, met with Josh. And we,

when we're talking about our startup. And whether our startup succeeded or failed, Josh knows, look, you're playing in the sort of like the startup lottery, startup Olympics. A startup can fail and an entrepreneur can still be really great. And if out of that conversation, Josh, Josh walks away thinking, oh, this person's really smart. And then they connect you to some other people that they know. And those people say, wow, Josh, thanks for the intro. Sean was really great. You develop a reputation amongst people who have a reputation. So that's the first step. Through real life interactions, you develop a reputation with people who already have a reputation so that they will retweet your stuff so that they will vouch for you when you have a project or you're doing

something. And that goes a long way in the marketplace. So like, for example, I've had Josh or Bology or different people who have their own big following and their own respect. If they share me or they they say this person's great, then a whole bunch of other people just inherit that reputation. They just say, oh, okay, if Josh says he's great, he's great. If Apology says he's great, he's great. It's such a unique way of, it's almost like credibility hacking or something like that. But that's the thing I think is important is like, I'm telling you how the mechanic works, but there's the thing you can't just, the reason it's not a hack is because your thoughts

actually have to be interesting. You have to actually. I don't mean hack like you're a hack. I just mean like you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, the process of getting the desired the process of getting to the desired outcome. Right. The second thing is we both created content. So now

these tweets are mostly making fun of people who create content and threads and teach courses. But before that, he was doing it himself, right? He himself was saying, you know, when you're building a social app, blah, blah, blah. Or here's how we grew inside high schools for TBH. And why did I respect him? Because he released this memo actually got leaked from inside

Facebook. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the memo basically said he was like, hey, guys at Facebook, here's some of the stuff we did to grow amongst teenagers. And I know Facebook wants to grow amongst teens. Here's some of the stuff we did at TBH. For example, for every high school, we would create an Instagram account for branded to the high schools. It would be like, you know, McKinley High, you know, secrets. And that's the Instagram account. And it would be locked.

And we would follow anybody who had McKinley High in their profile. Then they would follow it. You know, 40% of people would follow us back. They would request to follow. But we were private. We wouldn't approve anybody's request. Then at 4 p.m., when everybody got out of school one day, we would accept all the request. So everybody simultaneously would get a notification about our account.

So they would all go check it out. And then they would all see the link to download the app. And then they would download the app. And then as they were downloading the app, they'd be getting notifications that their friends are all downloading the app today. And it felt like a big deal. And that's how we hacked distribution into high school. I similarly have told actually a very similar story about how we would go get. Our goal was always to get half of a high school.

school to download our app in one day. We did it a completely different way, but I've shared that on podcast, different places, or on Twitter threads. And people read that, and they're like, oh, fuck, this guy's smart. That's a really smart growth tactic. This guy really understands growth. This guy really understands teens. This guy really understands social.

And so if you just, if I, like, is that quote, my buddy Jason Hitchcock told me once. He goes, you say one interesting thing. I say, huh, that's interesting. You say two interesting things. I say, huh, those are interesting. You say three interesting things. I say, fuck, this guy's interesting. And that's really what you've got to do with content

If you say three original interesting things Around one topic, whether it's Bitcoin or media Or robotics or whatever If I get three interesting things from you In my brain I will assign that tag to you This guy's interesting worth watching And then if other people endorse it and say This is interesting, it goes even faster

Dude, this is exciting to me I think this is a fire episode I'm not gonna I don't want to talk about it entirely right now because I think we should wrap here. But I, so last weekend, when you were sick, so you probably didn't see this, I tweeted out about STRs, so short-term rental stuff. Did you happen to see that? I saw it and I followed what you were talking about.

It looks super interesting. Your Facebook group, I want to hear more about that. We can save it for another app if you want to. We'll save it, but did you join the group? I didn't join the group, no, I didn't know the name of it. It's called Sam's SDRs or something? Yeah, I just made it in the car. Like Sarah was driving.

I just made it in the car. Such a smart way to do things, by the way. Like, it's going to sound super simple. Like, oh, I just made this thing because you were curious and wanted to learn about it, right? Like, you hadn't decided to do it for it. But it's, well, I have now, but I'm still looking for a property, though. But I, um. Sam's an STR crew.

Yeah, I'll let you in. And there's like 1,000 or 1,500 people. It's mostly all tech guys. Dude, I've met some guys in there. Where'd you get these people? You tweeted it out? Just the tweet. That's it.

