My First Million - Unpopular Truths From The Pod, Gourmet Gifts, and 4 Side Hustles

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Episode 393: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about the unpopular - yet valuable - lessons they have learned on My First Million, $1,000/day side hustles, and gourmet gift ideas. ----- Links: * RVshare * Mark Jenney Twitter * Caitlyn Minimalist * Harry & David * Omaha Steaks * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (01:30) - Are courses legit? (07:30) - Unpopular things learned on MFM (32:30) - Mark Jenney (44:15) - Last minute gourmet gift ideas ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Here's the headline. Great headline. Great headline. Guy sells $1 bills for $15. Here's how, right? And so here's what he did. So he basically, he's 15 years old and he says he sees a dollar bill on eBay that instead of who's on the dollar bills, Washington or something like that, instead of whoever,

let's call George Washington, it's Michael Jordan's face in the middle, right? And he orders it. He's like, oh, love Michael Jordan or whatever. And this is funny and gets it. And it's a, basically it's a normal dollar bill, but then there's just like a sticker paper over the George Washington. And you could just like do that. You could just go to Office Max and like do this. And so that's exactly what he did.

He goes to Office Max. He's like, I need to be able to create these because what better business is there to sell dollar bills for $15. And so he goes there. And then he goes, he puts him up on eBay. What's up? Let's jump in. What you got? You tell me, you, I think I've been driving the last.

handful of sessions. I'm going to ask you to drive right now. Let's switch gears. I want to do a topic about, I think you know Mark Jenny. You know Mark Jenny? Mark Jenny's a great friend of mine. He's an amazing, amazing, amazing entrepreneur. He's an awesome guy. I'm going to meet him next week. We're going down to stay at one of us. He has this like luxury Airbnb portfolio. And you should follow him on Twitter. Well, you want me to give his background? Do you know his background? I know a little bit of it, but go give it the story. So if I remember correctly, I think he was raised. He had a, something was a little wonky with his childhood.

I think like he didn't have a dad or a single household or something like that. So he wasn't raised in like a very privileged place. And then at one point, I think he was even homeless. And he lived out of like a storage unit or something like that. He started a bunch of different companies like info marketing stuff and everything did kind of okay. Then he started RV Trader, I believe, or is RV Share. RV share, which was like Airbnb for RVs. He eventually sold a large portion of it to KKR, I think, a large PE company. And he probably made many, many tens of millions of dollars, a lifetime of money.

Now he has a new thing that he's been doing for the last maybe five or something like that years, where he buys, I think he owns 20 of them now. He's got a huge portfolio of Airbnb's. And these are high-end luxury homes that sleep like 20 people. It's like a two-acre, like a two acre plot with like a fancy four or five six thousand square foot home with like basketball courts tennis courts mini put putt putt and he's built this like really really good business making millions and millions of dollars renting air bambes and he's doing it right and he's got a small team and it's a proper company not like a side project yeah i think what is it like a 50 million dollar luxury Airbnb portfolio at this point yeah i mean i i i'm friends with mark so he tells me

lots of stuff so i'm trying not to say any of the numbers because i forget what's public and what's in private. So anything that you, I'll let you actually say any of the numbers because you're probably getting in public. Yeah, that's just what he tweets out. So you follow him on Twitter. He's a good follow and it's cool to see like he'll post like a before and after photo of these properties. He's like, here's what it was. And then we added a McDonald's play place in the backyard. It's like he does like dope stuff like which I like. He's not just like. And he's totally unheard of. I'm a home flipper. He has got like maybe 2000, 3,000 followers on Twitter, I think. Like he's not like a popular like a big name person. So he tweeted this out the other day. And,

I thought that this was a great, we haven't done a blue collar side hustle in a while. So I thought this is kind of a great little, almost like a blue collar side hustle that he said he had done. I don't know if you saw this. He was talked about one of his very first, like sort of side hustles that he did or early, early hustles was selling dollar bills for $15. Did you see this? Yes.

Yeah. Tell the story. So he tweeted this out. You can kind of look at it. But here's the headline. Great headline. Great headline. Guy sells $1 bills for $15.

