My First Million - This guy made millions by inventing the McFlurry & the $1 Menu
Episode Date: September 10, 2025Want to start your own million-dollar biz with less than $1k? Get the guide: https://clickhubspot.com/rko Episode 743: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ...) talk about the inventor of the McFlurry and Stuffed Crust Pizza plus Shaan’s stock picks. — Show Notes: (0:00) The godfather of junk food (26:02) Stockapalooza update — Links: • QSR Magazine - https://www.qsrmagazine.com/ • David Protein - https://davidprotein.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — 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 HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Transcript
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All right, Sam, I got a Billy of the week for you.
I'm excited about it.
I got goosebumps thinking about this guy.
He's an inventor.
He's an innovator.
You know, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison.
Look, if those guys were going on a road trip, but there's only one set of keys,
they would toss it to this guy.
He would get to drive.
And his name is Tom Ryan.
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 look.
Tom Ryan is basically the Leonardo da Vinci of calories.
Okay.
This is a guy who has invented some of the most iconic foods in history.
He invented the McGrittle.
He invented stuffed crust cheese pizza.
He invented Smashburger, the chain.
He invented the beef dip sandwich at Quiznos.
His guy has just been inventing things in the food category, the McFlurry.
He's just been inventing things for, you know, just decades.
And he is like the godfather of food science.
So I want to tell you a little bit about this guy.
Okay, I'm interested because I didn't think that some of it, like,
dipping a sandwich in Aju, I didn't think that was like an invention.
And so I'm very...
Okay, so some of these things, I'm using the word invention, a little liberally, right?
Some of them he genuinely invented, meaning like nobody had done that before.
Some of it is he created that product at that company,
which was not previously a product.
And so sometimes it might be like, oh, well, you know,
somebody else had the idea of, you know, a sweet sandwich.
Okay, but cool, he invented the McGrittle.
It's a specific thing that he invented that made it work, and here's why.
But can we start by me asking, how did you even discover this?
Were you, like, on the McGrittle Wikipedia page?
You know when you're eating something?
And it's so good, you're like, I'd like to pay homage.
Who's the man who invented this?
I'd like to put some flowers on his tombstone.
That's not exactly what happened.
I saw TikTok about this guy, and I was like, there's no way.
One guy did all this.
Okay.
All right, so this guy, basically, he goes to college.
and when he's at college, he has his girlfriend.
The girlfriend's taking a food science class.
So she convinces him to take it.
He goes there and immediately falls in love.
He's like, oh, my God, I didn't even realize
there's a whole science behind things like ketchup and ice cream.
Like, there's literally like chemistry science,
but then there's also sort of the brain science, psychology,
the tongue science of like what flavors work.
And so then he not only studies food science,
he then gets a master's in something called lipid toxicology, right?
So this guy's just studying like the science of fat.
And I would say this guy is like, you know, I don't know what the equivalent of the Nobel Priest Prize is, but for like obesity, what this guy deserves.
So he goes and he gets a job at Duncan Hines.
He then works at JIF and he's like pioneering a lot of their peanut butter work that, you know, does some really great peanut butter work.
The best work.
Yeah, he's like, you know, these open AI researchers that are just getting poached from lab to lab.
That was him going from Heinz Food Lab to the Jif food lab.
And then he gets a call from Pizza Hut.
And they recruit him as head of new products because he got this reputation.
Because even at Jiff, he was launching new products.
And so he gets this reputation as being like this sort of mad genius.
And his friend tells him when he gets the job at Pizza Hut for head of new products,
he goes, dude, I'm so sorry.
He's what?
He's like, that's a tough position, man.
Everything's already been done in pizza.
Like, you're doomed.
You're doomed to fail.
Pizza is a solved problem.
And there's a quote from,
He goes, that pissed me off.
He goes, it pissed me off.
Not because the guy was doubting me,
but because a lot of the world thinks like that.
They think the world is full of solved problems.
I don't think like that.
I think there's always an opportunity.
So he goes into the research and he's doing research and he's like,
all right, what do consumers care about when it comes to pizza?
And he's like, all right, two things are very clear to me after studying how people eat pizza.
Number one, cheese is the value driver.
The more cheese, the better the cheese, the better.
And there's really no limit to the amount of cheese that people are willing to have
in their pizza. And second, the dogs eat the crust. He's like, the crust is the necessary part
because you need a handle to hold the pizza, but it's the worst part of the pizza. People just give it to the
dog. And so he's like, all right, I need to put cheese in the crust. And so, you know,
goes to his team and they're like, yeah, we'll just put some cheese on top of the crust.
It'll be great. He's like, no, it doesn't have that wow factor. He's like, we got to have a wow
factor. He's got to feel different. It can't just be that we've added cheese to crust. It's got to
like be something that's marketable. And so he's like, let's figure out how to put cheese inside the
crust, which was a whole, like, physics problem because, you know, he's like the first one he made
like that. He's like, it tasted pretty good, but it looked like a bike tire. Like, I burnt the whole
outer crust. It was like this fat, you know, like burnt thing. And so he had to figure out how do you
cook the pizza so that you can have gooey cheese in the crust without burning the crust.
And so he does some work and they figure it out. They get a special dough and a special pan and they
get it to work and it becomes this huge hit. But then he's also a marketing genius. And so he
creates. He's like, you know what? We don't need to do something new. What we need to do is,
have you ever seen this Malcolm Gladwell talk that he gives his big TED talk about the perfect
pastas? Have you seen this? No, that sounds great. What is it? So it's Malcolm Gladwell's famous
TED talk from back in the day when he was, you know, Malcolm Gladwell was the man writing
tipping point and others. And he basically talks about this guy, another food scientist who got hired
by a pasta sauce company, ragu or whoever. And they were like, we need you to figure out
how much, like, what's the perfect pasta sauce?
Like, should it have, like, chunks in it?
Should it be just smooth?
Should it have, like, herbs in it or just be plain?
Should it have cheese?
Like, what's the perfect pasta sauce?
And the guy, and the big takeaway, the spoiler of this TED talk is the guy discovers
there's no perfect pasta sauce.
There's only perfect pasta sauce is.
Meaning you cluster people into, like, four or five categories.
If you like chunks, then give them way more chunks than you're currently giving them.
Like, they want way more.
If you like spice, make it way spicy here.
It's too mild for them today.
And if you like cheese,
butchita, so you basically, like,
the middle that they're trying to serve everybody
wasn't working, and they actually needed to, like, go extreme.
So this guy discovers the same thing in pizza.
He creates the meat lover's pizza.
He creates the pepperoni lover's pizza,
the cheese lovers pizza.
