My First Million - The GameStop Guy Has Returned… (And Has A New $210M Bet)
Episode Date: June 7, 2024Episode 594: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) explain what’s happening with GameStop AGAIN and how Keith Gill turned $56k into $210M with ...memes. — Show Notes: (0:00) Roaring Kitty's $200M GameStop holding (8:41) Is Keith Gill the most genius creator behind a brand? (14:53) Where did the $65M come from? (17:44) The 7 Stages of GameStop FOMO (20:00) Ryan Cohen's activist investments in GameStop, Bed Bath and Beyond (26:34) Shaan's honest take on paternity leave (31:53) Painting the windows black (35:42) Zach Pogrob's The Year of Obsession (37:03) What's the deal with run clubs right now? (39:19) Sexy faces and sexy paces (42:04) Endurance event businesses (45:06) Opportunity: The suburban Iron Man (51:19) Scott Harrison gives Shaan unsolicited feedback — Links: • [Steal This] Get our proven writing frameworks that have made us millions https://clickhubspot.com/copy • wallstreetbets - https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ • Unusual Whales - https://unusualwhales.com/ • WSJ on Ryan Cohen - https://tinyurl.com/4zue9xps • Wander - https://www.wander.com/ • The Lehman Trilogy - https://thelehmantrilogy.com/ • The Year of Obsession - https://tinyurl.com/4nsrh689 • Nick Bare - https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness • RAWDAWG - https://www.instagram.com/rawdawgrunclub • River - https://www.getriver.io/ • 29029 Everesting - https://29029everesting.com/ • Rock n Roll Running - https://www.runrocknroll.com/ • thespeedproject - https://www.instagram.com/thespeedproject • Grab HubSpot's free AI-Powered Customer Platform and watch your business grow https://clickhubspot.com/fmf — Enter to win a free trip at https://www.wander.com/mfm and use code MFM300 at checkout for $300 off your booking. — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Sam, this podcast is not financial advice.
But if I was going to give anyone financial advice,
I would have said,
rewind the clock to May 1st, just a month ago,
and all you need to do,
if you ever want to triple your money,
forget Warren Buffett.
Forget Bill Ackman.
All you had to do was buy GameStop.
Again.
Again.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off.
On the road, let's travel.
On the Mount Rushmore of investing, there's Bill Ackman.
There's Warren Buffett, these wise older men who just exude confidence, exude wisdom right next to them is deep fucking value.
That's the world we're living in right now.
So a lot has happened with this guy.
Let's tell a little bit of the background of who this person is and what happened.
All right.
So it starts, what year did this start in probably 2020?
So like peak zero interest, COVID's happening.
a lot of people are streaming online and saying their thoughts because they're working from home.
There's this guy named Keith Gill.
Keith Gill, I think he worked at like mass mutual or like just some normal boring job,
like a $100,000 a year job.
However, he loves stock investing.
Like he studies it and turns out he's a very charismatic guy.
And he starts streaming some of his picks and why he likes certain companies, whatever.
Now, we all remember that in 2000, 2020, 2021,
the stock market went crazy.
And there was a subreddit called Wall Street Betts.
And a lot of people had extra income because of whatever was happening.
And they were betting crazy amounts of money on silly stocks.
Well, this guy, Keith Gill, he has a username on Reddit called Deep Fucking Value.
And then he has a YouTube page called Roaring Kitty.
And he starts explaining why he likes GameStop.
And he invests roughly $56,000, which at the time, I think that was like all of his money.
And he just goes on this kind of.
campaign explaining why he likes that stock. And it's kind of like an underdog story. It's this
kind of nobody charismatic, cool guy versus the large companies. And the reason he starts investing
into game stock is these large companies, these large head funds, he finds out they're shorting
the company. And he was like, I actually think they're wrong. I think this is great. And so it becomes
a little bit of a Robin Hood, Dave and Goliath type of story. And all of Reddit, all of Twitter,
gets behind Keith Gill, deep fucking value, roaring kitty. And the stock goes crazy. He makes,
something like $30 million off of his $50,000 investment.
And he spends about, how long was that?
18 months, two years, like with his campaign talking about it.
But then he makes $30 million.
He goes silent.
Nothing happens.
There's a movie made about him with Seth Rogan.
It was an awesome movie.
But at the end of the movie, they go, we try to get Keith Gill to comment on this
movie and give us insight.
He didn't say anything.
He's been silent.
We haven't heard from him.
Until last month, it all changed.
What happened?
So great summary.
Last month, Roaring Kitty, as he's known, he's got a couple different names, right?
There's his Reddit username, but then Roaring Kitty was kind of his streaming name.
And he comes back on Twitter and he just posts a meme.
And it's the meme of the guy sitting in his chair and then starts to lean forward.
Like he just became interested in something.
The gamer lean.
The gamer lean in.
Many of you listen to this podcast right now might have the gamer lean going.
And I hope you do.
But he posts that.
Nobody knows what it means.
It's cryptic.
And then he starts posting some more cryptic videos.
That tweet got 30 million views.
Yeah.
People are ready.
And immediately, like, stock pops a little bit, but nobody knows what it means.
And nobody knows really what happened to this guy.
During that run where he turned basically like $56,000 into, you know, tens of millions of dollars.
He held the whole way.
So what everybody thought was great, the short squeeze is great.
What happens when people start to take gains?
This whole thing is going to collapse.
And sure enough, that is kind of what happens.
But it didn't stay at the peak.
I think at the peak, it was like $480.
And it did start to come down.
But he had, as we say in crypto, diamond hands.
And he did not sell during that time.
Or nobody knew what he was doing during that time.
But there was no evidence of him selling.
So he comes back.
He starts posting all these clips.
And people start getting excited.
And what's happened in the last, you know, I don't know,
month or so is the stock has tripled.
And it's tripled in spite of Robin Hood and others,
halting the stock again.
Because like last night and after hours, it was up 100%.
Your money just doubled last night if you had bought yesterday.
And then they had to halt the thing because it's like, you know, pretty like abnormal behavior that's going on in the after hours trading.
So the internet's going crazy.
He then goes and posts on Reddit and he goes into a Resubredit called Superstunk.
And so he goes into Superstank and he says, here's my Gamestock, my GameStop Yolo update.
And he posts this screenshot.
And the screenshot essentially shows that he currently has between his equity and his call options,
$200-something million worth of GameStop.
Which basically means that, and people aren't exactly sure when all this started,
but there's a Twitter handle called Unusual Wales.
Unusual Wales.com.
I believe it's an option-buying platform.
And they noticed, they started reporting on this on their own platform, they said,
few weeks ago, they go, someone is buying $2 million a day.
And they're a whale. What is going on? And they've been doing it for three weeks.
And a call option, basically, and I'm an idiot when it comes to the stuff. It basically just
means they think the stock is going to go up and they leverage their money to buy a ton of
options to purchase the stock at a agreed upon price. I think his agreed upon price was $20.
