My First Million - The Business of Strip Clubs, Black Friday Boycott, and Three Twitter Scenarios

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Episode 390: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about Eric Langan and his foray into owning strip clubs, why we should boycott Black Friday, three Twitter scenarios, how to fly on a private jet and much, much more. ----- Links: * Jettly * r/fatFIRE * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (03:20) - Eric Langan (12:50) - Black Friday (18:40) - Twitter (36:10) - George Hotz (48:10) - Private jets (53:00) - fatFIRE subreddit ----- 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

All right, we're live. Sean, you look nice. We're both updating our studios. Looks like yours got done first. Yeah, sorry to steal a show, but we switched it already. So I don't know what else to do. The grand reveal would have been cooler if we both did it at the same time, but whatever. Well, that's all right.

Yours isn't entirely done. Mine's going to get, mine's getting worked on this weekend. Dude, so basically for the listeners, we're making our studios look nice, whatever. And it's like totally limiting. my options for like my lifestyle like i'm not thinking about this i'm like oh shit i need a bigger house so i could have like uh you know a guest room as well as a podcasting room uh as well as like potential baby rooms it's and like what if you want to travel this freaking podcast it's not easy to be a podcaster no like like poor me i can't travel for two months at a time

or you can just do it in both houses dude i'm thinking about like my lifestyle and like where I want to live, which I've talked about a lot of on here, I don't know what to do. I don't know where I'm going to end up. I don't know what I'm going to do. It's driving me mad. Yeah. By the way, we should do a episode that explains how we thought through when we,

when we do the full studio, when the whole thing's done. Like mine's like, you know, 70% done, yours is zero percent done so far. When we're done, we should do an episode explaining, you know, how we thought about it, how we pulled it, how we did it without a big headache, all the shit we bought, how much at all cost. We should do a full breakdown as a separate video on YouTube. All right. I'm down. Yeah, we got to and we'll pimp out the guy who did it, Kevin. Yeah, but yeah, we could do that. Okay, cool. Let's jump in. What topic you got? You want to go first? All right. I'll start off with something interesting. I want to give an award that I'm calling the

Chad Bro Chill Award to this guy named Eric Langan. So listen to this guy's story. I just randomly came across us because my friend Alex showed it to me. But it's kind of like a true Rag to Rich's American Dream story. So hear me out. So this guy named Eric, he's 21 years old and he starts dating this woman and she sees that her place of work is not exactly treating her respectfully. And he says, you know, where this woman works, I think this is an interesting business. And I think if I created a business that treated my employees a little bit better, I think I could retain them better. build a better business. So he's 21 years old.

Somehow he's accumulated all this, these really nice baseball cards over the past 10 years of collecting. He takes him to a convention. He sells his baseball cards. And he now has $44,000 in cash. And he goes, I'm going to go and start my business. And what is that business? It's a strip club.

He was dating a stripper. And this guy, Eric, he takes this. Well done. Well done with the story. Enjoyed that. Yeah. Yeah. So he takes this company and he, like,

buys, he has one strip club, he starts another, eventually he takes it public. Yes, this is a publicly traded company that owns a bunch of strip clubs. And the symbol is Rick. It's just Rick. So now at this point, it's $800 million market cap. And it's basically a free cash flow, like a wonderful cash flow. Yeah, a wonderfully cash flowing company. It's $800 million in market cap. Does something like 300 million in revenue and like 80 million in cash flow. And it's kind of interesting because they basically buy mom and pop strip clubs, which is, I don't know if that's like an oxymoron, but just pop and pop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like your just like your standard, you know, local mom and pop strip club. He buys them for one or two times revenue, puts a little operational

process in there. And he's also got a crazy clientele where guys like Drake and Pitbull and all these people like rap about his strip clubs. You know, and I want to be honest, I've only been to one strip club in my life. I went to one strip club ever. It was in Vegas like four years ago. Have you ever been to a strip club? Same story. I have actually a funny story with this. So we go to the, for the first time, to a strip club, I think 21 years old maybe. And, you know, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if this was the start of a new hobby or if this was, you know, the start of a bad day. And, and so we go, um, you know, in Vegas, there's the guys on the street who are like, boys, looking handsome. You guys want, you know, free limo and free drinks. And you're like, yeah,

no questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a good offer. I have no further questions. We get in this limo. We're like, hey, do we get to choose where it goes? It's like, no, we're dumping you off at this, like, place five miles away. And you're going to go into our establishment. So we get dropped off at this place. We're like, I guess we're at a strip club now. Like, wow, I guess we probably should have thought that one through. We go in and it's four friends. And my buddy, I won't say their names, but, uh, so we go in and I'll just tell you the characters.

There's me. I'm the, the group, uh, I'm like the jester. I'm just, I'm just there to make jokes. And I'm like, oh, this is this is, I'm going to thrive here. There's going to be so much, so much funny material. But I'm not the, I'm not the one who's, sort of the most, I'm not the most prude. I'm not the most kind of aggressive when it comes to to women. There's one guy who's like the ladies man. Everybody, this guy always gets all the

girls. And when we go to the strip club, we're just sort of expecting him to take the lead. It's like, you know, balls in your court here. You tell us, you're the man, you tell us boys what to do. And then we have one guy who's been in a relationship for like 95 years, just got out. It looks like a dad. And we were like, you know, okay, you just stay at the back. You're not going to know what to do here. You've been in a relationship for 95 years. We walk in and within two minutes, we're like, hey, where'd the dad go? Like, where he's gone? And we see him while we were nervously just like ordering drinks at the bar, like, as if that's why we came to the strip club was like to go get a drink at the bar. And we're using the free coupons. The guy gave us up from the street.

We're like trying to tear him and be like, does this count two of any drink? And like, what's a spirit technically? And then, you know, because it's like, it's supposed to any spirits. And then we're like, where'd he go? And then we see him holding hands with a stripper walk into the back. And we're like, what the back? We can't even see him anymore. We don't know what, like, how does he know what to do back there? We were all just like, you know, befuddled. But now we're all like, sort of like challenged. It's like, okay, challenge accepted. We don't see this guy for like 45 minutes. So we let 15 minutes go by. We assume he's going to come back. This guy's nowhere to be found. And we're like, what is going on? What is he doing back there? And then so we kind of get nervous.

we go back. And so each of us picks a stripper and we each go to the back. So Ladies Man goes with some super hot stripper. Like in the same room? No. We don't know. You just go behind this curtain. Now we don't know. I don't know where my friend is. I don't if I'll ever see him again. So Ladies Man

takes the hottest stripper goes in the back. Spoiler. He ends up falling in love with her. He literally falls in love with the stripper. He's like, dude, she's the best. And like, but he's like, no, it's not about her look. It's like her heart was so pure. He fell in love. That's what happened to him that night. I go back with one.

Now they've got three kids. And I'm like, so how does this work here? I got questions. You know me, right? I started a podcast because I got questions. So I start, I'm like, how does this work? What does this do? Do I sit here?

Can I sit anywhere? Like, do I tell you or you tell me? Like, who's in charge? And I'm so many questions. She literally asked me if I'm a cop because I'm a question. And I'm like, no, I'm just a curious guy. So that's my experience back there. I just use it as an interview and unrecorded.

podcast basically. And then our buddy, the dad finally comes out. We're all done. We all just like 15 minutes, $75 later. We're like, I don't know what the hell just happened. I spent all my money. And he comes out and we're like, dude, what happened back there? And he told us two things. So we go, we asked him two questions. We said, where did you go for so long? And how did you have the confidence to do that? And the second was, why'd you pick her? Because she was like not, she was like, you know, she was not the best looking, you know, in lunch. And so he goes, oh, I just asked her for a tour. And so she gave you a tour the whole building.