And he creates the lover's line of pizzas there.
And that becomes a huge success.
So he's crushing it at Pizza Hut.
Which, but all this sounds, like, silly.
Like, I'm laughing.
This is not silly.
This is great.
And this is really hard to do it at a corporate setting.
to convince someone.
This is true inventions, true innovations.
I'm laughing, but...
Because this is legit.
And this is moving billions of dollars of product, right?
And this is like, you know, hitting millions of customers.
And this is also, by the way, we have friends that work at Facebook and Google,
and they're like, yeah, I'm optimizing the, like, the marketplace banner ads to be like,
you know, whatever.
It's like, you know, you were talking about this one.
I think your wife was like, I was like if the, like, my wife worked in the team of them
trying to put stickers on photos.
And she's like, well, if the dog's tongue is out of the mouth, the click the rate is 5% versus if it's in the mouth, it's only 1%.
Right. And there's definitely like a cynical side of this, which is like our world's greatest minds are basically just fine-tuning knobs inside of giant slot machines, which is really what's happening inside of most big tech companies and most big food companies.
But hey, I'm not a hater.
Let me just see some positive things of this.
Okay, so he gets the call. He's at pizza. He's crushing. He creates all those products.
ring ring.
Hello?
Yeah, this is Tom.
Speaking.
And then on the other side,
Ronald?
Is that you?
And Ronald McDonald calls.
He gets called up to the biggest of the big leagues.
He gets called by McDonald's.
McDonald's says, we need you.
Is he a kid right now, or is he like?
Grown ass man.
Okay.
And he has a great thing, by the way,
of one of his frameworks,
because they're like, how do you invent?
Because, like, honestly,
he's like one of the more creative inventors of our lifetime.
And they're like, how do you invent?
And he goes, I try to get inside the mind of an ambitious 32-year-old.
And I was like, he's like, basically when you're 32, you have money, you have taste.
So you kind of know what you like and you don't like, but you're still open-minded.
You're not closed off to the world.
And you're not like easily swayed by the latest trend of everything.
But you're still like, you're still with it.
And like you're still a part of every major trend that like has,
staying power. And so he's like, I study the mind of an ambitious 32-year-old.
Okay. That's pretty great.
So he works for a great. So to get some call from McDonald's, he goes there and they're like,
all right, where's the opportunity? And he's like, all right, let's look at breakfast.
They start looking at breakfast. And he's like, all right, you got coffee, check. And then
you have all your, like, savory foods, check. He's like, got nothing sweet. And he starts
thinking about it. He's like, all right, you know, casual answer. We need French toast.
We need pancakes. And he's like, oh, this.
average first level thinking.
Ew. Get out of the room.
And he says, no, no, no.
What are we really going to do?
And he goes, so he's a master of constraints.
So he says, how do we take the Denny's Grand Slam breakfast and put it in your hand?
And they're like, what?
And he's like, I want an entire Grand Slam breakfast, but that will just fit in your hand
because that's what McDonald's does.
This guy sounds like a salt park character.
And so he creates the McGrittle, which is exactly that.
It's a sweet breakfast item that fits in your hand.
Pops off.
McGrittle becomes a huge hit.
McDonald's breakfast surges on the back of this.
It creates billions of dollars in market cap.
And all because, and he had to do some invention.
He's like, well, we can't have this messy, drippy syrup, you know, sticky sandwich.
Like, yeah, I can't put a sticky thing in your hand.
Then your whole day's ruined.
you're not coming back the next day.
And I've never had a McGriddle.
Have you had one?
Hell yeah.
Yeah, of course.
You've never had a McGrittle?
I've never had a McGriddle.
Are you part of Al-Qaeda?
Like, this is like the greatest, like, the greatest American.
I've been in one of those caves.
Where have you been?
I thought the war was still going on.
Yeah.
What the hell, man?
This is the best.
They're the best.
Honestly, I never even considered it.
But after this, after this, I'm so in.
Apparently there's, you tell me, I don't know.
Is it not like,
covered in syrup and actually there's something called syrup crystals that are inside the pancake.
They're like little balls of sugary like syrup and it's wonderful and it mixes perfectly with the salty sausage.
Okay. So that's it. That's what he did. Tom does it. And so he doesn't. And you don't get a mess on your hand.
So you get the syrup without a mess on your hand. All right. So a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business.
Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely
not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like $17 or $18 million in revenue.
I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton, does over $10 million in revenue,
started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that, nothing. And so you don't actually
need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is
systems that actually work. And so my old company, the Hustle, they put together five proven business
models that you could start right now today with under $1,000.
These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week.
You can get it right now.
You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description.
Now, back to the show.
Now, you might be thinking, all right, is this guy like, you know, what's he really about?
Is he just saying this for himself?
Is he an elite?
Is he one of these elites that I should hate?
Or is he a man of the people?
Well, he's a man of the people.
He creates the dollar menu.
The dollar menu, dude.
What an iconic move.
Is he an employee at McDonald's right now?
Or is he an entrepreneur?
No, I mean, in this story, in the story.
At this point, of story.
He did it.
He's a mercenary.
He's a hired gun.
And he drops in, like, he's like a one-man Navy SEAL who drops in and, like,
nails the target and bounces after a handful of years.
I don't know why there's no movie about this guy yet.
Right?
I don't want to see Jason Bourne.
I want to see Tom.
Right.
The only question.
No, we have at this point, does it come in be a parachute or just does he storm the beach on a boat?
Like, what's he going to do?
Yeah, the story's been told.
Like a hot dog truck.
Barges in.
So he creates the dollar menu, creates the McFlurry.
And then he goes to Quiznos.
Quiznos poaches him.
He does a little bit of work there.
But the owner of Quiznos is like, yeah, this is the guy.
So he says, forget Quiznos.
Let's just create a whole new concept together.
And they create Smashburger together, which I don't know if you've paid attention.
But as a former QSR operator myself,
I have a lot of respect and esteemed for smash burger.
Smash burger is just, it's just thin.
I mean, it's a burger that you, when you grill it, you put the meat, you stick the thing, the metal in the meat, right?
So it's kind of like a thin crust pizza, but for burgers.
So they kind of smash the burger, which gives it like more of a char on both sides.
Which is better for them, too, because it's less meat.
Well, I think it's the same.
It just gets wider.
Got it.
Okay.
But it tastes better, I think.
Okay.
So they create smash burger and become successful.
but what a prolific career for this guy.
And what a track record?
Like, who has dominated their industry,
the way this man has dominated fast food science, right?
Like fast food food science.