He starts accumulating that share, that stake. No one knows who it is. And just last night,
I think, or the night before, he revealed it was him.
him. He's been doing this all along. Yeah, it's insane. And so, you know, currently right now,
today is up another 24%. He's basically doing it again. And the hedge funds, I believe, were shorting
it again. So I'm not again. That's the part I'm not 100% sure on. It's like initially the appeal for
doing this was he would say, you know, I like the stock. I believe in the company. He would say those
things. But it was unclear how much of it was his belief in the company versus his belief that
the hedge funds had shorted more than 100% of the stock flow.
So it was like just massively, massively shorted.
And the way the shorting works is you're basically betting that the stock is going to go down.
And so as the stock rises, your losses, like normally, let's say you buy a stock for $100.
The most you can lose is $100.
That's what you bought the stock for.
That's all you have.
If it goes to zero, you lost your $100.
When you short a stock, you can lose an infinite amount of money.
And it's basically what happened to these hedge funds.
They lost billions of dollars by shorting GameStop because,
when Keith and then all the other people on Reddit started buying,
it created a short squeeze,
meaning the price was going up so much that they were getting called in and say,
hey,
you need to cover your positions.
They need to now buy the stock at this elevated price
in order to cover their short.
And so that put a couple of them almost out of business.
I think one or two went out of business,
and another one had to get a bail out, basically.
And there's a lot of accusation of collusion,
meaning these big hedge funds colluded together.
Some of the hedge funds had a stake in the company, Robin Hood,
and they called Robin Hood.
said, hey, we need your help on this. You can't let these guys keep doing this stuff. And so it was a
David versus Goliath situation of like, can the little nobody retail investor somehow beat
corporate America, beat the big billion dollar hedge funds. And for what it's one, by the way,
I think it's totally true. I don't think this is a whack conspiracy theory. So I don't think they
owned a stake in games up what I think was they were the market maker. Yeah. So they were one of the
biggest market makers. And then, you know, everybody said, no, we didn't call them and tell them to
halt the stock. What they did was they halted buying, but they allowed selling, which is like,
Like, you know, that's sort of the most effed up thing you could do to a stock.
And people lost like their life savings in this.
And some people say, oh, they should have because they were just gambling.
Okay, there is something called just gambling.
But if the casino rigs the dice, that's not cool.
Right.
And that's what appears to have happened here where if you shut down buying, but you allow selling for a period of time, you will relieve the pressure and the short squeeze.
And the stock will start to fall.
And then people start to sell because they think, oh, the game's up.
And so I took all my money.
I don't know about you.
I took all my money off of Robin Hood after that happened.
I just fundamentally morally was against what had happened.
I believe that the CEO lied and continues to lie basically about what happened during that period of time.
I also took all my money off Robin Hood.
I didn't have a significant amount, but like Robin Hood started as like the underdog story.
And this is a tale as oldest time, at least in Silicon Valley, which is like the underdog is like, they're the coolest and the best.
We're all behind them.
And then they get big.
And then all of a sudden, they are the man.
And they start changing some of the way they do things.
And now I don't trust them.
Right.
But I actually, so I currently have two takes on this.
Number one, we talked about the creator economy,
which I think is mostly a lame thing to talk about.
But basically, some of the cool stories are some of these creators like Logan Paul.
They now have a billion-dollar company with Prime.
Roaring Kitty is the exact same thing.
But instead of selling Prime Energy drinks or whatever,
he's selling not financial advice, but he's selling.
Oh my God, I'm so jealous I didn't have this take.
Holy shit.
That might have been the most insightful thing you've said in months.
This is his version of monetizing his audience, and it is beautiful.
And here's why it's beautiful.
Have you seen the movie, what's it called?
Dumb Money.
So they chose this actor to play Keith Gill.
And I've seen a lot of Keith videos.
He's so much more charismatic than the actor who played him.
If he would have been that actor, it would have been way better.
And so when you watch his videos, I think I want to get behind you.
He is so likable.
And so he is monetizing his fame in such an interesting way.
So let me just make that point again.
So what you said is basically we've seen all the creator brands.
You've seen feastables.
You've seen prime.
You've seen whatever, a thousand of these.
He did it without having to sweat the actual business.
He's like, yeah, yeah, cool.
How about instead of having to actually sell products and fulfill customer orders
and do customer support and all that, I'll just pick a stock and make the stock go up?
And the product is you might make money on this stock.
And not saying that he intentionally tried to do that or whatever,
but like in a way, he did, right?
He was streaming himself picking his dog, doing his analysis.
And the one thing I will say, because I went and watched these videos is,
I expected it to be a lot more like pump and dumpy,
meaning I expected it to be like either explicitly said or reading between the lines like,
hey guys, let's just do this and make a buck.
And he really doesn't say that or do that in any of his like videos or his updates.
And maybe it's because he kind of had a job at a financial company and he knew not to cross that line.
I don't know.
Maybe that's why.
Maybe he genuinely just liked the company and the stock and was like, yeah, I think there's value here.
And in some ways got lucky.
He didn't mean to start a revolution.
He just did.
So I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm very impressed that I expected him to be a lot more unrespectable.
But actually, when I watched his videos on Reddit's content, I actually respected him a lot.
I thought that he was not trying to,
you know,
a grifter trying to make a buck.
He did not come off that way.
And the movie,
which I think was a hit,
they made him not come off that way.
They can't,
they made him,
they made him and his wife come off as very romantic characters.
They made the people who followed him.
They like showed like a poor lady in the Bronx or something.
She was like,
I really believe in this guy.
He's the best.
We can't let the big guys win.
And so you get behind it.
It's easy to get behind.
The second take that I have,
I think what he's doing is not illegal.
But,
it might eventually become illegal.
What he is doing is absolutely, so here's my opinion.
We don't know what he has done between basically when he made his $30 million and up until
three weeks ago.
We don't know what had happened.
If I had to make a prediction, I think he tweeted out this gamer lean-in.
So he tweeted out this gamer lean-in meme or whatever and the stock jumped, I think 80% that
day, which is insane.
So he was, he ultimately, I think GameStop at.
the time was worth $6 billion and then it was worth $7 or $8.
You got to go look at those numbers.
But he basically created something like a billion or at least hundreds of millions of
dollars in value from a silly tweet.
I think that there's a potential that he was like knew that him saying something online
was going to pop the stock and that he is profiting from that.
And then further after that bought the calls.
You know what I mean?
No, no.
I think it's the other way around.
So I think what would make sense is he buys the calls first.
Sorry.
And then he announces it.
But his announcement, I mean, how are you going to get it in trouble?
Like, you know, I posted a meme of this guy leading forward.
It's not illegal.
It's not illegal.
It's not illegal.
And he's very wise.
And so other tweets that he posted are, what did he post?
The reverse Uno card.
Just a picture of a reverse Uno card.
Like we're running it back.
Yeah.
And I think it's hilarious.
I think it's hilarious that Nikita, our friend said,
if you've been toying away at your startup for the last decade,
just remember, a guy in his basement with a webcam and a headband.
just made close to a billion dollars in 12 hours.
And I think that that's pretty wild.
And potentially, there is going to be some blowback for Keith Gill.