He's like, well, we didn't do a lap dance. No, no way. And I was like, oh, you, we thought you were doing something cool. And then we all got pure pressured. And it turns out we were wrong. Second, we were like, why did you pick her? He goes, I didn't know you get to choose. He goes, I thought it's like, very daughter.

Like the one chooses the wisdom. That was like the epic line. And so forever, we've always said that the wand chooses the wizard, whenever you end up making a bad decision. That's hilarious. I actually lied. I didn't remember the first time I went to a strip club. It was Neville Madora.

My buddy in Texas was taking me to my Thursday 6 p.m. flight. And he goes, let's actually go at two. I want to let's go out to eat. I go, all right, cool. He goes, I got the perfect place in mind. And so he takes me to a strip club next to the Austin, Texas airport, called the landing strip at 3 o'clock on a Thursday. and we get there and I'm like, what, uh, what do we do?

And I remember, and he's like, well, let's just get lunch or something. And so I order like, chicken, breakers and fries. And the lady comes up to me as I'm sitting down and, like, puts my, like, her hand on my shoulders, like, hey, you need anything? And I was like, yeah, like, some ketchup. Some ketchup would be nice. And she, like, is, like, all, like, defeated and brings the ketchup. And I remember texting my girlfriend at the time, now wife.

and I was like, hey, Sarah, I'm at a strip club. We're just getting lunch. Do I like tip them extra? Because all I did was ate lunch and it was only $6. Like, what do we do? It was the same thing. Incredibly awkward situation. Very uncomfortable.

But I read about this company and I thought how interesting. And this guy, his name's Eric, he, the CEO of the company is called, what's it called? It's called Ricks. It's called Ricks. That's their ticker. It's called RCI Hospitality Holdings. The CEO is pretty present on social media. His Twitter handle, I think, is Rick's CEO.

And so, you know, he's pretty active. And I think the other thing that's interesting is, like, we were going to do this for the Milk Road because strippers know a recession is coming before anybody. And so we were going to spend our writer to talk about like, hey, what's going on in the markets? I was like, oh, just go to a strip club and just ask the strippers. they'll tell you, like, we'll be one week ahead of the news. And he's like, what? I was like, yeah, they know.

Like the tips, they understand, like, what's going on. They know the psychology and the psyche of all men. And then they, they know where they're at financially as well. Dude, well, he does his earnings call on Twitter. One time he did it and the host was liquidity, that Twitter guy. And he does his earn. Is that legal? I don't know.

But Elon Musk was like sat through one of the earnings calls. and it's incredibly interesting. They're also coming out with a like a new only fans thing called Admire Me, which is like an only fans, but for their dancers. He calls them entertainers. And so like if you're an entertainer at the strip club, you know, you can like create a small side hustle with your clients. And I just thought this was like, I was like, well, this is like a pretty fascinating,

pretty fascinating business. I never heard of. I never in a million years thought a strip club conglomerate would be publicly traded. and pretty fascinating, pretty fascinating company. Yeah. All right. Well, I don't have much to add. The sort of Juan chooses the wizard was the ending of my knowledge,

my trip, folks. At that point, I retired from the game. By the way, are you doing something for Black Friday? Like for your... Like with my family?

No. Are you, like, selling discounts and stuff? As an e-commerce owner, what's your opinion on Black Friday? So I think I'm doing it wrong, because everybody else is like Black Friday. Black Friday biggest time of the year. People are sending memes in the group chat.

That's like, like, you know, the 300, the Spartans when they're charging. And they're like, we're ready. We're ready for Black Friday. And for two years in a row, Black Friday has been, you know, a big disappointment. And the reason why I think, I guess, like, people think about Black Friday, it should be. What it should be is like basically, basically. November should be double your other sales months. So you should kind of get a 2x.

With that 2x, you're going to have a lot of profit. So I think that's why they call it Black Friday because you end up in the black. I don't know if that's sure or not, but like, yeah, that's somebody told me that one. Did you just pick that up? You generate a lot of your profit for the year during this kind of like this last push of the year. This is how you go from the red to the black. And I think it requires, you know, a large, like, you know, repeat customer base. So Black Friday is basically an excuse.

It's sort of a trick in the mind of a consumer that, like, it's a license to spend when you didn't even need to spend. And so you get a lot of returning customers coming back. So without having to do more marketing necessarily, you're going to get them back. But you're also steeply discounting. Then if you're marketing at all, like you have your marketing spend, you have your discount spend. So I'm like, where is all this profit that other people speak of hasn't worked for us? We've had way bigger months outside of November, both years. this year's doing good, but like, I don't know, I don't get all the fusses about.

I like it more as a consumer than I do as an e-com store owner. But then again, I might just be a crappy operator and there might just be like a better way to do it. But I'm doing all the things that are like the best practice thing. You know, I'm sending an email every like 42 minutes. It's like, you know, that's what you got to do. He just keeps spamming the hell out of everybody. Discount the things like crazy and, you know, hope and pray people show up. Do you buy stuff as a consumer for Black Friday?

Yeah, I shop, you know, that brand 32 heat, 32 cool, but like Costco, Costco Performance Wear brand. No, but that's awesome. You must know these guys. Basically, there's like a, I think it's, I don't know if they're made by Costco or they're sold in Costco, but it's called 32 degrees is the name of the brand. And so they make like, you know, like a Under Armour Lulu Lemon style thing, but like the cheap version. But on Black Friday, these guys have had the most ridiculous.

ridiculous sale, like you'll just get a shirt for $4 or $6. That's normally like, you know, $30. It's like 80% off. They just try to move all their inventory during this part of the year. And so for the last couple years, I have dropped like $500 and bought like an ungot, like huge boxes arrive at my house. Like it's furniture. And inside is just 32 degrees stuff that I just give out to my whole family and I wear, you know, throughout the year.

But that's the only thing I did on Black Friday. And then sometimes I'll go scroll. Amazon and see what they got. Dude, I think we need a boycott Black Friday. Black Friday is the worst. I think it's just we are people by, you know, George Carlin said this funny thing. He's got this whole like, it's a famous comedian on stuff. And he's like, a house is just basically a pile of stuff with a cover on it. And you buy a second house is really just so you can store more crap. You can store more stuff. I am so anti-stuff at this point in my life. I don't want to buy more stuff. And we need to get like all MFM listeners to just boycott Black Friday. I hate the, this, this.

idea of buying stuff that you don't really need, that just, then you got to go and pay more money. You know what's the worst, the biggest kick in the ass is when you've got to pay money to have someone come and throw away the boxes of all the stuff that you bought off Amazon. That is the worst feeling. I cannot stand that and I refuse to do it. Now I have a trash can that's a metal trash can that I just burn it all. I hate buying more stuff. I cannot stand all this stuff that we buy on Black Friday.

And I refuse to do it. And I think we've got to get everyone to not do it. actually burn your trash? Yeah. Yeah, I have videos of me doing it because Sarah has this funny meme that she shares with our family. It's like, you know, no matter what happens, we can't, we're never going to change them. But, dude, I'm not paying money to throw away Amazon boxes.

I refuse to do that. That's crap. Yeah, I paid like $600 to have 100 junk, like come haul away a bunch of boxes for crap that I bought. It's the worst. I'm not going to do it. I feel like, but like, like, the, This isn't Vietnam.

You can't just like go burn your trash. This is not India. You can't do that. I think legally you can. I think you can. You're not to have little, you're not to have fires in your yard. Wow.