Here's how, right? And so here's what he did. So he basically, he's 15 years old and he says he sees a dollar bill on eBay that instead of, who's on the dollar bill is Washington or something like that? Instead of whoever, let's call George Washington, it's Michael Jordan's face in the middle, right? And he orders it is he's like, oh, love Michael Jordan or whatever. And this is funny and gets it. And it's a basically, it's a normal dollar bill. but then there's just like a sticker paper over the George Washington.

And you could just like do that. You could just go to Office Max and like do this. And so that's exactly what he did. He goes to Office Max. He's like, I need to be able to create these because what better business is there to sell dollar bills for $15? And so he goes there.

And then he goes, he puts him up on eBay. And first he looked on eBay. And at that time, eBay was showing like how many, how many items a seller would sell. and he could just keep track of it like, okay, this week, oh, wow, they're selling like, you know, 100 of these, like that's amazing. So he starts doing it. He creates an EBA account.

He starts selling these. And he starts averaging 100 bills sold per day for $15, which includes the shipping costs. General profit was about $1,500 a day? About $1,500 a day. He's profiting basically $1,000 a day doing this. And then he ramped it up and he got it to, I think, $10,000 a day in, in sales. And he became the largest seller of custom novelty collectible dollar bills on eBay.

But it's a real dollar. It was a real dollar bill. It's a real dollar. Yeah. And you just add the sticker on top so you could sell it. Can you do that legally? I guess so why not? I don't know. I don't know. I just thought there'd be some weird rules around money. No, I think you could do it. Like, you know, people sell these like coins and whatever. It seems legit. So then what he would do, he's like, you know, so I had to start thinking of growth hacks. How do I beat these other eBay guys at doing this. So what he would do is he would do one of the auctions and then he would direct message everybody who didn't win the auction offering him the bill at whatever their highest price was. And so he's like, you know, whatever? Eight was your top price? All right, I'll do it for eight.

And so he started like just racking up as many sales as he could doing this. So then he became the top ranked seller, which helped him in the organic search as he was going from there. And I kind of love this. And I loved it for a couple of reasons. One, it's just another example of these little little nuggets, these little stories that shows you, there's a trillion ways to win. There's a trillion ways to get rich, right? Like he was doing basically $365,000 a year of sales or whatever. You know, he was doing really, really well at that time. You know, I'm just how old was he? Did you say he was like a kid? He was 15, 16 years old. That's amazing. And, and you know, probably didn't last forever, but these little arbitrage opportunities that come up. And then I started thinking,

okay, like what would somebody do if they're doing that now? So here's, I'm going to give you three ideas of how you could do that now. First, I think you could probably do the same thing. Like, what's old is new. What's out is in. And I think you probably do the same thing, either on eBay or Etsy or find one of the marketplaces and you could try to win doing the same thing. I went on Etsy and actually you could see that there's people doing this on Etsy right now

and you can see, you know, how they're doing. So possibly you could go do the same thing and compete, especially if you could pick a different, you know, celebrity face to put on the thing like Trump is the obvious one. But if it's not Trump, like maybe there's some other some other ones that you could do. But Trump dollar bills is my first idea of how I would do this. Second idea, okay, well, let's let's remix it, right? We want to keep 80% of the idea. We want to change 20%. So what's the 20% change? I would try to piggyback off of whatever's trending in movies or music or something like that. So for example, remember when Superbad came out and there was like the McLove.

you know, ID, his Hawaii ID, the rainbow on it. It's like the same iconic look. I think you could just do Mcloven IDs at that time. Like if that was the movie that had come out now,

I think you could take a prop from a movie or like in Pulp F or wallet or whatever. Like I don't know. I had one. I don't watch a bunch of movies now, but yeah, exactly.

I wanted one of those and you could just like jump on that trend and be like cool like for the McLevel and it's like upload your photo and we'll send you yourself as a McLevin ID. and maybe use little these like AI things to like create the avatar where it looks the same. But I think that's one that you could do.