But if you think about it, Bill Ackman announced, I think last week that he's considering
taking his company, his hedge fund, Pershing Square public.
And what Bill Ackman is doing is not terribly different than what Warren Buffett has done,
what Howard Marks has done, what Manich, the guy we had, you had in the pod, what these
guys have done, which is they've built a brand for themselves. And when you build a brand for
yourselves in the hedge fund or trading industry, it basically just means whatever Warren does,
I'm going to follow because I trust him. And so it adds value to a company that is not
necessarily in the fundamentals of the business. And that is exactly what's happening with
Roaring Kitty. And I find it fascinating. I don't know if I am good, I'm behind it because I like him
and I want him to win. But I do have to ask myself, is this actually like ethical and correct? It's
borderline, I think.
here's a couple of interesting bits.
So GameStop stock currently $28 as of recording this.
If the stock hits $70 a share, he's a billionaire.
It's sane.
Which is just kind of incredible.
It's sad.
The second thing that's really interesting here is some open questions that I have.
And I think if it's not obvious by now, we're noobs when it comes to this.
We are not stock traders.
We are not options traders.
This is not the world we live.
in we are both me and Sam, we are startup guys, we build businesses, we start companies that
are tech companies.
This is not our game.
But I do have some very simple questions as a beginner here, which is if he's buying basically
on average, I think two, two and a half million dollars worth of options per day for the last
like, like, you know, 11 days or something like that.
Where'd the money come from?
Where's the money come from?
This is a guy who didn't have money.
He made a bunch of money in GameStop.
How did he have the ability to buy like $60 million worth of these calls?
He bought six. That's my point. I think there's more behind the scenes.
He owns $5 million of, five million shares of GameStop, which is worth $115 million.
And then he has $65 million worth of call options. So there's some theories on this.
So the first question is how did he do this? And the theories are basically, I don't know if this is true, but here's a theory that this guy, Joe Lepton posts on Twitter.
He goes, I'm trying to figure out how Roaring Kitty ended up with 180 million plus, what's now $210 million of GameStop.
Here's my best guess. In late April or early May, he sold most of his equity and low
it up on calls. Then he came back to social media,
posted the meme, and it went up
300% in like, you know, three days.
If he sold his calls near the top,
that would give him cash back, he would then
go back to buy equity. And then he
decided to do this game again recently.
And he's basically using this scheme
of like sell equity, buy calls,
sell calls at the top. Now you have a lot
calls are basically like a leverage way to buy.
Take that leverage, leverage gains
that you have. Now buy equity again
and, you know, rinse and repeat
basically. So he's like, this is insane. I've ever
anything like this before. His
Twitter page, instead of the word
posts, it should just say a dollar sign.
That's his ATM. Every time he clicks
that button, he's like, that's how
much power this guy has. And it's insane.
Yeah, yeah. Everything about him needs to, he needs
a rebrand. Roaring Kitty is now
like the fierce lion. Like, he's no kitty.
This guy is just
legendary. I mean, the tweets about this are also just
hilarious. I want Brandon Boyle, we put these
up. I'm telling my daughter that this was
Warren Buffett. And it's just a picture of him
wearing his purple like cat shirt.
at home.
Trung, your boy Trung posted,
Here's Roaring Kitty and his $180 million game shop position
rolling up to the stock market tomorrow,
and it's the wheelbarrow with the guy from South Park
with giant balls in the wheelbarrow.
He's got, I mean, these are,
it's really pretty crazy.
Another one, Quiver quantitative is saying,
depending on how GameStop moves tomorrow,
his net worth is about to pass the other great stock trader in history,
Nancy Pelosi.
She's currently at $245 million estimated.
He's at 210.
And they said two legendary investors at the top of their game.
It's great.
It's great.
This is a very captivating story.
Well, there's the obvious question, which is, what do you do about this?
So during the first GameStop run up, I went through like whatever the seven stages of grief.
It's like the seven stages of FOMO, which was first, I ignored it.
Irrelevant to me.
Who cares?
Then I became dismissive.
And I said, why are you guys wasting your time on this?
This is stupid.
This is not like GameStop, really?
there's not like you're going to lose your money. Then I became jealous as all my friends made money
doing this and all those random strangers on the internet who were doing the dumb thing,
we're making the money. And then I went to chasing FOMO and I bought $100,000 worth of
the game stop during that last grade. No way. Did you really? I think I made like, I don't know what
I made. I made like 50 grand or something like that off of it. I made like 50% I sold and I got out.
And then I became confused and then I went back to ignoring it again.
that was my cycle. And so the question is, what am I going to do during this cycle? I already
have ignored the first lean-in meme. Saw that, ignored it, didn't even know what to do with it.
Didn't pay attention to the next two tweets either. I should be entering jealousy currently.
All I need is a few text messages. I'll enter jealousy. Then I'll chase. Then I'll, you know,
I'll reap the consequences of that. We'll see what happens. I think you should do nothing.
I will do nothing. That's the honest opinion. I think that that is a mature answer.
Even making money last time, it didn't feel good.
It was a, have you ever read the Annie Duke's book where it talks about this term resulting?
No.
It's like she's a poker player and it's, you know, it's the idea of you pay a, you play a bad
hand in poker, but you got lucky, you know, on the river you got your card.
And is your conclusion from that?
I'm a genius and this was a good play.
And like for a lot of people, unfortunately, that is how they, they result.
If something goes badly, they assume it was a bad decision.
If something goes, goes well, they assume it was a good play.
decision when actually like the decision and the result are in many ways disconnected and you should be
able to analyze a decision without um without only basing it on own without only basing it on the result
and so similarly even though i made money last time uh i think that would be resulting to say that was a
good idea in fact all i did was probably waste three days of my attention focused on this random stock that
who gives a shit so there's one person in this story that's not being discussed right now um and i think that over
the next handful of months, he's going to be a lot more famous.
And so that's Ryan Cohen.
So Ryan Cohen, he is most famous for starting Chewy.com.
Chewy.com was a pet food company.
My co-founder, Joe, my business partner, Joe, also owned a pet food company first.
And then Chewy.com came about.
And Chewy.com, their whole thing was we're going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars,
and we're going to spend, like, crazy on marketing.
We're going to lose money on our customers for a long time.
and we're going to provide such a wonderful experience that hopefully they come back for us
and they like us so much, whatever.
He was right. Ryan Cohen was right.
Chewy.com worked.
My friend or my partner Joe's company went out of business and it became a huge success.
He sold it for $3.5 billion.
Well, when he made his money, I think he made roughly $500 million, he put virtually 100% of it
into two stocks, Apple and Wells Fargo.
And there was this big article written in the Wall Street Journal about him.
And that's when we started learning Ryan Cohen is kind of, uh,
He's different.
He's different, not even amongst like the average person because he started and sold
the company for that much money.
He's different even amongst crazy people who are talented enough to do that.
David Gagins, he's uncommon amongst uncommon men.
Yeah.
And so he starts becoming an activist investor where he starts buying stakes in companies that
he thinks aren't going so well.
Well, let's do the numbers.
He put $250 million into Apple in 2017.
That stake is now worth over a billion.