Incredible. I want to talk to you about Twitter. Shocker. This Twitter thing that's playing out with Elon running Twitter is wildly entertaining. And I guess I guess like there's two things I want to say. The first is, you know, before when I heard about Elon Musk and how he did things, I admired him, but there was a part of me that felt bad. It's like, man, I'm just a lame duck compared to this guy.

Like this guy is achieving the incredible. This guy is, you know, must be just this execution machine. He must be this like strategic genius. And now that I see him running Twitter, I don't feel so bad after all. I don't feel the edge is. been taking off a little bit. Are you up from like, if we, if there's a scale and all the way to the left is AOC and all the way to the right is just total fanboy, where do you rank?

I'm more towards AOC, but it's not like so black and white. Like, uh, right. Obviously the guy is super smart. Obviously, he's super successful. Obviously, he's done some amazing things and he's built some really amazing products. Those are, I mean, inarguable. I find him corny. And I find him to be a virtue signal.

and sometimes he gets them like crossed. You know, like it's a signal's crossed. He'll be like, you know, um, you know, it'll be like like, yesterday he tweeted something out like there, are he like reinstated Trump and they were like,

yo, why don't you reinstate Alex Jones? Yeah, I saw that. And he was like, he's like, then he like wrote a poem and then they guys like, what?

And then he wrote a poem about like, you know, the suffering of children, blah, blah. And then they go, no, but really like by the same logic of why you would reinstate one person, and why would you not reinstate Alex Jones?

I don't agree with him, but I'm just curious about that policy decision. And he goes, my first child died in my arms. I felt their last heartbeat. And I will never, you know, so I can't, I will never allow somebody who, who like use the suffering of children

for profit or fame or gain in some way. Right. Fair sentiment. Okay, great, very emotional sentiment. you know, that's fine. But at the same time, constantly be talking about free speech and, and like how, you know, it shouldn't be one person deciding, you know, whatever. It's like, well, that's you now deciding, you know, where you're drawing the line off

of your random personal experience that traumatic and sad, you know, is a little bit strange, right? So like, whether you disagree or agree with Alex Jones is sort of irrelevant. So it's sort of like his virtue signaling about like his like sad experience got crossed, got on the crossfire with his virtue signaling about how hardcore he is about free speech. He said this himself, I'm hardcore about free speech. I'm hardcore that as long as you're not doing something, as long as you're not like, you know, breaking the law with what you're saying, then you should be allowed to do this. And so, we, there's, you know, some things there. Anyways,

point is, I think he's obviously really talented. Probably going to have success with Twitter, but, you know, definitely has like, you know, I consider myself to be somewhat impulsive. This guy's like impulsive to the max. And on one hand, I think there's like a kind of a brilliant method to his madness of what he's doing. Like he basically came in and just did a hardcore culture reset. He's like, let's just get rid of everybody who's in charge. So day one fired the CEO, CFO, CMO, all of them, walked him out the door. All right.

That's day one. The leaders shot the leaders. Yeah, they're out. Next, he like basically cut like half the employees. Then he cut another half after that. Trying to be like, yo, this is going to be hardcore work environment and like none of that soft shit anymore. And like, I think ripping the bandit off.

the way he did while harsh and like, you know, not that graceful, just like doing it via the email saying like, you know, reply hardcore by 3 p.m. or you're out, you know, probably could have been a better way to do it. But like nonetheless, it very effective and balzy. So I like that. Yeah, I like that too. Along with that comes cutting a bunch of the burn down. So trimming a bunch of the fat, making it a more financially healthy thing. But now I'm like, okay, what are the scenarios? Like, how can this, how can this play out? Like, what are the ways that this can go and like what's the bet and so I kind of wrote some of these out I'll give you my my three scenarios okay so I'll do them from and I and I'll rank if I agree with which with each of

the three I'll rank most likely so you want me to go from worse to best or best to worse least funny to most funny okay least funny is the the the mid case the base case the expected case So he makes Twitter more financially viable, right? He's cut down costs. He adds this, you know, $8 a month subscription that, you know, let's say he can make it more and more valuable. So people opt in. It makes it a little less dependent on ad revenue. The initial reaction where advertisers pulled out gets like subdued a little bit.

People come back to the platform. They realize, okay, he's not, you know, evil or going to like, you know, there's not going to be other people impersonating their brand. So they come back. So he resets the culture, resets the cost structure, makes it more viable, makes it a little more moderate. Like he gets rid of a little to like the hardcore left lean. He cleans up some of the bot problem. He gets some like solid wins like, oh, you can edit your tweet. You can post long form videos.

You can like, you know, just make search better. He just improves the product in ways that the power users will appreciate. And the end state is, you know, he gets kind of a one to two X on a. his money, you know, from where it is today. I don't think, I don't think this is a likely scenario. This is a very, this is far too reasonable. This is the reasonable scenario. So, and personally, you know, he gets a kind of a win, you know, a moral victory.

You know, it's net positive for the company. Twitter's net positive, you know, moved in a positive direction. And financially it wasn't disaster. No, this is like, this is like asking Picasso not to paint or John London not to make music. Like it just, that's just an unreasonable request. Regardless if it's, if it is in fact reasonable for most, it is incredibly unreasonable for this human being. I'll say this. He came in and did the hard part where he gutted the fish and he changed the culture and he's going to recruit good talent.

But in order to do this, he would need to replace himself as CEO within the next six months, basically. And then that person stewards it from there. he did the deep cuts, he did the hardcore like shock therapy, and then somebody's going to take it from there if this is going to happen. Because I don't think he's going to do that over a three-year span, you know, running a steady ship. Okay. Now let's go to the generous scenario, the best case scenario, what he says he wants to do.

Okay, so what he says he wants to do. Have you heard his like stated plan, like what his like goal is with it? I heard where he said he wants to make it like the town square. He wants to make it like an everything app. And he wants to add video and a bunch of other things like that. Yeah. I think the Everything app is the strategically what he's trying to do. So he basically looks at WeChat.

And for those who don't know, we chat is basically WhatsApp plus YouTube, plus Bill Pay, plus Amazon, plus everything rolled into one, plus Venmo. Yeah, it's hard to fathom if you don't use it. It's basically like it's the we chat is just a connector between people. And then all the things that people do, let's say I want to send you money, I could do that. Let's say I want to message a business.

I could do that. Let's say I want to pay my utility bills for the month. I could do that on WeChat. Let's say I want to post a video or watch a video or something like that. I could do that. And so WeChat is like this super app. And there's been a lot of people that have been waiting for, oh, when is this going to happen in the West?

And it never happened. Like all these things were siloed into different apps. And there's people who sort of are like, oh, that sucks to have eight different apps. This should just be one app that just does all the things. Everyone nods like, yeah, all in one. makes sense. But then the reality is like, go build the all in one app. People aren't just going to ditch. You're not going to be as good at those things that those other apps specialize in. Plus people are just going to change their habits and just ditch eight apps for one because you want them to.

So his idea is to create the super app. DAUs, you know, daily active users would need to go from like 200 million to a billion. So it becomes like a Facebook, a WhatsApp, a YouTube. Twitter jumps to that, like the big boy table. Because basically right now, Twitter is of like the eight or ten social networks, which include Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Reddit, and a few others. It's the least popular in terms of users. Correct. And so, I would say the best case scenario, he goes for the super app. Maybe some things go his way.