And so when I Googled his name,
it came up with Joboli Foods Corporation.
Is he associated with that?
Yeah, I don't know what that is.
He's got, like, new stuff that he's doing.
He did, like, a new, like, sports bar type of deal.
He's got Smashburger.
He was the CEO of Smashburger for a while.
I don't know what all he's doing now.
But they were like, you want to retire?
He's like, retire.
I wake up every day.
I wake up every day.
I'm trying to dominate the palate.
You think I want to go play golf?
What do you think this is?
Have you Googled him?
He's got, he's a beautiful man.
He's just got the most beautiful head of hair.
I've seen it a long time.
He looks like, you know, like that British reporter, like,
who covers like sports.
He looks like that guy.
In the 90s, in every rom-com,
the woman was vying for an editor
and chief job at Vogue or something like that.
That was like...
He looks like that woman.
Well, no.
He looks like the second character.
Now, the second character is a British or California record label executive.
So they work in AR or they're running the label and they miss the kids baseball game because
they have to check out this band.
Right.
Like, he looks like that character.
He looks like the record label executive from every 90s rom-com movie.
Is he like this alpha?
like get after it type of guy?
Or is he like a kooky, forgetful
professor who wears two
not matching socks?
Okay, that I don't know, but he's an alpha
in my mind. He's an alpha to me. I'm
gladly abated to him. This guy's amazing.
Did I tell you, by the way,
if we were back in the day when I was doing my sushi restaurant
chain, we went to a, you know
like these industry conferences
that you, like,
you just sometimes, like, you know, we went to
FarmCon. It's like a farmer's conference.
Well, I went to like a food version of this.
I don't know if you've ever been to any of these quirky, like, industry trade show conferences, but they're so funny, dude.
I mean, like, I went to inbound, the Inbound, the HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Conference.
Yeah.
You'll be there.
Yeah.
There's a whole talk on converting MQLs to SQLs.
Yeah, it's like that.
So I went to this thing because there's a QSR magazine, Quick Service Restaurant.
So there's a ChrisR magazine.
And we apply, we're like, hey, we really want to go to the conference.
Can you give us free tickets?
And they're like, yeah.
So we go.
And you know what the icebreaker was?
We got there.
And the icebreaker, when you come in in the lobby, they have three tables set up of just
like dirty dishes.
Like it's a restaurant table.
And it was a speed busing competition.
So you would go with three other people.
And you'd have to try to like bust the table as fast as you can.
And whoever had like, that's pretty good.
The best bus was.
you know, like succeeded basically.
Like won the contest
got like a keychain
or something like that.
It was amazing.
The guy who organized it,
his name was literally Tom Hamburger.
It was unreal.
Dude, this is,
this is,
we've done 758 plus,
I think, episodes of MFM.
And this happens a lot
where a lot of people
don't realize this,
but for the majority of episodes,
you and I don't talk in advance
because we like to like surprise
each other on air on the topic.
This is funny.
What you're saying
is very similar to the topic
that I had brought.
Okay.
And so this can all actually be related.
And I have what I think could be like a nice little bow at the end to like how this could be good for entrepreneurs or business owners listening.
I found a photo of a billboard that I saw recently that stopped me in my tracks.
And so I want you to look at this billboard and tell me what it says.
Okay.
So it's a boiled cod.
And it's a picture of a con.
Slightly more protein per calorie than our bars.
David, the David bar.
Okay.
Have you seen this?
No.
Amazing.
Okay.
So I want to tell you the story about this.
And I want to explain a little bit like nerdy marketing about why it works.
So the story behind this, we had Peter Raha on the podcast, I think like six months ago.
So Peter was the guy who started RX Bar in his mom's basement and he eventually sold it for something like $650 million, only six years after starting.
By the way, the episode he did with us was awesome.
Like if you want to go listen to a fun episode, listen to that one.
Basically, he tells a story of how he built RX Bar, how he's building data.
David Barr, but also he had like four or five other ideas of like, if I was going to go into
a category, this is the type of category I look at and how I would attack it, which is like what
you always want from an entrepreneur who's got like expertise that comes on the pod.
It's like, great.
Tell me how you did it.
Tell me what you're doing now.
But okay, that's great for you.
What about for me?
And do you have specific ideas and like a specific approach you take that I can learn from for
like white space right now?
And he actually had a third part of that, which.
was he had a beautiful attitude.
And not beautiful in the sense of fun to be around.
Like, he was sort of like Napoleon.
Like, he had this, like, conquer the world energy
that I thought was, like, actually kind of cool.
Very intense energy that I thought was interesting.
And so when he came on, he told us a story of RX bar.
He told us the story about David Protein bars.
I don't think David had launched at that point.
But the background behind David is when he was...
And I have to give a shout out to New York Times Daily.
I'm using them as a source for this.
But when he started David, the idea was with RX bar, it was a natural bar.
It was made out, I think, dates.
And it had a very small amount of protein.
And he noticed that had I had more protein in this bar, I think I would have been able to approach a larger market.
And I could create something a lot bigger.
And so David finds this thing called EPG.
It's a delivery mechanism for protein.
And eventually, David, actually, the company has bought the company that owns the
patent for EPG. An EPG is a type of chemical that allows protein to be delivered to you faster.
So let me explain, let me just ask this question because the doc here says, it's a modified fat called
EPG, which delivers the texture of fat, but it passes through your body with 92% fewer calories.
Is this, remember when Paul Murlucky came on and he was like, Diet Coke is amazing?
and he's like, I just wanted to make
Diet Coke for like any food
into the equivalent of Diet Coke. So it's just like
food that tastes really good. But it basically
just passes straight through your body
and it can't be absorbed and therefore
doesn't make you fat.
Is that what this is? Basically, it's like
something that tastes good. You can put
it in a bar, but because it can't be absorbed
by your body, it's
it doesn't have the sort of
caloric impact. Is that what it is?
So basically it's one
of the most efficient ways
to get tons and tons of protein into your body per calorie. And the way they do that is via
EPG, which is an incredibly ultra-processed food. So I don't know if it's what you're describing,
but the criticisms for David, of which we had Justin Mayers on the podcast, he was a very loud,
vocal critic of this. He has basically said, David may get you lots and lots of protein,
but it's incredibly ultra-processed. And there's the argument as to why that's not good,
because this chemical or whatever you want to call it EPG,
there's a lot of people who want to criticize it and say it's bad.
And I'm not going to place judgment on either side.
I'm just telling you there's two sides of this argument,
which is what I'm going to get to.
But people loved it.
And so David, which I think, is it even two years old yet?