Wow.
I don't know what happened with the Wells Fargo one, but he puts $76 million.
into GameStop
back when it was like
$4 or $5 a share.
So he owns 13% of the company,
10% and 1⁄2% now.
He's also the CEO now.
So he's been in,
he's actually running the company now.
Bought himself a job.
It's working.
And he did the same with Bed Bath Beyond,
which was for a minute,
another meme stock,
but he would buy,
I believe if you buy a larger than a 5% stake
in a publicly traded company,
you have to reveal,
you have to disclose it.
And so he's done that a few times.
and he's become an activist investor
where if he buys 5% of your company,
that means something's going wrong,
as in management is screwing up,
but the company has potential.
And then Wall Street bets
and the rest of these crazy D-Gen retail investors see it
and they buy this company.
Anyway, Ryan Cohen has been present for all of this.
Ryan Cohen is only 37 or 38 years old.
He's a young guy.
And he is still, as of right now,
I believe he's still the CEO of Game Stock.
And so GameStop.
And I'm very curious to see
what's going to happen with him
over the next handful of months.
And I would love to get him on the podcast
because I think he is a guy
who is not just interesting
for his chewy business,
but I think that he's a guy
who thinks very,
very differently and has very strong will.
And we're going to see a lot from him
over the next handful of months, I think.
He only follows one person on Twitter.
Who?
Unfortunately, it's not Roaring Kitty.
It's just the GameStop corporate account.
Is it really?
What he really should follow is Roaring Kitty.
He should either swap it
or go to two followers on Twitter.
Ryan, that's my only criticism of you.
Otherwise, I have no notes.
Yeah, so it's just a crazy story.
Well, where is this guy now?
Where is Keith Gill?
In the movie, he was in Massachusetts.
And what do you know about Massachusetts in the wintertime?
It's the worst, right?
Cole, bitter.
Cole, horrible.
He disappeared for the last two or three years.
Massachusetts are in the wintertime, very uninspiring.
This guy just made a huge bet.
He needed some inspiration.
Where do you think he would be going out?
he should voyage around.
Voyage.
Not that's not quite the right word.
He should scamper around.
No, no, no.
That's not it.
That's not the right word.
I think he should wander.
I think he should wander around.
And that's today's sponsor, wander.com.
That was a good plug.
What is wonder?
What is wander.com?
So, Wander's a dope business.
Me and you both invest in this because we are big believers in this.
But we both like to travel.
But when we travel, it's like you got a couple options.
The normal options were hotel, you go to hotel and you're like, okay, great, I'm staying in this
kind of like, I get all the luxury amenities.
I get the service, but I'm in this tiny box.
Or you go to a vacation rental, maybe on a Schmer Airbnb or something like that, and you
might get a bigger space.
You might get more rooms.
It feels like a home, but now you don't have the service.
And it's like a box chocolate.
It's like very hit or miss what you're going to get.
I was an Airbnb host, and I could tell you, my internet was definitely the cheapest internet
that money could buy and it was not very good.
Sam's a stunning.
views where his like plants right outside the windowsill.
Yes, it wasn't great. So Wander basically operates a bunch of really fancy, luxurious
properties that you could stay in. They built it. So it's kind of geared for like the remote
workers, but also high-end shit. So every or most of their properties have gyms. They've got work,
desk set up. So yeah, check this out. So I'm looking at a trip right now that I was going to
take with my family because I want to, you know, get out of the house a little bit.
And I was like originally planning for a hotel, but a hotel, I now have three kids, three,
three kids that are under the age of, you know, five.
And a hotel room now is actually Guantanamo Bay.
If you put all five of us in a room, like we just put the do not disturb thing up there out
of shame.
We're like, don't come in here.
You don't want to know what's going on in this room.
This room is like chaos right now.
Yeah.
You know, it's Guantanamo Bay Bay in there.
So that's not working.
But I would still want to be able to get shit done.
So like check this place out.
I'm showing you this one that's at.
And in Beach. So Wander has this location. Look how sick this is. So all of their places are like
this. They're like just like pure. It looks like it's straight off of Pinterest or Instagram.
It's like it. It looks like a desktop set like a screenstabler. Look at just like the work set up,
the work desk set up at this place. It's like you have the standing desk, big monitor, Apple keyboard.
They got like, we have fast internet for real. And we have a razor mouse for you. They have everything.
It's like, here's where you can do the podcast. Here's the gym. Here's the views. Here's the beds.
This one has a sauna too.
They have like 24-7 concieres.
They have like a cleaning service.
They have everything versus, you know, you have to do it all yourself.
It's like you want to stay in a home, but it shouldn't feel like homie, right?
In the same way that like you don't want your meat to be gaming.
It's like you, I kind of do like the luxury shit.
And that's why I like Wander.
So if you're looking to travel, check them out.
Wander.com.
They have amazing properties.
I think like 200 now.
These guys are growing really fast.
So they grew to like 200 locations in like 18.
months or something insane.
Well, that's the plug.
That was a great plug.
Yeah, if we don't say so ourselves.
Yeah, that was a great plug.
Wander.com, check it out.
Sean, you've been gone for three and a half or four, three and a half weeks now.
How you've been?
Two, but who's counting?
I'm good.
Paternity leave is harder than working for sure.
So, like, couldn't wait to be done with it.
I have realized a few things about myself.
One thing I've realized is I'll,
love being an uncle and I love being a fun dad. But to be the primary caretaker of kids is so hard.
And whoever, like, you know, whoever created this myth of like, you stay at home with the kids and I'm going to go do the work, the greatest marketer of all time.
That is a great reframe of what's actually going on. It is so much work to be at home with kids.
But it's great. Everybody's healthy. Everybody's happy. So I'm feeling good. Did you do any work over the last since your kid was born?
Not really, no.
Just a few voice notes here and there.
Did you enjoy that?
No, like I told you, I am, again, like I did other work.
It's just work that's like, you know, more like changing diapers and like, you know, cleaning up, spit up.
But did you enjoy like lack of screen or lack of thinking about like business?
Yeah, so one thing I did do is I shifted to doing a lot more creative stuff.
So I read a lot more, which I normally don't read because I feel pretty unprepared.
if in the middle of the day, I'm just like, yeah, I'm going to just take a couple hours and just curl up on this couch and read a book.
That seems completely unproductive, even though for my job, my life, that actually can be, that actually can be really productive for what I do.
But I just have a guilt when I do that.
So in this, I had no guilt.
I, like, what did you read?
I started playing the piano again, which was like, just like a fun thing I could do with my kids.
So I'm playing the piano.
I'm swimming with my kids all the time.
I'm, you know, reading books.
I started working on some like comedy stuff that I'd always wanted to do, like just dabbling and like, oh, how would I do this?
I went and saw a stand-up show.
I went and saw a play.
Like the stuff I wasn't doing before, that was very much more in a like art, creativity mindset versus productivity.
Did you go by yourself?
No, no.
I took my mom to the comedy show and I went to the play with some friends.
The play is actually pretty interesting.
Have you seen or heard about the Lehman Brothers play?
I saw you share it.