Like maybe TikTok gets banned in the U.S. And Twitter quickly grabs short form video, although Facebook and YouTube would probably have something to say about that. Like, you know, maybe they go for that. You know, he cleans up the bot problem. He improves the ad platform. Like both me and you have tried to run Twitter ads. It's God awful compared to Facebook.

I think it's good. I think it's just. The system sucks. Like the actual. The system does suck. I just bought Twitter ads yesterday. And like I kept getting airs when I was trying to set it up. So like the tech is bad.

But a lot of people are saying that right now because 50 of the top 100 advertisers have pulled back. and usage is all-time high that their cack is five or ten times better than it used to be six months ago. Oh, wow. Okay, that's interesting.

That's good, good. But that's not necessarily a sustainable thing or a, that's not a win for Twitter. That is a loss for Twitter. That is, well, no one's using it. They're for small advertisers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's not actually like a win for them. Yeah, exactly. But let's say he gets it to be a Facebook level of ad system. grows it, you know, he has to figure out something with short form video or something that's more appealing, like, but let's say he does it. And the end state is it's now like culturally up there with all the other social, like the big social networks, the sort of Facebook's, YouTube's, TikToks of the world. It, you know, he turns the profits around because he's got this lean, leaner team that's doing that. And it's like a 10x return. And he's the goat. Everybody's like,

God, this guy did this too. This is like, you know, the next. level thing. Now he owns one of the big social platforms. He single-handedly turned that shit around and he did what nobody could do. He did what Jack couldn't do. He did what Ev couldn't do. He did what Dick Hossela couldn't do. He did it and he did it like as his third job side hustle. This guy is the goat. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history.

call, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. Lep spot, grow better. Fairly unreasonable as well. I actually think it's more unreasonable than the first scenario that you gave. Right? It should be because it's like this amazing outcome. Okay, so now what is the bad case, the worst case scenarios? I think it's basically like there's this super cycle like going downwards.

like a downward cycle. It's a lot of what's happening in crypto right now. One thing in crypto blew up and then people who had taken loans to invest in that thing, now they're defaulted on their loans. So the people who lent them money, they're out of money. They blow up. Then the people who had stored their money with that bank or exchange, now they lose their deposits. It's just like daisy chain of bad news, all stemming from a lot of leverage in the system and a few people being reckless or fraudulent. And so let's say in this case, what it would be is like Tesla stock, I think, is down 50% from last year or more. He's personally lost $100 billion of personal net worth.

Tesla stock is not, the more attention he puts on Twitter, people feel like he's taking his eye off the ball. So basically, overall economy is going down. We had enter a recession. People slow down buying these like really expensive Teslas. Stock is crashing. He still has this interest payment. owes a billion dollars a year and just debt service on Twitter.

And I think Twitter's net profit was less than that. So he can't even currently the profits from Twitter can't even just pay the debt, let alone any profits above debt. And so let's say advertisers keep pulling out on the Twitter side. The initial spike from Elon's watching Elon's chaos goes away. Maybe he even makes some mistakes. Maybe the, maybe they fired too many of the infrastructure people. There's the fail whale.

Maybe it gets hacked because the security system is now more vulnerable as they make all these quick impulsive code changes and they fired a bunch of long time engineers. And so you get maybe hacks, maybe leaks, DMs get leaked, maybe the site just going down. Meanwhile, Tesla stocks going down. Meanwhile, he owes all this debt. If all this starts to happen, basically like a financial sort of like cave in occurs. and, you know, Elon ends, and he's getting sued by ex-employees. He's getting sued by advertisers who said, hey, our brand got damaged because you verified some fake account for $8 that then said, you know, we don't like Jewish people or whatever, right?

Like, you know, that's, so he's getting sued on all ends, and Elon ends up, you know, fat and broke, right? So that's the, like, worst case scenario on that side. React to that one. So, you know, you and I both watch UFC and boxing and stuff like that. there's this famous sentiment that says like basically all nearly all champions, they leave the career on their back. Meaning, if you don't get out on top, which only a few people have, Khabib, Mayweather, George St. Pierre, only a few people have these guys.

If you don't follow that, those were like the best people and they all quit when they were winning. If you don't leave at the top, which very few people do, you get knocked out and with an injury that devastates your life and you end up like Muhammad Ali and you can't talk. And I think that that is the same. What's true in boxing and UFC is also true for business. And if we look at history, that tends to be the case of people who keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Inevitably, you're going to lose at one point.

But the bigger you get, if you keep taking these really big, like, bet the farm type of risk, you're just going to lose more and more and more. And I think that there's some examples of like a Jeff Bezos saying like, all right, this is this fucking worked. you know, I got to pass on the torch. I don't think a guy like Elon has the ego control in order to do it. And I think that what you are saying for this final scenario is more likely to happen than the other two. I don't think he's going to be able to hand over the reins.

And I think that potentially this will be a, I don't, the phrase isn't career ending, but like a maybe like a power ending move or something like that. Right. A fall from grace. Yeah, fall from grace. I think that definitely could happen. I think that even, you know, you think about a guy who's worth 100 billion or whatever he was worth and you think like, well, there's no way a person like that can blow that.

And I actually think that regardless of the fortune size, you can blow it. And buying a $50 billion asset that isn't quite working wonderfully is a really good way to blow it. And I think that I think that that could be the case here. But I don't think he'll admit because he's just like he's crazy. I don't think he can admit a lot of like weakness or fault. Yeah, his core assets, Tesla and SpaceX, are like high risk, like assets. They're not like these, you know, it's not whatever, the railroad company that's just like a steady utility company that's just going to print, you know, cash and growth 2% a year.

You know, these are, these are themselves pretty volatile assets that the market has really pumped up. And as the market has turned, like those are going. downwards for sure. Now, how fast and how hardcore. And, you know, if he keeps selling Tesla stock in order to keep Twitter alive, it's going to be like, Elon's distracted. His priority is Twitter. He's selling the stock. And what else he's supposed to do? Where else he's supposed to get money in order to like fund a money burning business like Twitter? And so, um, so I think, you know, there are some downside scenarios. Do I, do I think he ends up broke? No, I think the guy will never

we broke. Do I think that he goes from where he was, richest man in the world and probably considered the greatest entrepreneur in the world to two years from now, Twitter ends up as a disaster, maybe bankrupt or sold, takes a $20 billion loss there, plus Tesla stock in the meantime has lost him maybe another $100 billion or more. And he's no longer the richest man in the world. He's no longer seen as this Iron Man invincible type of dude. He's been a hit with lawsuits and me-toes and, you know, news leaks constantly is what I predict is going to happen in the next two years. For sure. It's going to be, he went from Golden Boy to now he's going to be a guy who can't do

anything right. It's just going to be constant leaks and hit pieces, I think, for the next two years for him. I think the Elon case study is not necessarily how smart a human being is. You know, I think of Elon before and I was like, this guy's a genius. He's amazing. I actually think it's more a case study. He is intelligent. I think that there are probably there. There's definitely other people as smart as him. I think what this is more so a case study of the capacity to suffer. And what I am continually shocked by is his ability to suffer for longer periods of time and to add more suffering just, you know, just like people are just dumping suffering into his, it is in his truck. And they're just tossing it on there. And it's like, when is this truck going to break? And I'm shocked

it hasn't so far, but I believe in like there are, everyone has a limit and I'm just shocked we haven't hit it yet. Maybe this is it. But it's pretty amazing. Like if you talk to people about him, I do, and he'll even, at one point he said, death would be a relief to me. Someone was like, are you afraid of dying? He goes, no, it'll be a relief. And I think that he just has done a decent job of being funny and laughing in spite of suffering. But I think that he's lonely and I think that his life sucks. I think he lived a generally unpleasant, unhappy suffering life. And that's what he's chosen to do. And there's going to be a limit to it. And I think that this could be that limit. I think that is true of all the greats. There are most of the greats, right? They're sort of

totaled souls. So I think that's true for a lot of people. One other signal that I think is kind of in his favor or kind of bullish. Do you know this guy George Hots or Hots? Love him. We got to get this guy in the pod. This guy is one of those freaks that I love. He is a total freaking weirdo. And he's a punk rocker. So tell people his background. And then I don't know if you've been following what he's doing with Twitter. But I'm going to tell you that. So years ago when Sean and I both lived in San Francisco, I think he started out of like a hacker house, didn't he? Where like it was like just a hacker house with a bunch of like computer guys. And he starts building a self-driving, not a self-driving car, but technology that you can add to most cars. And it's called kind. comma.AI, I believe. And he starts a self-driving car and he makes these crazy predictions. And like, there's one story of like a journalist coming to see his self-driving car technology.