I think it's one year old, roughly,
because he was on about a year ago on the podcast,
and I think it was just about to launch or had just launched.
So this year they're going to do close.
to $200 million in sales in roughly the second year of business. They're on a tear. They did a
million dollars in the first week of sales. And if you go to like any store right now, I don't know
what it's like in California, but any store in New York, they're everywhere. David Protein bars are
everywhere. And they've crushed it on the marketing in particular. They've crushed it on the
product side, but they've really killed it on the marketing. And so when I saw this sign,
Boyle Cod, it stopped me in my tracks. And the reason it stopped me in my tracks is I'm reading
this book, I'm rereading. We had Tim Ferriss on the podcast, and he had mentioned this book that he
loved. It was called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Have you read of that? I have it, but I haven't
read it yet. It was one of these things where, like, I skimmed before when I was younger, but when we had
him on, he made a comment that it was a great book, and I was like, you know, I should actually
sit down and read that. It's really short. It's only 100 pages. You can basically read it in one or
two sittings. And one of the laws is called the law of the opposite. And the reason why this is
relevant to the story that you just said is because it goes to like the science and the methodology
behind in 22 different ways to stand out and be different and to focus on something that's not
better but different. And so the law of the opposite states that if you're not the leader of a
category, your strategy is then dictated by the leader, which means it's best to not to be
better than the leader, but to be the opposite. Customers already have the leader's position locked
in their mind and you win by framing yourself as an alternative. And the key is that the key is,
is to embrace the differences and often exaggerate them.
And the reason this all works is marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.
The challenger doesn't need to disprove the leader.
They need to define themselves as the antidote, meaning we are not them.
We're the other choice.
Right.
And so why is this so interesting?
Because David took the criticisms of them being an ultra-processed food and they ran towards
the fire.
So much so that on their website, I thought that this was a joke.
And so what they're doing is they are positioning themselves as an alternative to natural foods.
They're saying, yeah, natural frozen cod, that's the best. It's definitely the best.
But like, it's disgusting. Who the hell wants to eat that? Eat this other thing that tastes good.
And it's like, it's just a little bit less good in terms of protein per calorie. But you're actually going to be able to consume this.
They're actually selling. So that's what I was going to say. If you go to their website, they sell it.
They're selling it.
And so this is a masterclass on how to handle this situation.
What's hilarious, by the way, on the site, it's their cod, still their wild-cut con.
And it's like 23 grams of protein, 100 calories, no sugar.
You can get it.
It's four fillets, flash frozen.
Add to cart.
And then there's all their bars like chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter chunk,
all sold out.
Here's all the sold-out bars.
Here's con, fully available.
We've got a lot of this stuff still in stock.
And there's a bunch of examples of the law.
opposites. Do you remember, I don't know if you remember this as a kid, but you would see commercials for
Avis. Do you remember Avis? Yeah, the rental car. Yeah. So basically Avis was number two in the market,
and Hertz was the biggest company by far. And Avis had this amazing brand campaign where they said,
we're number two, so we try harder. And that was their, that was their campaign, which is like,
we know we're number two. We're going to try harder. That's another example of the law of opposite.
But David has executed this flawlessly. Isn't this like an amazing thing to lean into? And this is
like not something that like
dude I'm just kicking myself because when he came on
I literally fell in love with the guy
I was like I love this guy's intensity
love this guy's honesty love his approach
he's clearly like an expert
in this field in this industry
and attacking this it was so obvious that
they had nailed the branding and packaging at the bar
so I'm just mad that I didn't push to like try to invest
in this thing and be like hey I just I'm so
bullish on this and it has played out exactly
as I would have guessed
I think you go I think we said
what's your goal? He goes, well, I actually think we're going to expand the TAM, and I think that this is
going to be a $10 billion company. Yeah, that's crazy. I like their copy on their site. We thank our
predecessors in the protein industry. We'll take it from here. It's so good, right? They nail it
on branding. They nail it a bunch of stuff, and when I saw this cod billboard, I was like, oh, that's,
that's so good. That's exactly what the book, 22 immunity rule laws of marketing. That's exactly what
they had mentioned with the law of opposites, and they completely nailed it. And if,
you are a small business owner, very similar to what this guy, Tom Ryan did, I would highly
recommend reading this book and then downloading it and uploading to chat GPT. It's so cool and
interesting to give you ideas on your product or your positioning. And what he just was
explaining about with the Mick Riddle and all that stuff, it's all very, very, very similar
to this, which is it's not, the goal is not to be better. The goal is to be different. Because
a meat lover's pizza, that's not particularly better. It's just, that's remarkably different.
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All right, back to the pod.
All right, let's do another topic.
Okay, I have a little stock market thing.
Can I do a stock thing?
Yeah.
Which is pretty stupid and dangerous because like most likely just going to be wrong and get ripped apart here.
Not entirely.
So the last time we talked about this type of stuff, you picked, we're all disclosure
we're idiots, don't do anything we're saying.
The last time, though, you picked UFC.
Yeah, so we did an episode called Stockapalooza.
About a year ago, I don't know when that was.
And the idea was, me and Sam would go research and we'd just try to pick a stock.
So we'd try to make a call similar to the Sone conference.
We just try to find a company that you would believe in as an outperformer, and then we made our case.
And I picked TKO, which is the parent company of UFC and WWE.
And you picked Ferrari, Ferrari, right?
And I think, I believe we did that episode.
So February 12, 2024.
Let's see what the stock price has performed since then.
Okay, so the stock at that time was trading at $85,
and it's currently at $185.
Okay.
All right.
You know, up, what is that?
over 100%, 117%.
Did you put any of your money into it?
Of course not, bro.
You think I'm here to make money?
What's going on?
Not because, not for any particular reason.
I was just like, lazy.
I didn't pay attention.
So anyways, that pick has performed well.
I don't think Ferrari's done well.
I think Ferrari's down like 5%,
so I'm better than you.
So let me, you just stay quiet for a minute.
Let me just do this segment here.
You could give a pick that's bad after this.
I was hanging out with somebody recently
who's a guest, you know,
I was a guest on the podcast, super successful, like billionaire type of dude.
And asked him two questions.
One was, what would you be doing right now?
What would be your AI play if you're just like young and broke, but like wanted to do something with AI?
And he gave a pretty interesting answer to that, which is he's like, I would go into,
he's like, I would go find a business owner who's built a successful book of business.
Like, let's say it's in insurance or home mortgages or, you know, some nice industry, some juicy industry.
and like the owner kind of knows like,
oh,
AI probably could benefit,
like I could probably benefit from AI in my company.
But who cares?