Yeah, I think that, I mean, it sounded awesome.
I've never heard of it other than your share.
So I feel, I wish there was more of these things.
This is really cool.
So there's a Broadway play that's basically the Lehman Brothers story.
What I thought it is, I thought it's going to be the 08 crash.
I thought it's going to be the big short, but as a play.
And I was like, oh, great, big short as a play.
I'm in.
But that's not at all what it is.
It's basically the story of the Lehman Brothers.
It ends like, it's the play ends the first day of the crash.
It doesn't even show the crash.
It's like implied.
You already know what happens with the crash.
It's the hundreds of years before that of how Lehman Brothers even became to be one of the four biggest, like, investment banks in the country.
And it's a pretty wild play because there's only three actors in the entire play.
It's three and a half hours long, which is way too long, to be honest.
But these actors are super talented.
They basically carry this thing for three and a half hours.
And it's also pretty fascinating because I did not know this history.
and it's kind of like reading a biography, but as a play.
And when I watched it, I was pretty inspired.
I was like, I wish there was more business entertainment like this.
I am really into things like this.
I could, if I was this interested in the Lehman Brothers story,
which I was not curious about before,
I feel like there could be a hundred times more content like this.
And I'm kind of inspired to try to go to make sense.
I think that would be the greatest pivot ever,
not quite pivot.
I think you should 100% explore this.
I think that would be awesome.
I am exploring this.
Not only as a play,
I'm not sure if it plays the exact form factor,
but something more in this style of content,
not tweet newsletter,
podcast YouTube.
I think the whole world is tweet newsletter podcast YouTube,
and I'm just like,
I feel lame doing it.
Whereas if I did something like this,
like a grand creative act,
I think it would be a lot more fulfilling,
a lot higher risk too.
What's the play called?
The Lehman Brothers trilogy,
I think.
And who wrote it?
And like,
did you research?
Yeah,
I started looking into that.
And I started trying to figure out, like, how successful is this thing.
And I started doing the thing, right?
I'm counting the seats.
Like, during, you know, one of the two intermissions of the, of the play, because it's
three and a half hours long, they have two intermissions.
I'm trying to figure out, like, how successful is this thing and how long has it been
running and all that stuff.
So what's the background?
I'm looking out.
I'm trying to look it up now.
There's not, it's not too, not many people I've written about it.
I think it, like, started in London.
And then it's kind of like fanned out from there.
So this was opening night in the San Francisco location that I went to.
And to be honest, there was a lot of.
there was a lot of empty seats,
but I also didn't understand
because when I went to buy tickets,
there was like no tickets available.
So I think either they screwed up their ticketing system
or I don't know why half the seats were empty.
But yeah, anyways,
but point is I think there should be more like this
and I kind of want to create it.
I'm also slightly intimidated because I'm like,
I really have no idea where I would start,
never done anything like this.
And so which is a good feeling to be in
because I know the answer is,
well, you just start putting one foot in front of the other.
And like, today it's the moose quote
that I've shared 100 times on this podcast,
which is today I know nothing about deodorant.
But in six months, I'll know everything there is to know about deodorant.
And that's how I would have to approach this, because I know nothing about this.
Have you ever read the story about Sylvester Salone and Rocky?
He was a nobody, and he wanted to make this movie, and he wrote the screenplay.
The story's even better than that.
He did not want to write a movie.
He wanted to be an actor.
That's right.
And he goes to auditions, and he keeps getting turned down.
And they're like, because, I mean, if you hear Sylvester Stallon talk, like, his voice is like, his mouth moves in a weird way.
His voice is sort of strange.
So he just kept getting nose.
And instead of just taking the know and just saying, well, I guess I'm just not cut out for this.
He's like, if they won't put me in a movie, I'll put me in a movie, which is one of the greatest, like, big dog moves anybody could ever have.
Right.
Like, what's the opposite of no small boy stuff is to say, if they won't cast me, I'll cast myself.
And he hates writing.
So he's never written a movie before.
And he actually hates writing.
He's not good at it.
But he, the best part of the story is that he just ratchets up the intensity.
to level 12.
So he decides,
I don't know how to do this.
So I'll just,
why don't I just not come out of this house
until I've written the play,
or the screenplay?
And so he wakes up,
he's like,
I'm going to start writing.
I'm not going to do anything else.
I will not leave this house
until this is done.
That's the only way I know I could force myself
to get through the thing I don't like to do,
which is writing.
How long did it take him?
And he goes even further.
He paints the windows black.
He's like,
not only will I not leave my house.
I don't even want to be able to look out
the window. So he literally painted his windows black. And so this has become a phrase that I use
with Ben a lot, which is, you know, let's paint the windows black on this, which is how do you have
a phrase for what it means to turn the intensity knob up all the way where it breaks? And you're just
holding the knob and now the intensity is stuck at level 12. And that's painting the windows black. And so
then in three days, he wrote the V1 of the script of Rocky. He then, and then it's even better.
The story is actually like, I don't know all the details. But here's like the rough version of the story.
I apologize if I get something wrong.
He goes to get the movie made now.
And actually they like it.
They're like, we like this.
And he's like, awesome.
And I'm Rocky.
They're like, not that part.
We like it, but you're not Rocky.
And they're like, what?
He's like, no, I'm Rocky.
That's why I wrote this thing.
And I think they were like, you know, you could do this other role.
He's like, no way.
Give me my script back.
And they're like, look, look, we'll give you $200,000.
They offered them $300,000, which is the equivalent of a million bucks today.
And he said, he goes, I had $106 in my bank account.
In the bank account.
He turns it down.
Things are pretty rough.
He ends up selling his dog to like make ends meet.
What a dick.
What a dick.
He sells his dog.
I think he also couldn't afford to feed the dog also because he couldn't really afford
to feed himself either.
So he sells his dog.
What are you going to sell your kid?
Hundreds of bucks.
He then goes and he finally, he finally, I think,
a sales thing for 25 grand or something like way less than what he was going to get and he gets to be
Rocky after rocky comes out and it's a success he goes back buys the dog back for 35 grand because
the guy was like no I like this dog and he's just like makes him an offer he can't refuse it I
give you 35,000 dollars for this dog back and that is the story of rocky which is insane because
the story of Rocky of how he got made is more inspiring than the actual story of Rocky in the movie
And he wins an Oscar that year.
Maybe that's my first play.
It's the story of Sylvester Stallone riding Rocky.
That's a great idea.
And he goes to the Oscars.
They win the Oscars.
And he goes, 10 months ago, I was a valet driver.
I was parking cars.
I'm here at the Oscars today.
This is a great story.
This is your story.
To the half a million people that are going to listen to this, do not steal my goddamn idea.
We're leaving this in.
Don't steal by idea.
That's actually the beauty of this.
No one's going to steal by idea because who the hell is going to go try to make a play.
you turn me on to this guy on Twitter.
I don't know.
I think his name is Zach prod.
So Zach is this guy who's like, he's like a 210 pound beef cake.
He's a big guy, which means like if you look like a donkey, you're not exactly going to think like this guy's going to be a good long distance runner.