Only that. It's all tech guys. Like, it's that guy, AJ, uh, who owns, uh, that, that, the PEC business. And then it's Nathan Barry. It's Marshall Haas. There's guys in there that I've met guys that are like billionaires, like who have sold,

or rather they've sold companies for a billion dollars. I met one guy who's making half a million a month in profit. He's paying himself $6 million a year off of his handful of, yeah, there's another guy in there who owns $50 million worth of them. It's crazy. I'm learning all this in this fucking group. It's amazing. You're going to have to browse through that.

And I'll tell you some more interesting stuff about it. We'll start with that one next time. Does that interest you? Dude, of course it interests me. Yeah, that's great. It's crazy. Who would have thought about short-term rentals and how they're crushing? It hits the highest level of interesting me, which is where you say, what am I doing

with my life? Why don't I do that? All right, you basically question your own life is the highest form of interest. The thing is, the thing is that, like, you don't need to, quote, be doing it. You just need to have done it. And there is a world where you not quite set it and forget it, but like you just like, it's not like you need to do shit all the time to it. Right.

And so I would say like one of the criticisms, not a criticism, but the one of my feedback for Sean and how Sean should like evolve maybe is to sometimes invest in some of these a little bit more boring, stable things, at least just a tiny portion of your money. And like this is like a really interesting asset class. Have I told you about steady? No. This is sweet. I think you'll like it.

So I actually, I think the website is cool. steady, I want to say it's steady. Dot capital or steadycapital.com? One second. Let me pull it up. If I just type in steady capital. Okay, do steady dot capital. S-T-E-A-D-Y.

How do most, okay, here is. Tell me what you see. It's a black screen and it says, how do most millionaires build their wealth? 90% of millionaires invest in real estate. Study lets you earn passive income from real estate for $100. Okay. And you invest in,

okay, so steady is a web dashboard for retail investment. to buy shares of income-generating commercial real estate. Commercial real estate. Make investments in senior financial reports in our dashboard and get monthly deposits from your investments directly to your bank account. We do not offer high adrenaline investments. This is the part I wanted you to read. We do not offer high, this is really good copy.

We do not offer high adrenaline investments. We don't have an app designed to keep your eyes glued to your phone. We pursue steady returns over hype. We are the tortoise in a race full of hairs. So good. Wonderful. So good. So I read this.

So this guy I used to play pickup basketball with her. He was on my like interneural basketball team. He, this guy Dylan, he created this company. I just kind of saw his Twitter and I was like, oh, what's the guy Dylan up to? And I didn't even know he's a startup guy. Like he's just a dude we used to play ball with. And has like steady capital. What's that?

And I read this landing page. I was like, dude, what is this? I got to invest literally. So I invested in both his company as well as I started putting my money into steady. This is why. You invested in steady? Yeah, because I was like, do this, this is what I want. I was like, I want to own, I want to have real estate income coming in, but I don't want

to do the work of like going and finding a property, diligenceing it, underwriting it, taking out a loan for myself, buying the property, managing the property, all that good stuff. So what these guys do is they basically handpick sponsors. So they'll have like guys who have a good track record in commercial real estate. Commercial estate, they'll be like, oh, this guy buys warehouses in, the middle of Texas. And they basically diligence the properties for you. And then all you do is, so what I do, I just said auto invest.

So I just say $5,000 a month, just as a starting part, I was like, I'm going to about $5 grand a month into commercial real estate. Cool. Over this year, I'll have $60,000 put into this. And then it just shows me, it's like, cool, you're going to be, you're going to break even in 18 months, but you're going to get your first check next month. And basically what they do is they go to that sponsor. They say, hey, you know, you're going to raise money for this deal anyways.

give us half a million bucks. We have this cadre of investors. We come in as one line item on your thing and we become an investor. And then you just, like, our investors want passive income through real estate investing. And he's like, he's trying to do like the Robin Hood model where it's like Robin Hood made it where there's no fee. You could invest for a very small amount of money. So it's like normally real estate has pretty high barriers to entry for knowledge as well as the amount of money you have to put in. So his mission is like, I want to make real estate as, you know, investable for even $100. And even $100, if you're earning 8%, great,

you'll earn $8 of passive income. Is this thing going to be big, you think? It looks cool. I think it's a really hard business to do because, you know, you have to, it's like a two-sided market. You have to have really, you know, quality deals. But honestly, like these aren't like,

like, for example, with startup investing, I don't just give my money to anybody for startup investing because I'm like, dude, are your deals any good or are they all dog shit? With real estate, it's like these are like the property. There's so much data about the property. It's collateralized by the property. the guy's got a track record.