I'm 60.
But I'm 60.
I'm too old to like actually figure this stuff out.
And go to,
he's like,
I would go to them.
I would go to as many of those guys as I can.
I try to build up a listener and be like,
hey,
I will do all of the work to use AI to cut our costs internally.
Like I can automate a bunch of processes and jobs and whatnot.
Like I can increase our accuracy and decrease our costs.
And if I do that,
like can I carve,
basically when you carve me out 10% of this business,
if I successfully do it.
I'll do it totally on contingency,
but like here's the deal.
And we can like measure the op-exchange
that I'm going to make in this business
if you just give me free reign for, you know, 12 months.
He's like, it's the fastest way to kind of like own a piece.
He's like, you know,
and then I would try to, in that agreement,
maybe create an option to buy the majority of the business
at a fair value if I can pull that off.
So he's like, I thought that was interesting on this first thing.
Second thing he was talking about,
he goes,
He's like, yeah, he's like, SpaceX.
He's like, I just think it's unbelievable that people,
that there's any counter argument to SpaceX.
He's like, SpaceX is the most defensible company
in the history of humanity.
Like, what's the second best SpaceX?
Like, is there anybody?
You know, like, there's so few companies
that can even compete with SpaceX.
And think about how monumentally difficult it would be
to compete with SpaceX.
Like, yeah, you've got to literally get into the rocket
business. And like, not just the rocket business, the reusable rocket business. Not only that,
but to do it and, like, be competing, you know, competing for these giant government contracts.
And you have to, you know, successfully demonstrate, you know, safe launches over a period of time.
He's like, at this point, SpaceX is so unbelievably defensible. He's like, I think it's the safest
place to put money. And so I thought that was kind of interesting. Just like generational defensibility.
and really the question of like,
who is set up over the next 20 years,
who just has an incredibly competitive position
for the next 20 years?
So I just took that frame.
And none of these names are unpopular,
so I'm not giving you some like obscure pick.
But I just like, this is my honest take.
And like I'm basically trying to get into all of these companies
because I think over a 20 year period,
I think all these companies have a very combination of,
they have a tailwind behind them.
So the wind is in their sales of,
they're in the right place at the right time.
Clearly, the industries they're in
and the tech wave that they're surfing
is the big tech wave
that we're going to see play out over 20 years.
And two, they don't have much competition,
which was my case for the, for the TKO stock pick also.
Because I was like, there's no competition to UFC
and there's no competition to WWE.
Like the number two MMA promotions,
whether it's PFL, like Bellator.
Like these were companies,
there's literally on the brink of bank
and like they're they're like not just like in second place they're literally like 100 or 1,000
times smaller and behind and they and because of the network effect they have no chance to
ever catch up.
UFC is a tens of billions of dollar company and the second best one like they get in trouble
for not being able to like make payroll literally.
Yeah, it's like a rich guy's hobby typically.
Yeah.
Like it's not even close.
Like it's like it's like it's like LeBron versus the freshman, the freshman, the first
freshman team. It's not even in the same category.
And so when you're in that category of one,
it's like that's a pretty big deal, plus you have growth behind you,
but like the fact that there's just no competition.
Same thing with WWE. There's really no competition to WWE.
And of course, since then they both signed major, major like streaming deals,
way bigger than, you know, people thought they would sign like billion dollar a year
plus streaming deals.
But what does this have to do with the first part of AI?
Oh, the AI part. That was separate.
All right. So now, so here's five other companies I think are extremely well positioned.
So the first is a company that I was wrong about.
I owned the stock very early on,
and I got so mad during the GameStop thing
that I sold out of principle.
I'm never going to let those stupid principles in my way again.
Consoles are a bad way, too.
They give you bad directions
in route to making money.
My big moral stand didn't seem to hurt this company.
So Robin Hood was the company.
I owned the stock when it was like, I don't know, $5, $7,
whatever it was, like really early on,
like right when it'd IPOed, basically.
And it was like actually after that
I'd be able to kind of dipped or something
and when the GameStop thing happened
and they basically shut off the ability to buy
but continue to let people sell GameStop,
I was like, that is the most corrupt thing
I've ever seen.
Same.
And it piss me off so much that I was like,
F these guys.
Same.
I don't trust these guys.
I'm out.
Since then,
they've just basically proceeded to like build
what's clearly like Morgan Stanley
for the next generation.
So like the tailwind behind Robin Hood is the following.
there's some, like, absurd amount of wealth.
I don't know what it is.
Like 20 trillion, 50 trillion.
There's like some stupid number, like with a trillion behind it of wealth.
That's just going to get transferred from like the parents, you know, boomers to millennials or Gen Z over the next 20, 30 years.
And so the question is, as that money gets handed down, what will those people do with it?
And it's pretty clear that like, if you're in Gen Z or you're a millennial, the platforms you
trust and gravitate towards the financial platforms, you're already a user.
of when you have small check deposits is Robin Hood.
And then they were like, great, we have crypto, we have 401Ks, we have home mortgages,
and we got credit cards.
It's like, what else do you want?
Wait, they do all those?
They have prediction markets, which is a code word for sports betting and gambling.
So you can gamble on there, you can buy crypto on there, you can buy stocks on there,
you can buy fractional stocks of private companies.
You can buy, you can do all the margin trading and options trading.
If you want to get really degenerate, you can do your free, you can put a four,
you can open up a 401k.
them. You can get a Robin Hood gold card and you can use that as your credit card and you get a
home mortgage. It's like an unbelievable amount of financial products that they've rolled out all in
one app. And it's basically this financial super app that Gen Z slash millennials are most comfortable
with. And as the wealth transfer happens, they're going to be the beneficiary of that. So I think
next 20 years, they're extremely well positioned. So Austin Reef, the founder of Morningbird, one of my
closest buddies, he has been texting me for the past six months, maybe longer, to be honest.
Longer. He's been texting me too about this.
In fact, he's the only reason I bought it.
So I did buy it back again, like maybe six months ago.
I was about to have a call with him.
And he had been talking about Robin Hood, but he's kicking himself because he doesn't own any.
But it was like his call.
He was like, it's going to be great.
I'm just waiting for a dip.
The dip never came.
And he doesn't own any of it.
And it's basically ripped up like in a 5x, 7X since he's been like wanting to buy.
Yeah, he's been talking about it constantly.
And I had a call with him.
So before the call, I bought $100,000, $100,000 of Robin Hood suck.
Just so I could get on the call as a Robin Hood shareholder.
and be like, oh, thank you for the tip.
And since then, it's up, you know, 30, 40% also.