But turns out he likes running.
And he's run the marathon now under three hours, which is like really fast, particularly for someone who's that huge.
And he's got this whole schick called the year of obsession.
And all he does is tweet out.
He goes, if like, if I.
could, I would just run and lift weights 24 hours a day. I'm so sad I have to sleep.
Like, he tweets like crazy things out like that. And it is a little cringe, but I think it's more
inspiring, to be honest, than it is cringe. I actually think it's quite awesome. I do think that crazy
people like that are pretty cool. But he, that's what your life needs to be over the next year,
the year of obsession. Paint the windows black, baby. And his whole thing is he does a running club
in New York City every Monday at 7 a.m. All these people meet and go for runs with them. And he goes,
Here's the rules.
You've got to be at this place at 7 a.m.
We're going to run this many miles and then we're going to sprint afterwards.
And you must wear black.
And so his whole thing is everyone who's following him or who's like into this,
they put like a little black emoji next to their name.
I think it's awesome.
That's what you need to do.
You already wear the black t-shirts.
Now you've got to paint the windows black and you're going to write the Sylvester Salone story.
Yeah, that's really good.
By the way, you said this thing, Run Club.
What's the deal with Run Club?
I feel like I'm getting my sign filled on.
What's the deal with Run Clubs nowadays?
This is, I saw this take.
like that really spoke to it.
This guy posts and he goes,
was there like a thing?
Like, did I miss something?
Maybe the pandemic was pretty,
uh,
a pretty crazy time.
I was inside for a lot.
Like,
did something happen where everybody started running?
He's like,
everybody I know runs now.
And that's cool.
Running's good.
But where,
why did everybody decide to start running?
And like,
why are the run,
run clubs are like an insane thing now?
Um,
have you been paying attention to this?
Yeah,
I have.
And I'll explain to you what I think happened.
So basically there's this guy, Nick Bear.
We had Nick Bear on the podcast.
I don't think you've ever made it with Nick.
Have you?
Yeah, maybe one.
I did one with him, yeah.
But then I tried to leave, you know, it's kind of like when your roommate hangs a sock on the door.
I was like, okay, let me leave Sam alone with the beef cake.
Like, you guys can admire each other's nipples for the next hour and a half.
That's cool.
I'll just take the pot off.
Nick Bear is a beefcake amongst beefcakes.
Nick Bear is, he looks like a, he looks like if you like, he's the wag you version of the obsession guy.
Yeah, if you were to like take a Greek statue and put it into a white guy who's raised in the Midwest, it would look like Nick Bear.
So Nick Bear is this he owns Bear Nutrition. It's a supplement company, but he has this schick called the hybrid athlete.
And the hybrid athlete basically means someone who likes to lift weights and run.
Because typically runners look like not great. They look very skinny. You can be skinny fat and a great runner.
His whole deal was like, I'm going to lift weights while I run. He's been doing this for many, many, many years now. At this point, he's got one or two million,
followers on YouTube. And I think he helped popularize this thing. And so now a lot of these young men
who like to live weights, they're saying, I actually want to go running as well. And so they've
made it popular to go running. And it's also a very social thing. So in Austin, run clubs have been
getting very, very popular. And so on the trail that I would go and walk on or ride my bike or
run, you see tons of groups of runners. And it's very popular. And you're starting at see pop up in
other cities. In fact, the woman who runs my little project Sam's List, she used to work for a
company that was trying to make money on run clubs.
I think that's a stupid idea because I think it's incredibly challenging to make money off
that, but it's a cool idea that they exist.
Cool guys start running, right?
Influencers.
So have you seen this one in Austin called the Raw Dog Run Club?
No, that sounds awesome.
The branding is, it's a run club, beautifully done.
The branding is amazing.
So go to Instagram.com slash raw dog, DAWG.
Here's the profile.
Raw Dog, Austin, Texas.
Sexy faces and sexy paces.
Saturdays at 8 a.m.
Location Posts Weekly.
Open all just show up.
I've seen this guy.
Look at the photos.
The photos of this,
it's Coachella.
It's Lollapalooza.
It's every festival you've ever seen,
but they're just running instead of,
you know,
drinking and listening to music.
They made it really fun.
They made it sexy.
I love the branding of this.
This is kind of like the pinks window washing,
like branding level thing.
I've never done this and I would never do this because I hate running.
But I really respect the way these guys,
are building the community and the brand around this.
If you want to go down a kind of interesting branding and community rabbit hole, study these
guys.
I think they're doing a lot of things right.
Go look at their TikToks.
Go look at their Instagram.
Go look at their website.
Go look at everything that they're doing.
And I think that they are doing a lot of things well.
I also think that if I'm one of these influencers like a Cody Coe or whoever, I would 100% lean
into making a national run club.
The way we're doing our MFM meetups, which like, to be honest, we didn't do anything.
so we should take zero credit for this.
But the way that the community started self-organizing MFM meetups
so that a bunch of like,
like-minded dreamers and schemers get together in some city
and they hang out,
they get to learn about each other's businesses.
And it has nothing to do with us,
but like we were the reason that they got together,
that they found each other.
But then from there on,
they had their own little community,
which is really great.
And by the way,
we should shout out,
I don't know,
what's the URL for that?
It's like getriver.com or something.
I don't know.
If you want to go to a meetup,
you should do it.
I think that is one of not getriver.
dot com for sure. That is something else altogether. What is that? It's called a getriver.
I think I just opened up like only fans basically. So it's getriver.io. And then if you go to the
website, you'll see, I think we're on the front page. So you'll see it. August 1st, there's meetups in
San Francisco, Bay Area, wherever. So getting people together in real life for real life experience
off of your online community, even though you're not there as the creator, I think is a really
smart move for whoever does that.
And whoever, like, you know, if I'm Nick or if I'm Cody Co, if I'm one of these guys,
I'm going to lean into that because it deepens people's kind of connection,
relationship with you and it creates this kind of grassroots movement.
And if you end up, and you could end up building a business around that, right, because
you could sell, you know, those products that people have.
What are those things like goo and like, what else?
Like, all the runner products, right?
The electrolyte drinks.
By the way, so the club that you're referring.
to Raw Dog, they're based in Austin.
The guy who started it is they're all young kids.
So he looked like they're 23, 24, 25.
He actually works for Nick Baer.
And he's a former professional bodybuilder.
And so it is sort of rooted in that in this like 20 people who have kind of started this thing.
There's another good example.
So we talked to Jesse Itzler.
He didn't tell us too much information.
But do you know this thing called Jesse Isler started a company with this other guy?
And the other guy recently joined Hampton.
And that's how I got to talk to him.
it's the name of the business is the height of Mount Everest.
So it's 29,00029.
I don't know if you pronounce 29029.
I don't know how you exactly pronounce it.
But it's a,
they do eight figures a year in revenue.
And what they do is they have got these events all over the country.
And they pick a really tall hill or mountain.
And you climb up that short mountain as many times as it takes to equal Mount Everest.
And so it's like,
all shit is like you can climb Mount Everest or at least the height
without actually having to go to Asia and do that.
and it's a great company.