You're not looking for the next Uber, the 1000X return. You're looking for something that's going to generate 8 to 10% a year, 8 to 15% a year. And cool, like, that's doable. That's not, that doesn't take a miracle. So I really like steady. I think there's currently a wait list or whatever. People have to like.

Dude, I just signed up for it. It looks sick. I'll email they got to get you in. If people want to do it, they should do it. I think it's really good for people. Like, I've had multiple people asked to invest in my startup. fund and I just say no. I'm like, if you're not already wealthy, don't do this. Because don't use this as the way to get wealthy. You have much smarter paths to get there.

If you already have, if you're already, you know, multimillionaire, cool. You should do this then to get some exposure to startups. But I think for most people, getting exposure to passive income real estate is a much better place to build wealth if you're not already wealthy through your business or whatever. This is a good episode. I'm interested in steady. I have a whole bunch of other topics. still so I'll save those for Wednesday. I appreciate you holding down the fort while I was it was hard. It was hard.

I think like I had to do it with Ben and Ben's great and then I did it with Noah and Noah's great but you and I are I mean you're talented which I talk about all the time you and I together are talented and it was very hard with it was way harder with it was work.

I love to hear it. I love to be needed. It was work. Dude it was work. And like I thought there's been times where I'm like oh fuck I can just I can handle this. It was work. It was, like, I felt like I was working. By the way, if people haven't listened to the episodes you do with Ben on the Silk Road, it's on our feed.

It's a special, I think it's called special episode, Silk Road. I don't know what it's called. Go listen to that. I listened to that while I was sick. I fucking loved it. Because I've been meaning to read American Kingpin for so long. You told me it was so good. And I'm just like, back to, I'm just not reading it.

And so listening to that gave me my fix. And it's like, you know, the best kind of Netflix shows where after it's done, you then go down the rabbit hole and research more for like an hour on your phone in the middle of the night under the covers. Like that's what I was doing about. So dude, dude, that one, I think we were prepared for 45 minutes. It wasn't a lot. But we were both so fascinated by that topic.

And I think you, something happened where you weren't able to come. And we found last minute and we're like, let's just do this, Ben. And so we're going to do another one on a guy called, I forget that. There's another version. There's another like, juicy one. But I just bought the book. I'm going to go read it and like do it. That's, those episodes were fun.

And Ben's really good at that stuff. Yeah, exactly. And you guys play off each other really well. The one thing I really wanted to know, because while you're here, I'll get you, how did they catch him? So you had said, like, basically they traced his, you had said, okay, he had originally posted on this forum saying,

hey, has anybody seen this thing? And then also that they caught him in the library right down the street from you. So I got those bits. But I wanted to know. Yeah, how they know it was him. Yeah, and, yeah, like, I think there was a bunch of,

details about like the investigation, like the cop chase basically. Yeah. So basically what, there was there more there? You know, it's so funny. There's this episode of South Park where they're trying to like track this terrorist and the boys are like,

dude, just like do a reverse Google search and like, like just use Google. And that's what they did. And so the very first post ever about the Silk Road was written from a username. And that same username posted a few weeks prior to stack overflow saying, I'm building a website that is trying to do this. Yeah, can you please email me,

Ross Oldbright at gmail.com. And then they like did a, they like used a web archive because once they, once he, once Ross caught his air, he changed his username from like Altoid to like Frosty or something like that. But it was on the web where like he was asking, he used a username to post about,

I've created a website or no, sorry, he created a username. It says, has anyone heard about this new thing called Silk Road? And that was the first time anyone ever mentioned it. But just weeks prior, that same username asked about like how to build an exchange.

or something like that. And then they found out who this Ross guy was. And then they realized that, oh, we just like went to this guy's house recently as Holam Security. Because he ordered like 18 IDs with his picture, but for like different states with different names. Let's keep an eye on him. And they found out basically was like, all right, whenever. And so they had a fake, they had an FBI guy become an employee of the Silk Road. And Ross or Dredd Pirate Roberts, the owner would say, all right, I got to log off to go blank.

they noticed that Ross would walk out of his house and go for a walk. Right. Like they just tracked him or they're like, all right, I got to go to Dominican Republic to do blank. And they're like, oh, Ross is in Dominican Republic on vacation according to his Facebook. Right. And so they knew the FBI, the day he was arrested, he got arrested in the library right down the street from my house in Glen Park.