And he's driving throughout San Francisco. And they're like, this is amazing. When did you get this to work? He's like, oh, just this morning. Like he's just like a cow, he's like a cowboy that builds the stuff that is incredibly illegal, unregulated. And he just plows through and he does it anyway, raises all this money. It ends up flaring out and not working out. And he quits and leaves. but he's very outspoken, very opinionated, clearly a smart guy and kind of a punk rocker in terms of like self-driving cars. He makes fun of all his competitors, including like GE and Ford and all this stuff. And so he's kind of a loose cannon, but kind of in a good way, in my opinion. So two things.

One, I don't think comma has flamed out. Like, I think it's still going. I don't think it has not become the winner, but he did resign as CEO president or whatever. So the company's still alive. But before that, you know, his best. backstory. I think he was the first guy to jailbreak an iPhone. And he jail broke like a Tesla too, I think. He jail broke an iPhone. Then he hacked the PlayStation. So he hacked Sony, which was pretty huge. And then he was doing something with a Tesla. And I remember at the time, there was some story.

Sorry, I don't have this in front of me, but there was some story where Elon basically offered him a job or something like that. Yeah. So Elon offered him, it is what he claims. Elon offered him $12 million minus, so basically he's a, I'll give you $12 million. Let me explain differently. He did a demo that showed he had the self-driving car technology. And it wasn't using at the time what was the kind of the core technology for the vision system, which I think was Mobile Eye. Mobile Eye was the hot company. It's what Tesla was using. George Holtz made a version of that without using Mobile Eye. And MobileI was kind of limiting and kind of sucked and kind of expensive. So Tesla wanted to get off it.

So he says that Elon made him an offer, which was, I'll give you $12 million for this technology, minus one million for every month that it takes you to do the task. So like, if you give it to me today, it's $12 million. If it takes you nine months, you're only... Just a pissing match between two people ready to take that, play that game. Exactly, exactly. And he's like, if you can create a driving system that replaces Mobile Eye, that Tesla's using at the time and then they kind of walked that back and whatever and say and they had basically

discussed you know do you want to come work whatever no so then he creates comma dot a i which was the idea was like you know you don't need to buy a Tesla that has like self-driving like what about all these other millions and millions of cars that exist what are they going to do just be left in the dust he's like no i'm going to build a retrofit system so you could put this on a honda civic and install this thing on the top and this thing in the dash and then it it will be able to be self-driving Right. We'll install the cameras and the technology so that your car can be retrofitted to be self-driving. That was the dream of that system. So he's this hacker guy, brilliant, brilliant programmer. Also, very, very entertaining guy. Like, he's sort of like, we've talked about Martin Schrelli's live streams where he like looks at stocks and finance and things like that.

And then this guy, George does the same thing. He'll live stream himself, figure things out. So the other day, he's the real deal, I think. I mean, I think that examples like that, you're the real. He's, I don't think he's, I don't think he's. I don't think he's. full of it. I think he's a loose cannon, but I think he's the real deal. Yeah, I agree. So the other day, he goes live on Twitter live streaming video and he's like, let's see how Twitter works. Sorry, I'm just going to like, I've never looked at the Twitter source code, but like let's, and I don't work there, so I don't have access, but like just right click, inspect and let's see what they're doing. Okay, so what is this? Okay, this is the login prompt. What if I remove this? And he starts messing with it. And he's like, so how does this work? And he's like trying to play with it. He's just talking live while

He's doing it. What platform is this on? So he was doing it on Twitter. He streamed it live on Twitter as the video. Then he goes, he does Twitch a lot and things like that. So then he tweets out to Elon. He tweets out about the hardcore, he tweets out Elon's like hardcore email. And he's like, this is great.

This is like exactly what it takes to win. And like, you know, people should be jumping on this. And immediately he starts getting backlash. People are like, oh, yeah, you know. So this guy's asking you to work twice as hard. for less money and without giving you extra pay, like, oh, yeah, we should all just be slaves to this billionaire. And people are like ragging on him in the comments.

And he goes, dude, can you imagine the excitement of getting to work on this right now? Like, this is amazing. Screw it. I'll put my money where my mouth is. Hey, Elon, I'll do a 12-week internship. I'll work for free. And I want to come help you fix Twitter. And he took it.

Elon goes, sure, let's talk. And then George goes back, you know, here comes a pissing match. He goes, my number hasn't changed, which is just a hilarious thing to be like, you know, you call me and let's let it be known. You have my number. That's what he said. He goes, that's what his reply was. He goes, great, my number hasn't changed.

Oh, my God. And then so he agreed to, so he's there now. So he joined Twitter. He agreed to Elon gave him the problem. He goes, you're going to fix Twitter search. You have 12 weeks to do it. And so he's publicly trying to fix Twitter search right now. And he's tweeting out every day the shit he's doing.

And he agreed to work on this for just the cost of living stipend. He said, I think he said he's going to make two grand a week, I think is what he said. The cost of living San Francisco. So eight grand a month. And this is a guy that like is a multimillionaire basically cannot be hired for a job. He's like, you know, an entrepreneur that could snap his fingers and get funding again. Well, and he's tweeting as he goes. I just saw him tweet something.

And the first line was, I don't know if I have the authority to do this, but, and then he, like, said what he wanted to do. And I was like, I'm in. You got me. That's a beautiful first sentence. I'm following your journey. And one of the things he did, he goes, all right, I'm trying to fix a search thing. But I need somebody to just, he wanted somebody to do like just a front end design task, which like most programmers, most real programmers aren't good at that stuff. And so he's like, I wanted to just auto complete.

Like, you know, when I open search, he goes, for some reason, it shows me like just this random follower of my. name. He's like, no, it should prompt me on the ways that I can search. Like, search people, search for hashtags, search for my, search within my likes. Like, show me what the things I can do. He goes, don't send me a resume. Don't tell me it can't be done. Uh, just send me a code snippet that I can plug in and it works. If you, if you do that, you're hired. That's the interview. So it's wildly entertaining to watch this guy do it. And I think this is part of the bull case of, well if Elon can get like real hackers and real people who are like

ready it's kind of like a movie when it's like oh the old gunslinger they go to his house he's retired but he agrees to dust off the old boots and get back out there like hey John we have a final mission for you yeah exactly like if he can assemble with you I'm retired like yo this is Ocean's 11 we're going to go do this shit

it's like a three month gig just get off your ass and come do this it's also the bear the bear case though because that sounds great in all when you're just getting something going. It doesn't sound good when I have all types of private stuff in my DMs that I would not want to be public. You know, I share like intimate things like, you know, like I'll complain about other people or I'll like say like, hey, how are you solving this problem? I can't figure it out. I don't like the fact that people are doing things this way when there's already 300 million users and there's a lot of like payment information and like intimate information on this platform.