And so he's responsible for my Robin Hood conviction,
even though he doesn't own any of it now.
Yeah, and I think his reasoning, I forget what it was exactly,
or he had more than one point, but one of the points was like,
young people, and he owns a company called, or he did own Morning Brew,
which probably had 200 employees, which a lot of them were like 23-year-old,
like $100,000, $150,000 earning people.
And he was like, my staff, that's the,
the default. They all have 100% of their net worth in Robin Hood. And that is only going to continue
to grow. So they, because they keep their money in there and it's just going to keep on growing.
This company's unstoppable. And he's been bragging about it or calling that for maybe a year
and a half. And so he's absolutely nailed it. And I agree with you. I did not buy into that
argument at all. I thought Robin Hood was silly. I thought on principle, I'm not on board with what these
guys did. You're more of like a Schwab type of guy. I feel like you, you, you,
want you when it comes to money you want boring you want like a bow tie you want like you know got a man
with a briefcase is what you well you know the i i i potentially have a lot of money and i didn't want
to keep it in an app like to think i'm keeping it in an app was like kind of that's a little
nerve wrecking and like the interface is so cute that i thought it was like they cared more about
looks i was like i want the ugliest website that's the biggest vault you didn't want to keep it in
an app as if it's like a shoebox like where do you think the money's kept in any of these like
If it was a website, that's better.
What did you want?
I wanted the, like, forgot password button to be, like, hidden.
Like, I didn't want someone to, like, I don't know.
It was too user-friendly.
If it's too user-friendly, to me, that means it's easily hackable.
That was the issue, that it was too good, you know?
It's like, you find good deals on Craigslist because you're finding something, like,
interesting that no one else uses.
Robin Hood scared me.
Honestly, I actually get what you're talking about.
I actually felt similar.
I was like, I don't want to keep a huge amounts of money in this app.
But I did keep some.
I had some money.
I bought like crypto on it before and like they for years they did this thing where instead of giving
you like Uber for your new ride if you referred someone to a new ride they give you $10.
Robin Hood had this amazing thing where you could like do a scratch off. You could pick option
one, two or three, which obviously it's not actually one, two, three. It's all the same.
And they would give you stock. And so like I owned like. Ten dollars of stock. Yeah.
I owned like $10 of Ford. And that is now worth more because I did this like, you know,
right when they launched. And so I like Robin Hood though as a company. I just Googled it. Is it true?
did they do $1.1 billion of profit on $3 billion in revenue?
Yeah, basically when interest rates went up,
all of the financial service companies started printing money.
Because now all the money that they hold,
they're able to, like,
and money that they lend out at high rates,
but the money they hold,
they're earning like 4 or 5% on their float,
which is like pretty crazy.
So they're, you know,
they're very interest rate dependent right now.
By the way, the criticism for all of these is that these are already popular.
The valuation is crazy.
The valuation is crazy.
look at the fundamentals, oh, you know, Tesla, you know, they need to sell this many crazy amount of cars in order to justify this or like even self-driving and have to be like bigger than Uber to just be where it's valued at currently, right?
So like your upside is priced in would be the counter argument.
And by the way, I have no argument against that.
I just think very simply.
This has actually served me pretty well, which is like, I told you this story.
Like in 2010, I was kind of like, oh, like these internet companies seem to be like pretty dominant.
everybody uses them.
Let me get some of that.
That's the piece of those.
I don't really know how to do a discounted cash flow.
I can't really tell you much about the P.E.
ratios and like any of that stuff.
But like, I don't know.
This internet thing, that toothpaste is not going back in the bottle.
And so like similarly, it's like pretty obvious that with some of these.
It's like, yeah.
Yeah, like I like that partners.
That's the name of your firm.
I like that.
Running my company, Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet.
with hundreds of different businesses.
And I'm always surprised by how many of them
still use spreadsheets, emails,
and clunky tools that do not talk to each other.
It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape.
So here's my take.
Custom software that actually fits your needs
isn't just convenient.
It's a competitive advantage
to transform the way you do business.
And that's why you need to know
about a no-code platform called Bubble.
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By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including Hampton.
And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in ZeroCode.
They're the top Bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugin creator for the platform.
They can build anything, custom portals, SaaS products, and they do it about 10 times faster and
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efficient automated ones.
So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to zerocode.com.
That's zero code as in the word zero and then code, Q-O-D-E.
Again, code is with a Q.
And tell them that Sam sent you.
All right, what's the next one?
All right, let me just run through a couple of.
Coinbase is basically the same case, except what they have is Coinbase has nine product lines
that do over $100 million of revenue each.
I thought that's a stunning statement.
I can't believe how many different ways that they make a lot of money.
I think crypto basically it's like I'm bullish on Bitcoin in general and crypto.
And if you're bullish on crypto, the most trusted exchange that basically everybody,
that takes a fee on everybody's interest, everybody's enthusiasm around crypto.
They take a fee of every buy and every sell.
Like that's a business going to do very well.
And also like as now like the government's pro crypto, they're buying crypto.
There's ETFs.
It's in people's retirement accounts.
Like same thing.
You can't put the tooth base.
back in the bottle on that. And that CEO is an animal. He's an animal. And so I just think they're,
they're extremely, you know, well positioned similarly for, for, you know, the future.
When it, when I P-Oed, I never do this. I've only done this two or three times or something like that.
I bought. You jumped up and clapped? I, I, you click the heels.
Right after I purchased like a hundred grand worth of stock. And I just looked at my, I just looked at it.
I just made the money back. Now that it's like,
On a tear.
It looks like I'm even now
after I think four years or three years.
All right.
The other two, again,
this is so cliche.
I almost didn't even want to do this segment,
but I do believe in this.
It's not cliche to me
because I don't follow all this stuff,
so I think a lot of people
won't find it totally cliche.
Yeah, okay, all right.
Well, unfortunately,
the YouTube comments aren't as forgiving
and kind as you are.
All right, so Tesla is the next one,
which is basically if you think about
what are the next big industries to get unlocked,
a combination of self-driving cars,
is going to change the world and then the robots.
Now, the timescale is obviously the question here.
But again, I'm taking it.
If you take a 20-year outlook,
nobody's better positioned to do self-driving cars
and robots than Tesla.
And then I also think, by the way,
he's going to end up merging X-AI with Tesla.
Like, he's going to put it all together.
I don't understand that.
I don't get that.
I don't get that combo.
Why it would go together?
Yeah.
One is an AI lab, and then all the future of Tesla is as an AI company.
And if he's able to basically like financially engineer his way into owning more Tesla by having Tesla by XAI, like he's also like done this before in solar city where he like bails out his own companies in a way, right?