Really cheap to print and and laminate. And then you, you know, you can send these out very cheaply because they're, they're so thin. And then I saw some other ones. If you go on TikTok, you'll see things that are like this. One, for example, I think the second biggest Etsy store, maybe the first actually now. I think it's second or first on the planet is this thing called Caitlin Minimalist. I'm guessing you've never heard of this. No, what is this?

I got a whole thing coming on the pod of my Etsy deep dive, but I'll just give you a little sneak peek. The top selling store is Caitlin Minimalist. What she does was how she got her break was she was like, she was making jewelry for herself. Her friends were like, oh, that's cool. And her friend had a special request. She goes, my mom or dad passed away.

I forgot which one. And like the last thing that wrote me was like this note. Is it possible to like get their signature in their handwriting as like a bracelet? it. And she's like, yeah, you just like, I can do that for you. And she just gave it to her for free. She was like, this is so meaningful to you. I'll just give it to you for free. And she was like, overwhelmed. Was like, this is the most meaningful thing in the world. And so she's like, oh, wow, people just want like, you know, their name, their parents name, their kid's name. And ideally in their own handwriting, like done in jewelry. And so that's what she how do you do that.

You like send her. You like send her a picture or you write the name. You know, depends. If you want to match the handwriting, you got to send a picture of the. You got to send a picture of of this of like a piece of paper with the writing on it. And there's some tech that just then like tells her like, etches it in that look, right? Oh, so it's not like made out of metal. It's a metal plaque or it's like a dog tag. And then she like, no, no, no.

It is, it's cut. It's like the name is cut. It's like out of the chain or whatever. Like it is like, you know, whatever somehow somehow cut. I don't know exactly her manufacturing process. But these little like custom, custom name things, I think work. And I was on TikTok yesterday when I was thinking. about this idea.

How big is it? Oh, it's huge. She's done like probably 80, 90 million in sales is my, my estate. So she's done two million transactions. I would guess her average transactions like,

you know, something 40, 50 bucks, something like that. Wow. You know, that's like 80 million dollars in sales, lifetime.

And she's just like this woman out of LA or whatever. And I was on TikTok and I was scrolling and I saw another one of these, which was, it was a hoodie. It was like, here's a perfect gift for the holidays or for Valentine's, whatever. It's a hoodie and they're like, take a picture of you and your, whatever, your, your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whatever. And it basically takes like, let's say it's a picture

of you and your wife and you're kissing. And it just like, it'll etch, it'll stitch like a silhouette of that as like into the hoodie. So it's like a meaningful gift. But again, it's like this kind of what they call mass customization, right? So if you can do mass customization, if you can figure out a manufacturing process to do this, there's a lot of opportunity to sell somebody these like kind a gimmick gifts that I think will, that can and will work. Do you remember T-spring? T-spring, yeah. It was like the print-on-demand type of. Yeah, it was a really cool t-shirt companies started by this guy named Walker Williams and they were like one of these companies that was like, oh, this is going to be one the fastest companies ever to get to $100 million in revenue.

And the way that they got popular was it was on-demand, T-shirt printing. And they figured out this hack on Facebook where you could target people that have your, like, by last name. So it could be like the one thing we all know about Smiths is that they loved a party or they also did by location. Like the one thing we know about people who are raised in Boston is that they love Blank. And it had a t-shirt that said, I'm from Boston and I'm proud. Or I'm from Boston and I love Blank or I'm a proud Smith or something like that. And the engagement on those ads was crazy. So their cack was like stupid low.

And that's one of the ways that they grew. And it's just like that. It's that thing from Dale Carnegie. the most beautiful word in any language is of the person's name. And I think it's like name, location, maybe like where you went to school and then followed by like your friend's names. And if you can figure out how to like incorporate those into ads, they click the rate is crazy.

Your pet's face. So there's another one which is pet socks, pets face on socks. I think I have a pair. Jungle creations was the name of it. So if I remember correctly, at one point they did like a million dollars in like a week selling You'd basically go on the website, you'd upload a photo of your pet's face, and they would print it on socks.