So I would say it's also a bear case. Yeah. By the way, on that, he, so Elon goes, all the messaging should be encrypted. I should, if a gun was to my head, I should not be able to reveal what's in somebody's DMs. So we need to go end-to-end encryption. And he told the employees that. Then he goes, and then I've, same thing.

I reached out to the original founder of Signal. He's willing to help us, you know, like, think through how to do this, you know, like, help us implement this end-to-end encryption quickly. And same thing. He's like, you know, basically, oh, that guy, that, the guy from him, started signal. He sold, he was the guy from WhatsApp, right? Sold it to Facebook. Then regretted it and was like, F this. These guys are like basically screwing with my baby. They're reducing the encryption. They're adding an ad. They're mining the data. Whatever. Quits out of principle and start signal a

like completely encrypted messaging tool because he like really believes in this. I forget if he's the one who founded it or he was the funder. He was maybe the main main funding source. Yeah, whatever. He was involved. He was involved. He put like 50 million in. But yeah, that's the, that's another example of people, you know, getting, getting kind of like world-class people involved. But you realize somebody's got to go do the work every day for like the next five years. Who's that, who's that person going to be? The last eight weeks or so have been kind of a gift, gift from God in terms of just like drama. And I'm just chopping at the bit every morning to go and look at my Twitter app or like to go and look at the news. I'm, I'm loving this, man. This is a soap opera. And I'm,

on board. I said I was off board originally when Elon was doing Twitter and now like with FTX and all this other drama I'm back. They got me back like this has just been awesome. It's been a dopamine hit like every single day. You know, and I'm feigning. I'm waiting for that

next hit every morning. I check it. And so this has been just a gift. I'm kind of the opposite dude. I'm going the other way. I can't resist sometimes. What's that the, is it the R. Kelly thing where he's like, my mind's telling me no. He's like, My body.

My body is saying yes. That's how it feels. My mind is like, this is all a distraction, unrelated to you. Go read a book. Go outside. Go build something. This is the opposite of what you stand for.

Go read a book. Have you ever read a book in your life? The other day you told me about a book you were reading. And I was like, oh, that's great. You're like, yeah, I'm only five pages in, though. You literally were telling me about a book that you were reading and how impactful it's been. And then the next sentence was, you said that you were five pages in.

Do you remember that? It was like about like yoga or some bullshit. It was like, quicker the better. And now you're telling me to get off Twitter and read a book. I didn't know you read books. When was the last time you read a book from beginning to end? From beginning to end, okay, that is a bit of a challenge.

I read probably one book a year from beginning to end. And I read probably 10 books from beginning to 35 pages. a year. That's so funny. Yeah. By the way, I think that's the optimal way to read books.

Most books, you can get the general principle. And if it doesn't compel you to finish it, you should have no problem putting it down, saying I took what I needed from that, and I'm ready for the next, you know, interesting little nugget or principle because these books are a lot of filler.

Tell me about this jet thing that you've had on here twice now. By the way, our, so we have this document. It's called MDB Master, it stands for a million-dollar brainstorm. I don't know if you saw this. It's across 200 pages. So, Sean and I have this document

that every day in the morning we, like, write our topics. It's 50,000 words now and 200 pages. We've deleted a bunch of topics off this. Like, once we're done with that, I just delete them. It's pretty wild how long this document it is. But you've had this thing in here about Jets. What about it? Okay.

So I forgot who was saying this. Maybe Andrew Wilkinson, somebody else. Andrew. He was saying this about empty legs. So basically private jets are obviously really expensive, really awesome. Have you ever flown private on your own dime? No. Have you ever flown private on anyone else's dime either?

I flew private a couple of times. One time Andrew paid for it. How was it? It was sick. Like, yeah. Like, you know, like there's things that like maybe like, fancy socks and like that's basically it. That's like things that like it doesn't matter just by the cheap ones.

They're just as good as the fancy ones. And then there's things where you spend money and it actually makes a difference. And unfortunately for all the plebs out there, flying private is one of them. I'm a plebe too, by the way. I don't fly private. It costs too much. But flying private, it is game changing. Yeah.

When I did it, I was like, okay. This is awesome. I kind of imagine to be similar to the strip club experience where I would constantly feel like I need to be doing something to like maximize the opportunity. Like, I can just imagine myself standing up and just stretching repeatedly. Like, I don't know. Is there caviar? I don't even like this. Dude, I read, I read a newspaper when I flew, when he flew me.

I read the Wall Street Journal. I've never read the newspaper in my life, but I picked up the newspaper and I opened it up. I opened it up and just had it. And I, like, flopped it and like smacked it to like get the crease out of there. That's what I did when I flew private. And it was an amazing experience. Yeah, I feel like I would need to like pick up some new hobbies and like, wear leather if I was going to be flying private.

You're going to get into Sudoku. So he tweeted this thing about empty legs. So basically private jets, I think some really high percentage, maybe 25% or 30% of all private jet flights are completely empty. It's just a jet relocating from one place to another in order to be ready for the next flight. And so there's this arbitrage then of empty legs with basically like, hey, this was going to fly anyways. is it's just going to cost, you know, 40 grand to do this flight and it's getting, you know, there's no value. It's just a burn.

Could you basically give people the opportunity to hop into these empty legs? And so I found there's a website or there's several, but like there are websites that will let you fly private. You don't need to own the plane. You don't need to sign up for some membership. It's literally just like, hey, if this is going from here to there, if you want to go 20 grand and it's like, this is yours. You know, you and six people can go on.

on this thing. That's kind of interesting. Have you heard about this? No, but one time, I have a little bit heard of it. And one time I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to call the airport. So there was one time that I needed a flight from Nashville to New York. And I just called, you just Google like your city, the city you're in plus executive

airport. And I remember I called them. I go, hey, can you put me in touch with like a broker, like a flight broker? And they did. And I talked to the guy. I go, hey, I need to go to New York in like a few hours tonight. Is there any pilots that need work and can fly? from Nashville to New York, and there was a guy willing to do it for $6,500.

He's like, that's, you know, that's the cheapest we could do for $6,500. And it was like a, like a crazy hack that I didn't think actually worked. And it did. Right. So like right now, in four days from, I'm on jetly.com right now. But there's a place in Texas going to Fort Wayne International in Indiana. It's going there anyways. And it's just as negotiable, right?

You can just like, you can go do this. or right now, like, let's see, when is this one? This is in two days. So in two days, if you're in Poland, do you want to go to Italy, you know, $15,000, and you can have this private jet flight if you happen to be going there. And you get the whole plane?

Yeah, I think you get the whole plane because it's empty. How many does it see? Let's see. So you can clue. I mean, if it's a small one, you can see, you know, seven people. All right.

So this is, okay, this one is going from Turterboro. Where is that? Turterboro to West Palm Beach. New York. New York to Miami, basically. Okay. So New York to Miami. Tita Borough. Tita Borough. Okay. Let's see. This one seats eight. Eight and how much? This, this, so the one to Miami seat six. It's 15 grand. So, you know, basically that's a price of a first class ticket, right? Like for a lot of things. Yeah. It'd be a fun ass experience with a bunch of friends. So everyone ponies up two grand. I mean, that's a pretty. That's a pretty. cool experience. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought this was kind of cool.