These guys do really well,
and they have,
I think they have hundreds,
for sure,
dozens of events throughout the year.
And it's one of the events
that I've seen that's killed it.
And I've always been interested
in these racing events.
And so,
like,
for example,
Iron Man,
right before COVID happened,
Iron Man was acquired
by a Chinese billionaire,
and they've tried to make it significantly larger.
And I think they've done a good job of that.
And so some of these events are actually really fascinating.
Have you heard of this other one called the,
I think it's called the country marathon.
Have you ever? No. No. Sorry, maybe it's called the rock and roll marathon.
But anyway, what it was is in Nashville they had this where for 26 miles, every mile,
they had a band play. And so it was called like, is it called like the rock and roll?
Rock and roll running series, I see. Yeah. And I believe that business was acquired for nine figures.
And it started as a kind of small niche thing where they had music every, every mile. And so
there are actually some of these really interesting endurance events businesses where they just
have one cute stick on it and that makes it kind of cool. There's another one called the Speed
Project. Have you seen the Speed Project? So the Speed Project, they don't, listen to this. The Speed
Project doesn't have a website. You can find it on Instagram, but it's invite only. And so the
race has, I think only one rule or two rules. The race has two rules. They start at the Santa
Monica Pier and you, either you by yourself or you with a four-person crew, have to make it to
Las Vegas. And the rules are basically, you can go there any way you want, but you have to be
running. So you can't get in a car. You have to run the whole time. And number two, you just got to
get there. And so you can take any route. And there's no website other than you have to be invited
to do it. They don't really announce when it's going to happen. And it's gone, whenever it happens
every year, it kind of goes viral where you see like a handful of influencers who you like. They're like,
What is the speed project?
Why are they there?
Right.
It's super fascinating.
My friend did it and got second.
I have two things to say about this.
Number one, if you're the type of person that likes to do these and you're like world class
in organizing these, hit me up.
So, Sean at Sean Pruheurie.com.
I have a small Google Doc of ideas that I thought would make for a really awesome event.
That would be like just fun and awesome if it existed, but I will never do the work myself
of organizing these.
The second thing is, what is the pick up?
ball of running.
I'll let you do on that.
So what I mean by that is
pickleball took tennis,
made it faster,
cheaper,
smaller,
more accessible to all ages
and all sizes of people,
right?
Who's going to do that for running?
So who can make running
less of a marathon or an Ironman?
Literally.
Who's going to the other direction?
Who was going to shrink it?
It might just be sprints.
Like maybe the sprint thing is more like pickleball.
I was a sprinter in college.
There's no sprint events for a grown,
men. And sprinting is way better for you anyway.
Hamstring insurance is needed for sure.
If you're going to put adults, like, hey, just come out and come out here and sprint.
But I do think that there's got to be something like this.
Or we made this joke on the pod where I was at a dinner and this guy goes, yeah, I, he goes,
we goes, yeah, every Saturday morning, we walk the trail.
We walk a mile to our favorite, like kind of brunch spot.
We drink a beer.
And then we play pickleball for an hour or something like that.
And he's like, I call it the like the suburban, the suburban.
suburban Ironman.
And I was like,
holy shit,
he's got something here
with this branding
of like the bourbon,
like the suburban,
you know,
dad bodd version of a fitness competition
where it's more about the fun
and just getting out there
and doing something.
Because I think in the jobs to be done
of what's going on in these races,
you have many things that are being bundled.
You have the fitness component.
You have the social component.
I think a lot of these run clubs,
by the way,
have a big dating component.
because I think you want to meet people in a context where everybody's, you know,
sweaty, it's sexy and just, you know, everybody's, it's like a positive vibes community.
You're going to talk to anybody, approach anybody.
I think there's a dating component.
So you have the social, you have the fitness.
You have the photo component, which is how do I do something that I can brag about on social media, right?
How can I go post something on social media that makes me feel better than the average person?
And that's how tough mutter and Spartan race, like, that was huge for them.
So I think there's a bundle of things that you're getting out of these.
And then the last one is kind of like getting people out of the general feeling of softness in their life, which is, it's just very real.
And I think only going more and more over time as we spend more and more time on our devices.
And AI goes and makes it our life even more, you know, everything you want at the touch of a button, people still want something difficult, physical to go do.
So I think you can unbundle as part of that and make it maybe ramp up the social and put down the physical, right?
Or ramp up the photo and, you know, whatever.
So I think you can unbundle that in a way.
So let me tell you something really quick.
And then we'll wrap up on the segment.
But Google, I think you pronounce it, high rocks.
So H-Y-R-O-X.
Don't go to the website.
Just click images.
So this guy, I think his name's Christian.
He used to work for Iron Man, the company Iron Man.
And about seven years ago, he started this thing called High Rocks.
And they have events throughout the year as well as a world championship.
The world championship just happened on Saturday.
Oh, I saw, I just saw this on Twitter.
Somebody was like, these high rocks things killed.
And it was like a photo that just looked massive in scale.
It's like an airplane hanger or something.
What is this thing?
So they rented out, this year it was in Brooklyn.
So I imagine they rented out like a whole pier.
And the way it works is I think the event changes every time, but I'm not exactly sure.
But basically they rent out this huge area.
And you have to do a series of five exercises in a row.
And the first person that wins wins the whole thing.
And so the exercises are something like lunges with a wing.
on your back and then it's rowing a certain amount of meters and then it's running a certain
amount of miles and then throwing like a a weighted ball in the air like you got to like throw it
in the air a bunch of times it's basically the my first muscle challenge but like real men and yeah and
the winner did it in an hour which means I imagine the the race is an hour to three hours depending
on how slow you are and if you look at the photos it's all people wearing all black and
and they're all smoking hot.
Like,
everyone who does this is good looking.
And so it's sort of like CrossFit,
but CrossFit kind of has a douchey component to it.
This somehow tone it down,
and they added like a New York,
all black, Brooklyn, like swag to it.
And it's awesome.
So Lance Armstrong competed in it this Saturday.
It's literally the Equinox version of CrossFit.
It's like the Equinox aesthetic of CrossFit.
And I think they're killing it.
And this Ken Wrightout,
who was a guest in our podcast,
a few times or once he I hung out with him recently he was like hey I'm going to be in New York I'm
going to do this race he got third or fourth or something like that and I went and looked at the
Instagram of the people who want it and it's their whole life so now they're like dedicating their
life to this and so when you when I saw that I was like this business is going to be huge if people
are like it's like a lot of ex a lot of ex college athletes who are like oh this is like an
interesting outlet where I can make a little bit of money and continue to train because I'm not
good enough to like be a professional at whatever sport I was doing I think this business
is killing it. And I think we're going to see a large exit from these guys. Very interesting.
Man, this is a much bigger space than I would have guessed. For sure. And I think you're seeing a COVID
bounce. So I don't know about you, but as I work from home all day, I'm normally, I don't really like
hanging out with people, but I'm like, I need someone to touch me. Like I just like, I need a man to
put his arm on my back and ask how I'm doing. Or like, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like,
I need more touch and stuff.