I guess I get that.
The way how Twitter has basically become AI, which is then a Tesla own thing, that's a wild journey.
That's the wild part.
I wouldn't own any.
I don't want to own any stuff.
that E-Line controls because he's a crazy person. And I don't mind being, I don't mind him being
crazy. What I mind is like when he tweets something, the stock changes. And so I'm like, well,
what if he gets shot? Which is definitely not unreasonable. Like, there has to be like a 1% chance
that he gets assassinated or a 1% chance that he dies doing something reckless.
Yeah, there's crazy e-man risk with him. Yeah, it's too crazy. Like when he tweeted that Trump was a
pedophile, what, did it go up or, like, did it move?
yeah it went down
then it went back up
yeah I don't have the stomach for that
the stock trades in completely
crazy ways in the short term
like they'll be like oh we missed
delivery estimates by a lot my bad
and the stock's like up 10%
it's like what what's going on here
it's weird man
Tesla's too weird for me
yeah I'm too old school for that but
I do I understand the argument
I mean again the idea
is like we're going to have robots
doing human labor
If you disagree with that, then you're wrong and we disagree.
But if you realize that robots are going to do human labor and that human labor is the biggest market in the world, is the market for human labor,
then the company that makes the robots that do the human labor is going to sell more.
It's going to be like the iPhone.
The iPhone was like this product that everybody in the world bought that sells billions and billions and billions of units.
As soon as they have robots that can actually do functional work, they're going to
sell billions and billions.
There's going to be more robots than humans.
Because why would you not?
I'd be like, yeah, give me five of those guys to be doing shit around my house, my backyard,
my factory, my warehouse, my whatever, right?
Like, as soon as that exist, then the question is, do you believe it will exist?
Do you believe that Tesla can pull it off?
Yes.
It's definitely worth betting that they will pull that off.
So once you go down the logic train of like the biggest market in the world, human labor,
we now have the technology wave happening where robots will be able to do that human labor.
And that if you had that, what would be the demand for that?
Okay, pretty much the biggest demand we've ever seen for anything ever.
Okay, great.
So let's go to the next one.
Who is going to be able to do it?
Who's well positioned to do it, Tesla?
Okay, great.
So you go down that chain and you realize like, okay, they're pretty well positioned.
It's just hard because, so I have a friend that joined Open AI in, I forget the exactly what year.
But at the time, I think they were worth $30 billion.
And he was debating, he's like, should I do this?
Should I not do this?
and he said, we all said the same thing, which is, wow, $30 billion, that's a lot of money.
Is there any upside to this?
Well, he joined.
I believe he's made about $30 million.
And as of now, the stock that he was granted back then, it is now worth $10 million a year.
So every vest, it's something like $10 million.
Right.
And he sold a little bit to where he's good.
But we were talking the other day, and we were like, this could definitely 10x again.
Like, your grants could be $100 million a year.
And that's, that's, it's very hard to like overcome that, that, to get to that conclusion just because not logic, because of emotion.
You know what I mean?
Totally.
The smartest investors I know.
And the reason why I think there's merit to just having a very like simple, simpleton model of investing is for most of the, like, I guess I, if I look back to.
in the last 10 years.
I look back
a couple of
smartest investors
I know.
They always had
like a very like
two sentence
level of conviction
and they sort of
pointed out
they're like,
hey like all you needed to do
was BTC and chill.
Like all you needed to do
was Bitcoin and chill,
right?
You know,
when we sold to Amazon
and we got our
Amazon grant
and it was like,
okay, you own this much
Amazon stock now.
Guess what?
I did all these side projects.
I did all this other shit
during the meantime.
I like, I like work, got up every day and went to work.
All I needed to do was Amazon and chill.
Like, if you get a big enough lump sum, you just can let things compound.
And so like one of my friends, Zach, he has this phrase that basically every year there's one investment that's sort of like the power law.
Like, you know, when OZembek happened, he was like, oh, I think I just need to own the companies that are like the OZEPIC companies.
And he's like, yep, that was the only thing that you needed to do.
OZepic was the investment theme of the year.
you just had to recognize it
and you had to take action on it.
It didn't take a literal genius
to do it, right?
You didn't have to predict his epic.
You didn't have to like be knee deep
in clinical trials six years ago.
Like even if it just like,
after it happened,
you just had to like understand
what was actually happening
and buy and hold.
And like that was what you needed to do.
And he basically has a list of every year
what's the one thing that matter.
What was the one deal that matter?
I think he said one year,
it was like only fans.
Yeah, one year he was like,
it's only fans this year.
And I was like,
only fans.
This was like before it was, this was actually, I think, in 2019.
We talked about it.
We sold, and we sold to Twitch.
And he texted me and he was like, OnlyFans, I believe is going to make more money than Twitch.
I go, bro, Twitch is making like, and I shared him with him.
I was like, Fitzger's making a lot of money.
He's like, I said what I said.
Everything else is noise for me this year.
I just need to figure out if I can get into OnlyFans.
Did he get it?
Yeah, he did.
And so, you know, he's, you know, but I just really respect that level of thinking.
that type thing.
In fact, one of my friends who's like this,
he came to,
he came over my house and he goes,
take two.
Take two.
What did it take two?
What's take two?
Dude,
your friends talk really strangely.
There's no connecting words.
It sounds like it.
Was he Kramer?
You just knocked out the door at that take two?
I ask him,
I'm like, what's the thing right now?
Because he was the one early on
was just like,
you need to have 100% of your net worth in Bitcoin.
and he was just like every day he would just tell me this and he would just tell me this every day this is
2014 2015 2015 2016 every day he just told me the same thing and he would tell me exactly why and he would write it
he wrote it down for me and he just kept doing it and because of my own more bitcoin than I would have
otherwise so I you know at least I didn't listen to him I didn't do 100% but I did listen to him
he was basically making a case why the company that makes grand theft auto he's like grand theft auto
is coming gtta 6 is coming out and when it comes out it's
And right now the stock is a little depressed because the game's been delayed for like multiple years.
He's like, the game is going to come out.
And when the game comes out, it's going to be the biggest selling game ever.
There's no competition.
And he uses all these like economics words, like, you know, some word for like there are no substitutes.
Like there's no substitute for GTA.
Yeah, he was using words like elastic or something.
Yeah, exactly.
So he's like, you know, a great investment has these like six properties.
And like, you know, here's the six properties.