And another like kind of, this is what Airbnb did was like, they took something that was excess capacity and found a way to turn it into like a, to fill more of that excess demand. Right. So do you know, um, do you know Dennis, Dennis Hextead? Mm-hmm. So he's my good buddy here in Austin. And he, once a week, he goes, hey, I just got a notification.

Austin to, and he'll just say like somewhere in Utah. Like, it's a, it's a golf stream. like, you know, it's normally $100,000. They have it for $20,000. And they could see 10 of us, you and a bunch of friends want to go and do this thing. He does that all the time. And he actually, like, actually like pounces on him.

Okay, so what else we got? You got a couple others. Life after selling, you want to do that? All right. This is just an interesting thing. So I always read this subreddit called Fatfire. And it's interesting because you don't know if anything, Fat fire means people who financially,

independent, retired early. So people who want to do that, but fat, meaning they want to retire with a lot of money and not work again. And that's an interesting sentiment. Like most everyone wants to do that. They go, oh, I would love to retire and be rich and not have to work at the age of 30. That sounds cool, right? There's this common theme of people doing that and they get depressed. And that sounds like, oh, boohoo. Like, why, you know, fuck those guys. Who cares? But it's interesting nonetheless. And there's this really interesting thread that I found. So click where it says follow up. But the reason why this is interesting is like you are seeing such a clear journey that someone is experiencing. And so this person wrote a post where basically about a year ago, they wrote a post saying, hey, I sold my company.

I made $20 million. Until that day, I hadn't sold a single share. I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck, but I was living a normal life. After the sale, I basically had nothing to do with the company. My wife kept working and she would just basically tell her friends, that I was working from home. But in reality, I was just playing video games all day while our kids were at school.

And six months later doing this, I am so depressed. I hate my life. I have nothing going on. I'm sad. I need to go see a therapist. Yada, yada, yada. He writes another post 10 months later. And he goes, hey, this is just a short follow-up

to the post that I previously wrote. But the crux of it is for this moment in my life is so good. I love waking up. I love doing what I'm doing. doing all day and it just, I feel like I've got camaraderie. And basically what this guy did was he sold this company, made enough money, was depressed for a little while and did the exact same thing again, where he went and started another company. And he has 10 employees. It's cash flow positive. It's not huge yet, but it's enough to pay for the 10 employees. And I think it could be big. But what I realized

was I loved the hunt doing it. And another person said, my number, the amount of money that I made, it wasn't anywhere near yours. But I pulled the trigger and I sold it. the company, I made a little bit of money, and I basically retired, and I floated around in my pool all day. I played video games. I read. And after about three to four months, I was miserable. I was so sad. And now, since then, I started a small business. It's never going to be that big, but I basically took one of my hobbies, and I turned it into a small business, and it has a lot of challenging problems, and I've never been happier. And I thought, this topic and this thread, who knows if it's real. Everyone could be exaggerating. But it's incredibly interesting because you get to be a

and see other people's lives where they anonymously say their true feelings. And I thought that this was a really interesting insight that is rarely not uncovered or discussed in such a clear, straightforward way where you see a very like, post one, I'm sad. Post two, I'm not sad. And I thought it was like a really interesting insight. And I went through this not as much with my company. I was happy I got some chill time. But I went to the same thing. I'm like, what do you do? What am I supposed to? do all the time. And it's actually quite depressing. And it's not a topic discussed because, you know, who the fuck wants to talk about a guy who sold this company? Doesn't have to work.

And now he's sad. But interesting nonetheless, and interesting because a lot of people want to do this. And it's cool to see that it's maybe not all that fulfilling. And basically, particularly type is who have the ability to do this. You have to have like a way to contribute. You know, like I've talk to, I have a few stay-at-home moms in my life who, like, after their kids went to school, they're like, my life is pointless, you know, like I don't contribute to anything. Previously, I was contributing to my children's lives. Now they're in school. They don't need me. What the hell am I supposed to do? I'm so sad. And now this is like a really good example of that, but in the business world. So I don't know. What do you think about this? So I literally had a conversation like this

yesterday with the guys who were helping set up the studio. They go, you know, I heard they were saying, I heard this, and they said, Alex Hermose said this too. Like, he's never been as sad as after he sold his company. He was depressed, kind of like either sad or depressed. I don't know the exact phrase, but basically the same gist of it. He sold his company. And then that was supposed to feel the best, right? But I actually felt the worst.

They go, what do you think about that? Do you feel that? And I go, no, I feel excited. Like, I feel super excited. I'm like, oh, are you joking? Like the, anything is possible now, right? Like, sure, I have, you know, a bunch of free time. And if it was always going to be doing nothing, that would be, that would feel a little bit, that would feel bad for sure.

But for me, I'm very, very excited about this period of, oh, I get to figure out what's next. And everything is possible and everything seems interesting. And the background is, is you had a project that you recently sold. We'll do a whole pot on it at another point. Now you've got some free time. Yeah. And I've had that before when we sold Bebo the first time. And the same thing.

Like, you know, I've never felt that. But I have heard this now from a bunch of different people. And I remember Michael Birch, who's been on the pod and was kind of a mentor, an investor in my company. He basically said the same thing. You know, when he sold Bebo for $850 million, you know, next six months, we're not very fun. Like, you know, it was like a huge come down. And he's like, you can't even really talk about it because boohoo, poor billionaire. Like, nobody wants to hear it.

And I think people take the wrong takeaway from this. I think what people take away is, oh, it's not all that it's cracked up to be to sell. You know, maybe that's not a good thing. I don't think that's the right takeaway because I agree with you. I was happy that I did it. And I don't regret it at all. And it was everything plus more that it was cracked up to be. Exactly.

I think the real takeaway is that humans need, you know, a purpose and a direction where they're going to direct their talents and their energy and their focus. without that, you will be sad. And so the question is, and sometimes in between things, you won't know exactly what that purpose needs to be. And that figure it out period can feel uncomfortable. Some people get sad in that period because they are so used to having that purpose. But that isn't like, it's not just sad equals bad.

Sometimes it's feeling bad equals discomfort equals being out of your comfort zone, equals growth. And so I think the better signal or the better takeaway is, yeah, when you do realize that, hey, man, I've been filling my time and focus and energy with one thing for so long, I take that away. And now I'm going to fill it with something else, something new, something that can be exciting. But the period where I don't know what that is, that's a little, that's a little uncomfortable. And I'm going to have to go through that until I could find that thing again. And that's okay. That's part of the process to figure out the right thing rather than just filling it, right? Same way that when you break up with, let's say you're in a bad relationship or even

an okay relationship, but you break up because you know it's not the one you want. You break up. Yeah, it kind of sucks to be alone and single. There is a period of time where that does suck, but that suck is required for you to work on yourself, figure out what you want, make space for the next person. And then when you meet that next person, it's even better than it was before. But it was, you couldn't skip that single step. If you just never did that, you would never have the better relationship in the second time. So that's kind of my, the way I think about it at least. So I'll try to be really tactical here. So I've got a handful of friends who made enough money that, you know, they're pretty much set. And they built these like great companies and they came

from nothing. And then they sell. And then they want to start something again. And after six months, they're like, oh, this can't ever be big. Or it's not growing fast enough. Or it's just too hard and I'm like, man, like, had you thought that about the thing that got you to where you are, you never would have gotten to where you are. Like, you're kind of being a little punk and you're being soft and you need to like get past that. And I think that that is like a really big challenge that people go through. And the way that I combated that challenge or I think I've done a good job of overcoming that challenges.