They would just drop ship that to you, basically. And let me see if I can find. Yeah, they did 2018, they did 17 million in revenue. They did 17 million in revenue doing basically pet face on socks. And so that's the same thing. You know, celebrity face on dollar bill, pet face on socks, right? Like we have a buddy who is doing the pet portraits, right? Like a painting of your pet.

that would just be like mass customized, produced. There's a ton of these like little opportunities. Yeah, and the click-through rates on these things are like, kill it for the ads. So, yeah, that's an interesting idea. Let's see if anyone actually follows through with it. But Mark Jenny's amazing, man. He's awesome. All right.

So let me bring him one thing up. Dude, this guy made fun of me the other day for having a course. And it hurt my feelings. A friend or an internet stranger? A little bit of both. and it really hurt my feelings. Do you feel like, because, all right, so I built a business before. I built a few businesses before.

A few that I've gotten to seven figures. A few that I've gotten to eight figures. I've sold things. I should feel confident about this. And then you and I both have courses. I'm going to actually launch another course that I think can be like a, like a million dollar plus a year income stream for me and my family, which is awesome. It's never good when you have to say for me and my family,

Like if you have to justify feeding your family, that means there's that's just the insecurity poking out. Poked out of there. Well, it gives context. And what I mean is, is it the context, the question that I'm going to ask is, is it worth it? Because part of me thinks, well, if I'm such a big shot, I shouldn't talk about it. I should just have shit and not teach it. But then I'm like, but I like doing it. And it's a significant, like it pays for my whole life.

So do you? Yeah. If you, again, the only question. I was going to us. Do you like it? You like doing it? Yeah. All right. Then that's enough, right? But do you feel like, you feel like a fraud sometimes too? Or at least I, you've never said that to me. But you said that when we have when we were interviewing that one person, you're like, I kind of feel like a fraud every once in a while or I forget what you said. Not a fraud, but I do feel like I make fun of myself about the course thing. Because same thing. Self-conscious, maybe.

Self-conscious is a better word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I would say somebody who. is like somebody who is really locked in and I'll use the word locked in because it's not about how much money you have like but it's true somebody who's really really wealthy would not do a paid course I don't think I don't think somebody who's like super wealthy probably should be or would be doing paid course it's pretty unusual to do well I think that's actually wrong though because like Warren Buffett had a course at Columbia I mean there's a lot of examples of like wonderful investors who go and they act up. I don't think Warren Buffett

did his course like I don't think he was pocketing a bunch of money doing a direct sales course type of thing like I if I went and taught a guest, if I was a guest lecturer at Stanford right, I drove 45 minutes away I go guest lecture at Stanford. I'm a teacher there. I would be doing that

for different reasons and it would feel totally differently than me being like hey I have my power writing course, go sign up and pay for it. I don't know why it is. It's just different. It's a different thing. But I would say two things. I said locked in because also if you have like a main thing that is totally an obsession for you, you're loving working on it, there's so much, there's more to do than you'll ever have time to do. You really wouldn't take

the time to stop, pause and go sell the course. It's my opinion about myself, I should say. I would not go do that. So to me, as long as I'm still doing courses, it's me part of my wandering around phase, trying to figure out what I really want to do when I grow up, what I want to do with my life, what I want to do with my time, I know that if I get locked in on, oh, man, I really love this project. I'm just building brick by brick. This is something that I'm really excited about. There's no chance in hell that I would push pause and teach course, even though my courses

are like, it's two weeks out of the year. So it's not a lot of time. But even those two weeks, I probably wouldn't do if I was in that position in the same way that when I was building my startup, I had no podcast. I had no angel investing. I had no courses. I didn't do it. I didn't tweet.

I didn't do shit when I was building my startup for like seven years because I was fully locked in on that. It's only after we sold that I started doing a bunch of these things. And that became the new business was the podcast and other things. I think I'm going to keep doing it. But I think you should totally keep doing it. You said you like it. So keep doing it.