And I'm like, and Grand Theft Auto.
fits all those? He's like, yes. And so that's like, you know, his big thing. This is what he was saying
a year ago. It's already up like 30% or something since he told me this. And he would, you know,
whatever, there's more to that story. I won't. I can't share here. But like, is that type of
thinking that's like, I don't know, it's very, very attractive to me. I fall, I get seduced by
that level of that type of thinking very easily. And obviously I'm cherry picking like, you know,
things that worked. I'm sure there's, if I really thought about it, I'm sure I have a bunch of
smart friends who, you know, fell in love with random single securities that didn't do anything.
I'm not saying this is like a foolproof thing.
Dude, whenever we talk about this, I like, I started thinking I would be like the Warren Buffett thing where I'm like, well, I just don't understand it.
So I'm going to stick to that thing, which is a really novel way of saying like, you know, whatever.
I'm not doing it.
And then I started thinking about this recently where I was like, well, it's been eight years.
Maybe I should learn about it.
Maybe that circle of confidence needs to expand a little bit.
Yeah. I'm like, it's so like six months ago. I went and bought a book on it and like started reading it. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. I wish I would have read this a long time ago. This book was published like years ago. What am I doing?
I'm like, well, I don't know it. I don't understand it. So I'm not going to do it. But that's been eight years. Yeah. I should have read way sooner.
What's the fourth company? Open AI is one of them. But I think that's the most controversial one because I think they, you know, there's so much competition.
who knows. And I just was thinking, like, who else is uniquely positioned on a 20-year time scale
where they have the winds of technology behind their back. So they're in the right space where, like,
clearly they're sitting in the lane where the highest velocity of, like, you know, of change
and sort of upside is. But then also that they have a unique defensibility, well, they will actually
capture it. I think space is uniquely defensible. I think Coinbase is uniquely defensible. I think
Tesla is uniquely defensible.
None of these things are completely foolproof.
Of course, there are competitors.
I'm not saying that.
But I just think, like, on the sliding scale of defensibility,
it's very, very hard to compete with any of those companies
because they built up these durable, durable modes, right?
Like, whether it's regulatory modes, whether it's brand,
whether it's network effect, whether it's like hard, you know,
hard technical things that take years for other people to catch up to.
But then by then, they're on the next generation.
Dude, I wonder, like, this is total, like, the bro science of financial investing, but I don't look into, like, I don't really read about the fundamentals of certain companies. And the only few times that I've bought an individual stock, it's been mostly because the founder, the entrepreneur behind it. And so when we hung out with Mario, the guy who started Oscar Health, he, like, explained a little bit about Oscar. And I was like, okay, it's a health insurance company, but I don't really know anything else. But, like, you're really inspiring.
And so I bought a little bit of that.
And then the first one was Atlassian.
I read an article about Atlassian.
And their office, I don't know if you remember this, but my office was at, where was it?
It was in Soma.
And their office was like on the street of my office, the hustle.
And I used to like look in their office and I was like, wow, I love the interior design of your office.
And I read a little bit about the founders.
And they seemed really smart.
And I bought, I think a thousand dollars worth of it because I didn't have any money.
And I think it turned into 50 grand.
I think it like 50xed.
And so both of the times that they have made money, it's literally just been because the founder was interesting to me.
Total bro science.
No, I don't even know what Glassian does to this day.
Like, they make software, but I don't know what software.
I don't know what's true.
I mean, I think.
Yeah.
Like the, they say words like schedule instead of schedule.
Like, you know, it's a scheduler.
I don't know what a schedule is.
But it's been like.
That's kind of in like an interesting way.
It just seems like someone has willed something into existence and the cool factor.
So, for example, Palantir.
I'm pretty sure they're trading at like 200 times revenue or something like that.
And I have to imagine there's got to be some research on what the Alex Carp like cool factor adds to that multiple.
Yeah.
These become cults.
Like there's enough like there's enough sort of like retail energy now where these things become cults.
Like right now they're trying to make it happen for Open Door.
I don't know if you've paid attention to this.
I have.
I have. I've seen Open Door. I don't understand why there's what's who's the cult leader behind like
why do people care about open doors. It's kind of pop and it's like this guy Eric Jackson and others.
I mean, I don't know. I'm not too far in it. I stay away from the like, you know, everybody's got their
their their vices. Meme stocks is not not one that that does it for me. So fortunately I don't get sucked into that.
So your buddy was like, I should just pick one stock and go all in. If there's one skill set that you should go all in, honestly, like I learned it a little.
bit with Hermosie, and we've seen it time and time again. But, like, becoming a very charismatic
person that knows how to talk to the masses is obviously the answer. That's the skill set that
you have to learn.
Manipulation is what I'm saying. Everything else. Just learn that. I think Rob the Bank, who you
had on a while ago, he, like, talked about some book. He's like, I don't even want to say the
name of this book. He, like, teed it up perfectly. And I think you did, I think you did the same.
He's like, there's just one book on how to manipulate people. I don't even want to say the name.
It's just too powerful, and I don't want the price to go up.
The dark arts.
Do you remember what he said that?
Maybe.
Like, did you say it on our podcast or somewhere else?
Yes.
Or maybe he said it on.
I started following him after you had him on.
And he said something like that.
And I went and like Reddit, and I'm like, yeah, you're right.
This is like the skill that everyone should learn.
Screw products.
Screw being smart with AI.
What is it?
I want to know now.
I'm not going to say.
Here we go.
You get it to me.
I'll tell you after.
Robert Green.
Robert Green, they say this about his book, right?
Fortyot Laws of Power, like, I think one of the, like, marketing schicks,
which I don't know if he completely made up or is true,
and then he used it to, like, to market his book,
but it was, this book is banned from prisons.
It's the best.
Because they don't want the prisons to, like,
the prisoners to be able to, like, overtake.
It's so powerful.
It's so powerful that it's banned in prisons is,
ah, just perfect marketing.
Yeah.
You know, that's, that's like the cod level marketing.
And I have it.
wear of my good reads that I'll say that I'll that I'll find it but it's uh I don't even
remember the title from being honest but it was like so you think I should go all in on on
uh Charleston manipulation or what yeah I mean you're we're kind of we kind of do that
already yeah that ship's sort of like I'm just saying like go all in yeah just be better
just do what you're doing now but better is that it is that the pod yeah that's it
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,
never looking back.
All right,
let's take a quick break
because as you know,
we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network,
but we're not the only ones.
There's other podcasts on this network, too,
and maybe you like them.
Maybe you should check them out.
One of them that want to draw your attention to
is called Nudge by Phil Agnew.
And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson,
and you're looking for the small changes you could make,
the new habits you could do,
the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference.
That's what that podcast is all about.
Check it out. It's called Nudge, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.