And like, dude, if you're 22 years old and you're working remotely,
I feel really sorry for you that you don't get to experience some of the stuff that we got to experience.
And I feel sorry for myself, frankly, that I'm still not experiencing it.
And so as someone who doesn't like to go to these events, now I'm like, I want to go meet people.
I need to go do this stuff.
I need to find my tribe.
So I think that's what's happening.
That's very cool.
Yeah, this is a great, great segment.
Can I leave you with one interesting thing that happened to me in our catch-up segment here?
I got a phone call the other day
that kind of blows my mind
and makes me
I feel simultaneously grateful,
embarrassed, and inspired.
You might be wondering what could possibly make me
grateful, embarrassed, and inspired at the same time.
Here's what happened.
Scott Harrison calls me the other day.
And I see this voicemail from Scott Harrison.
Scott Harrison is the founder of Charity Water.
He's been on the pod once,
and he's an incredible guy.
I've told a story before,
but I'll leave that out for now.
he's definitely somebody in my like top five people I admire.
If you said,
which entrepreneurs do you admire?
I'd be like Scott Harrison is up there.
The short version of why is the guy is using his entrepreneurial talents
to kind of save the world in a way.
He's providing clean water to people who don't have it,
which once you see firsthand,
you feel like something's wrong in the world that people don't have clean water
to drink or to bathe in or sanitation or all that.
he's been doing it for a long time.
He could be making himself rich some other way if he wanted to,
but he decided to devote his life to this.
And he didn't,
the best part of why I admire him is because he didn't start that way.
There's some people who they do amazing things and you're like,
they're just sort of born Mother Teresa.
This guy was like a party boy.
He's like,
I was living every deadly sin you could for a period of time,
for 10 year period of my life.
And he turned it,
he sort of decided to make a shift and ended up doing it.
this. Anyways, here's the story. Scott calls me. I miss the call. I call him back. What's up? Do you need
something? Is there something I can help with for charity water? What's going on? He's like, hey, man,
I'm listening to the podcast and I had some feedback for you. Un-slisted feedback. He said, sure,
hit me. He said, you want to do this, right? Like, you really like doing this? Yeah, I love doing this.
And this is like your thing, right? You want to make this your thing? Absolutely. I think I can be great at this.
you got to say like less.
Oh.
And I was like, what?
Here, there you heard it again.
So I'm, I tell him, what do you mean?
He said, I was listening to this episode that you guys did.
Great episode.
But I think you said like, like, 700 times.
And I'm like, oh no, he's right.
And he's like, you know, I used to do the same thing.
It's hard to get rid of, but you can get rid of it.
And I wanted to tell you that I think you do it too much.
It doesn't add to what you're doing.
doing, I think you could fix it and you will be better if you fix it. And I just wanted to tell you
that. And I was like, man, I had two thoughts. I said, first, how do you get rid of this? How do I
improve that? Is it like, you said that you improved it? How did you do it? Was there some
technique you did? Did you hire a coach? What'd you do? And he's like, don't worry about that.
It's just once it's in your awareness, you'll fix it. You're like, I am worried about it.
basically the answer was pay attention to it and you will obviously start to
start to reduce it and you'll you'll work on it that's all it'll just take reps the second
thing i felt was dude thank you i'm not that close with scott harrison i like him i would
consider him a friend but this was the first phone call in five years let's say right we don't
talk that often so for him to do that the the courage and the care that it takes to call somebody
and be like yo some feedback for you i thought
that was an incredible friend moment
and I was
again simultaneously grateful,
embarrassed, and inspired by it.
And since then, I've been thinking about
this. How can I just call
and insult people?
Call people
and just ruin their day.
No, I'm playing. But like, hey, bitch, I've been thinking
about you. You're
only 5'5. We've got to add a few
inches of that, dork.
Radical candor out by
You're welcome.
This is a gift.
He gave me a gift.
And I was thinking about this.
How many of those gifts have I given people?
Very few.
Very few.
I think it takes a lot of guts to do that.
I think it takes a lot of care to do that.
There's different ways to show somebody you care.
There's different ways to give,
you know,
an act of service for somebody.
And I was like,
this is one I can do.
And for the people in my life
that I know like me would take it as a gift,
I'm going to do that.
Of course,
I'm sure that it can go the other way
where some people do not take it well.
Dude, Neville Madora,
my best buddy Neville does that to me all the time.
He'll be like,
hey, could you come over for a few minutes?
Yeah, sure.
And I'll go over.
He goes, hey, so last Friday night.
You need something?
He's like, no, you do.
Come over.
Well, like he goes,
last Friday night,
I had a party over,
and this one woman brought her parents there,
and you did not let the mom talk nearly enough.
you're you're you're kind of talking over her and i think it made you look really dumb and i don't think
you are dumb he has done that to me so many times uh that's one example another example i stayed at his
house and i didn't make his bed right he goes let me show you how to be a better guest in someone's
home did you see how i had that bed made because i really care i need you to make it this way come
let's make it together i'm going to show you how to do it and that's what i expect for you
he does it all the time that is amazing also kind of kind of big dodgy there i like that uh
But he's older than me.
He is kind of like an older brother to me.
I've always looked up to him.
But he's done like when I was like 25, I think I had a towel.
He stayed at my house and I had a towel that smelled like mildew.
And he goes, and I gave it to him to use.
And he goes, come here, Sam.
Let me show you something.
This is not how you treat guests.
Anyway, and it's always really helpful.
He's always said that to me and I think it's great.
But I will say, I know you say like a lot.
I kind of like it, to be honest.
Oh, no, I'm getting feedback whiplash now.
Wait, is this my thing?
Maybe it's my thing.
We should do a charity thing with him.
We should do some type of thing.
You went on that podcast when we did one.
So we did one where I did.
No, but we should do like a proper campaign.
Like the way we did my first muscle, we should do something, whether it's that one.
Anyway, we should when we did, we've done a few things where we were kind of charitable,
but not really.
And whenever we do those, it's like the right thing to do and it feels good.
We got to do a little give back thing.
And I'll post an update of the one that we already did, which was a, it went to
the campaign went to India, so we provided clean water and wells to people in India.
And I think we raised something like 50,000.
So I want to provide an update of like what happened with that, the impact, which is what
one of the key innovations that Scott had with his charity, he was like, no, he was not like,
he decided to change the way the charities work.
He's like, I give money to charities, but I never hear back from them.
Like, I don't know what happens with the money.
And then they just come back again the next year and they say, can we have more money.
He wanted to have like a closed loop so that when you,
donate, you actually get to see where the money goes, what impact it had. You get to see the
photos. He literally installed, like, Google donated these like IoT devices, these flow meters
so that you can see that the well you helped build, you can go in the app and you can literally
see how much water is flowing through that well right now. And so he did a lot of experiments like
that to like change the feeling people get when they get where they actually get to feel
the impact because his belief was, if people could see how much good it does, they would do more.
And he was totally right.
That's why Charity Water has raised so much money.
All right.
Is that the pod?
That's it.
That's the pod.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off.
On a road, let's travel, never looking back.