Let me share a little thing. I do it during my course because during the writing course, some people, will be like, you know, okay, I get like, this lesson was really great. I feel like I now have a much better idea how I would write to like kind of grow viral or build my brand. There's a part of me that just feels like, you know, they'll ask a question that's like, how much content would you say is too much? You know, it's too much to post. Or would you say that like, you know, I should wait, you know, until my product launches to start doing content? Or like they ask all these questions that are sort of like self-promote and self-

conscious feelings. Self-conscious. There's just a under, there's just a layer of self-consciousness around the whole thing. Or like, you know, what do you, what do you say if you post something and then somebody comments, do you take it down, blah, blah, blah, do you, you know, how do you deal with, you know, a negativity or blah, blah, blah. And I always just say the same thing. I go, I go, oh, I'm going to answer you a question, but hey, what, what time is it? I want to make sure we don't go over. What time is it? And then they're like, uh, 934. I'm like, no, no, it's me o'clock. And you forgot that it's me o'clock. You know, you're thinking about what everybody else might think, what they might say and how they might feel and what my,

bro, you forgot the main thing. It's always me o'clock. You just got to ask yourself, do I like this? Do I want to do this? How do I feel about doing this? Remember, it is always me o'clock. In fact, I want to get watches made or a clock on my wall that just just reminds me. It is me o'clock.

Should I wait to go do this thing? No, it's me o'clock. Should I care what other people are thinking? No, it's me o'clock. How do I feel that's what I'm going to do things based off? There's this funny picture of Fidel Castro, you know, like the dictator of Cuba. And he's wearing two Rolexes at the same time, both on the same wrist. Just because he's just like, he just wants to flex that hard.

Fidel knows it's me. You need to get two watches on each hand that say, wait, just let me make sure this other one's not broken. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. So your question, to me, I don't even need to answer. I just got to remind you, it's me o'clock. You do what the hell you want. All right, you have another thing on here that was like... The 10 list?

Yeah, the list. I'm going to read the title and you go from there. So it just says, a few non-popular things I've learned from this pod. Pretty good headline, eight out of ten. Thank you. We'll accept. I'm going to say each one and I want you to give me your reaction and then I'll explain a little more context.

But all right, the first one. Well, can you give context on the whole thing? Like, where did this come from? Or why did you even think of this list of non-popular things you've learned from the pod? I see a lot of things online of people talking where they try to explain, like, rules. Like, you do have to work this much or you don't have to work this much. And the reality is that there's a million ways to get the same things done. So, like, for every example of one person succeeding in one way,

there's going to be lots of examples of them succeeding a totally different way. So I think it's silly to have rules. And so I, like, will see these things of people posting of like, oh, you know, like they say, it's a 10-year overnight success. And in my head, I think, man, I know people who have had overnight successes were like literally in three months, their life has changed. And I think it's silly to not acknowledge that, you know? And so, that's how I kind of came up with this list. Okay. All right. Hit me. I'm excited now. All right. The first one I just said. So an overnight success, which is like one or six months,

it's absolutely possible. And those exist and they're real. Agree or disagree. All right. Give us an example. For example, we covered this couple of called Brumate, B-R-U-M-A-T-E, and I think in like year two, they got to 20 million in revenue, and year one, they got to like eight million. And I know a few people that have had other companies were like in the first six months, like it kind of just took off and it worked. So we interviewed, who else did we interview? Well, I would say your current stealth company we haven't talked about yet, taken off right away. Yeah, it's, it's succeeded like pretty quickly. How do you count that? Do you count that overnight success or do you say,

I've been preparing my whole life for this, right? That's the, that's the counter argument. I'll say, like, I built up a reputation, and I'm trading off that reputation. But there are times, you and I have, like, talked to people, for example, we, I had this guy on who you weren't here, but you know him. His name's Val. You know Val, V-A-L, Val. He had a company where in year one, it made, like, 10 million in profit, and it was selling

like ringtones on the internet. And, like, just some people just have the it factor. And then also, like, luck is real. So that's another thing. Luck is real. Sometimes you just kind of nail it and it just works. Not always, and most of the time it doesn't, but every once in a while, it just happens. And so I think for people to say overnight success isn't real, I think that that's nonsense.

Because I know a handful of people who are like 19, 20 year old kids who, like within a few months, they've got something making many, many tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in sales. And it just works. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I agree. All right. Here's another one.