First of all, dude, getting that first sale regardless of what you have, I think is awesome. Like, it's addicting. And it gives you that dopamine high. But second, what I did is I took my lump sum and I invested it just like boring 80-20, you know, stocks and bonds. And then I, well, not entirely 80-20 because I do have like some just in like, you know, just cash sitting there. But that account I haven't logged into in like a year and a half.

Like I just don't log into it. And I keep a certain amount of money in my checking account, tens of thousands of dollars. And then I have my credit card. And I just assume that my net worth is tens of thousands of dollars. And so if I want to. something, I've got to go earn. Or I'm like, y'all, you know, I would love to go and buy X, Y, and Z. I better make my company work a little bit better. Or, you know, I think about it like that. And that has been a nice little hack that has helped me kind of like, look, like that.

You're a little silly though, right? Because it's like, then the money is serving you no purpose, no utility. Well, it, why do you want the money so bad if it wasn't going to benefit you? Well, because first, the cash flow that I make on a monthly basis covers my life and more. You don't even look at that account. No. So the way I haven't set it up is a certain amount of my cash flow goes to my checking account, and that's my spending money. That's the account with tens of thousands of dollars.

But once it hits a threshold, it automatically goes to my other account, which is my investment account that I don't log into. Right. What I'm saying is the investment account then is serving you no purpose? Is it not improving the quality of your life at all? Well, yes and no. Yes. And the fact that like when I got my deal.

done. I wanted a car and I wanted a house. I bought those things. And I didn't really, and then I wanted to buy some clothes. I think I bought like two or three thousand dollars or maybe more worth of clothing. And I was like, all, that's like pretty much all. I don't really want much else. And oh, and I took a trip. It was a $10,000 trip to Hawaii. And so collectively that sum, my car was $110,000. It wasn't like crazy expensive, but it was kind of expensive. Collectively, like I spent that amount of money, like buying the initial things that I wanted. And then after that, I was like, you know, I don't really want more stuff. I don't want more things.

And so it served me, but now I don't want more stuff. And if I do want something extra, in the back of my head, I know, look, I could go and get the money to spend it. But I'd rather just go and earn that because that keeps me hungry and it's kind of more exciting and more fun and I appreciate it more. So in my brain, on one hand, I think I only have, I'm only worth $60,000 or $70,000 because that's what's in my checking account. But in reality, I'm like, yeah, when emergencies,

happen with my family, it's all covered. But I try to just look at that 60,000 or 70,000, and that's all I have. Okay, I like that. That makes sense. But you don't like that? No, I like it. I think it's good.

I like using, I do this a lot. I use my own psychology for me rather than against me. It's much easier to just understand how your brain works and then use it to your benefit than try to fight the way your brain works and say, no brain, think differently and react differently to situations. You know what I mean? It's like the same way that if I publicly go on here and say I'm going to do something, then I know that my brain is going to not want to fail at that because the

social pressure is going to make me want to do it. So I just use that to my advantage. I'll go and I'll say, I'm going to do the X and I call my shot because now I know I'm going to use that feeling of social pressure to help me do the thing I want rather than try to talk myself out of caring what other people think. No, I think that's a good way to live. We're going to do, this is the second time we said it, so we actually have to do it, but we're going to have to do a total pod about like what you're going to do next. But I think that, I think the best thing that people like you and me and people who sell stuff, the best part of the situation is, okay, I have a little while to breathe and think. No one, very rarely do people get that. Sometimes they'll get it if they get fired and they get severance.

but most people, the average American, doesn't get it until they retire if they can retire. And even then, it's like, dude, now I'm old and like, I don't have a lot of income coming in. So it's like, what, you know, what's the point? But so I think the best part of selling is you have time to reflect and think. The worst part is if you do that for too long, you get stale and you're going to, I think you have a highly likelihood of being depressed and sad. Yeah, the, we've used that phrase before,

of work like a lion. I think Naval was the one who came up with this, but like, you know, it's worth repeating because I think that this is, this is what you're describing. A lion will find what it wants, right? It finds its prey. It sprints. It catches it. Then it feasts and it toasts and it celebrates, you know, that feast. Then it relaxes. It sits and it waits. You know, there's a rest period. And then there's a observing period where it lurks and it waits for the next prey. And so business is the same, right? You had a period and I had a period where we were sprinting to catch the, the, the, the win. We both caught the win. Then we feasted. We celebrated. We did that, you know, got that out of our sister. It's important to enjoy. It's important to learn how to

enjoy the thing. Then you rest and you reassess. And you go and you're looking for the next prey. And then for you, you just found your next one and you started sprinting. And I'm still in the, I'm in the rest and reassess period. And that's what I told you was, Enjoy that rest, though. You do have to enjoy it. And I think you truly do need, like, a period to rest and, like, embrace it, which I know is very hard for you and most people. No, that's easy for me.

That's what I'm saying. I get when other people say that's difficult for them. But, like, it sounds to me like a snow flaky thing to be sad about. Like, not to, like, minimize their feelings. Like, I kind of get it. But at the same time, it's like, it's like, what's your, it's like, what's your perspective? It's like, my perspective is like, dude, I can't, like, I'm so happy with how that turned out. That was awesome. The next thing is going to be awesome. And this period is a new,

it's a different type of season in the same way that, oh, it's nice in the winter because you kind of bundle up and you wear your fuzzy socks and you sip on your hot cocoa or whatever. It's a different season. And that's to be enjoyed for its own purposes. And like, you know, I don't feel bad for myself and therefore I don't want anybody else to feel bad in the same way. Like, I think people too easily are willing to feel bad about themselves or feel for bad for for themselves or to themselves or whatever. Like it's like a form of victimhood, right? Like, I understand how it would be easy to think that way,

but I do not think that way. I choose not to think. No, I guess what I mean is you have a pattern sometimes of jumping into projects and going all in. And I'm like, you know, like maybe just like, if you have an idea, just wait like three weeks and then and then do it. You know, like three hours. Yeah, like, you know, like I.

you started the Milk Road over a weekend. You're like, well, you're all in on one or two other things. And then over the weekend, we're like, I'm doing this. And you went all in on it. And thankfully, it worked. But you could see how that could be both an advantage and a disadvantage. But that's kind of my point. That I think is very, very sage advice for me.

Because it's super easy to start something. You can start something in an hour. But once you start something, and if it's going to do anything, it's going to take weeks or months to make it work to get it. started and then once it's working, now it's years to like, you know, pay it off. Particularly a daily email that requires you to do something every single day. Daily emails are hard, aren't they? I mean, they're not that hard, but they're challenging.

They're unlike other businesses. But even if it wasn't the daily email, I guess either way, starting is so much easier than finishing that like you got to be careful that like just because it would be easy to get it to try. It's like the test is if I'm going to do something, it's a, it's a multi-year arc for if this is going to be a good, in a good scenario. So choose wisely. You know,

those are very, very valuable years of prime prime. And the same thing with people taking jobs or anything else. It's like, are you sure? You're sure you're going to give up like 20% of your prime to that? Or like people who want to wait. I'm going to wait a year before I go do the thing I want.

Like you sure? A year? Right. You know, valuable that year is to you? Like this year and your 20s, you know what that's worth? Like,

that's not just like, that's not nothing right like a year in your 20s is i kind of think like you're sort of like 20 20 to kind of like your 50s basically that 30 year window is you know worth like 80% of the time of the total time in your life and so like you know each of those years is uh is very very valuable do not do not do not throw it away doing something you don't want to do i'm i'm eager to hear if people like this type of content, but I think they will, right? What do you think?

Yeah, if we like it, they'll like it. Who are our customers? The people that love what we do. All right, we should wrap it up.