And they said, basically, the FBI was, do not arrest him. We got to get a SWAT team. And they're like, dog, he's on his computer right now. We're chatting with him. And they like tackled him, right? He's logged in this second. We know we're having a conversation with them. And so they had two FBI agents.

He was sitting at a chair in the science of this library that I used to go to. He was sitting at a desk and a chair. And they had two FBI agents, dresses kind of homeless people, go right behind him and get into a fight where the guy was like, bitch, what are you doing here? And the lady was like, fuck you, man. You don't know. Like, you know, like they got like a domestic disturbance. And so he turns his back. And when he turns his back, the other FBI agent,

one tackles him and the other one swipes his computer from his desk and runs it straight to the van and they plug it they already had the they knew that he was using a PC they had the outlet right there they turned the video camera on and they start filming them they go look here's the fucking he's on the dashboard right now as we speak here's us we were literally just talking to him and then they plug a USB in and they get a lot of the stuff out before the computer goes to sleep and is locked and so that how is there no movie like I know there's like a kind of a shitty Why isn't there an amazing movie about it?

There needs to be. It's such a good story. The book American Kingpin is the best book I've read in years and years. It is such a fascinating story. And it's also, as we said in the podcast, it's incredibly challenging story for someone like me. Because this guy Ross looks like me, right? Like when you hear about gangsters and shit, they're usually like poor, oftentimes, minorities. And like, well, that's like the other.

That person's not, you know, I don't relate to that person. Ross was from a good family, a white guy, a good looking dude who lived in San Francisco, played on computers, had these ideals of like, I want to help the world. And you're like, oh, he's just like me. But he's a fucking criminal who tried to like supposedly wanted to kill people and sold more drugs than Al Capone. And so it makes you question like, what's right and what's wrong. Yeah, dude, it's so good.

Go listen to that episode if you like that a little bit. But it was really good. So that definitely got me through one of the COVID fever nights. I mean, I'm in, I got my fever going. I'm listening to the Silk Road. I got all kinds of crazy ideas in my head. It was awesome. All right, that's the episode.

Oh, we have to do one thing before we go. So we, two or three weeks, four weeks ago at this point, we did a contest on TikTok where we were going to give $5,000 to at least one person who created videos about using our YouTube videos and chopped them up and posted them on whatever platform and used our clips. So the end result on TikTok alone are hashtags in like the first two weeks got something like 30 million. views. Do you know that? Damn. And we're giving, Jonathan, confirming the chat, are we giving it to the people that I think it's the cartoon? Let me know. But the first guy that we're, yeah, okay. And it's the first guy we're giving it to. His name on TikTok, I believe, was MFM minis. I think his name's

Michael. And he posted a bunch of videos. A few of them got more than a million views. No, no. MFM cuts, right? Sorry. Yeah, I can't get that wrong because there was an MFM minis as well. Jonathan, tell me exactly who the winner is in the chat. I can't get that wrong. MFM cuts is the winner. And this person got something like, so MFM cuts. That's the winner. MFN cuts. That's the winner. This person got like 30,000 followers on their TikTok channel and like 10 or 15 days, millions of views. They won. And then the second place person who also gets $5,000. I think they're called tune pods. Is that what they're called? Say it again. Pod tune. Mr. Podtune.

So they turn podcasts into cartoons like South Park style. We've retweeted a couple of them because they're awesome. And they are hilarious. They are really good. So the best one was where I was making fun of you for not wearing a shirt, hilarious, really good. I have a feeling both of these guys are going to end up making a lot of money by turning this into a business. And I bet they already have. Yeah, exactly.

Good job. Good job by them. By the way, MFM cuts. The guy, he is in university still. I email them. He's 19. I love it. Good job by them. And so is this still going? Can people still win next month a different, like a different person could win or no? Yeah, we're going to keep doing it. We got to wait. I got to wait until Jonathan tells me we're allowed to announce it. But we are going to continue doing it because we saw in December our podcast, basically in November, we were like just shy of a million. In December, we basically skipped over a million and went straight to two million. And I think that that TikTok thing was one of the reasons why it happened, one of a couple reasons.

Yeah. And did we do this other? winner two, the 60 minute thing? We'll announce that next time. Okay, sounds good. All right, I gotta go. Good stuff. Good seeing you again. All right.

I'll touch you some good episode.