I think at least in the beginning of your career, where you live, it actually really, really matters. It's incredibly important. And the people who don't move some places, I think they are at a disadvantage. 100% agree. I did this. I was sitting in Australia and I wanted to do startups. And I went to a local startup like event. And I was like, okay, I'm like looking around.

Everybody's being super nice. It's Australia. Everybody gets along great. And I just thought in my head, I go, who's the most successful entrepreneur in this room? And it was this one old ass motherfucker who was like, you know, had built something in the 90s and he just like stuck around. And then nobody else pretty much. And then I was asking some questions. I was talking and something.

And the guy, the organizer was like, dude, you should give a talk next month at the meetup. Like, this is great. We would love to have you teach. And I was like, teach. I'm 23. I've done nothing. I was like, and I like at first I was flattered. And then I caught myself two seconds later.

I was like, oh, wait, this just means I'm in the wrong pond. I do not want to be a smart guy in the room. They should be like, dude, you should shut up. You don't know anything about anything. That's the type of room I want to be in. And so I literally went home. I went on, I think like T-Mobile or whatever, I activated a phone plan and I got a 650 area number, area code because I was like, I need to just mentally, before I even move,

I need to go to Silicon Valley now. So I changed my phone number. and then I booked a ticket and my mom was like, you know, where are you going to stay? Do you have a job? I was like, I don't know. I'm going to figure it out, but I'll have a better shot of figuring it out there than I do from here. And that was my whole mindset. And Tony Robbins has a thing he says about this. He goes, proximity is power. And I am a huge believer that proximity is power. I have done pretty crazy things to just get in proximity of people that I think are awesome. I will take jobs that I think are like the worst job of all the job offers I have if I know that it's going to get me to sit side by side with somebody awesome because I know six months next to that person is going to do more for me than a better higher paying job would have done. And so proximity is power.

This goes beyond business. It's beyond business. It's just anything. If you want to make it in the movie industry, you have a higher likelihood if you at least spend a handful of years early on in Hollywood. Just putting in the time matters. There's like these funny stories about Bill Murray. He lives in like North Carolina or something and he's like totally out of the loop. It's like, yeah, that definitely works.

There are examples of that. But I think it helps. Increase your odds. Yeah. You want to increase your odds of success. The second one or the third one, luck is is incredibly real. You know, I remember like early on in my career, I was thinking like there is no such thing as luck. It's just hard work.

And I'm just going to do it. Nah, shit's real. Shit's real. I remember I've said this story a bunch of times that when we were selling their company, Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot at the time, gotten a life-threatening accident two weeks after we closed. And there's a world where two weeks before, if it happened, it could have ruined it. I think you've had a couple examples where if one or two things happened before or after

selling a business, like within like a month, it could have changed things. Getting sick really matters. Being born like in a healthy place and a healthy family, like things like that. Luck is totally real. And I think that we dismiss it too often. Yeah, I think I agree with that. I would say luck is real. I would also say a big part of luck is in your control and a small part of luck is outside

of your control. So most of the luck you experience in your life, there's a whole bunch of things at the beginning, being born in a certain place, healthy, your parents, whatever. Those are outside of your control. A lot of what happens after that is in your control. And we've done the, there's a podcast episode called Four Levels of Luck where we talk, you know, on Framework Friday where we talk about. actually manipulating luck to be to go towards your advantage if that makes sense there is a set

of actions you can take that will increase the amount of luck you end up having in your life and this is not like you know hold crystals or something like that it's like more practical uh tangible stuff um okay the last part of that that i'll say is i remember when i was i had moved to san francisco and i met michael birch the guy i came to work with because again proximity's power i just took the job because i was like oh i get to sit next to this guy this guy's like a billionaire who's built four successful internet companies. Well, what is the thing I want to do? Build a successful internet company.

I think this is the place to sit. And I was talking to him and I was trying to figure out like, did this guy just get lucky or what happened? Because a lot of people, I think, would look at him and say, oh, he got lucky. Because the thing he sold two years later, Bebo, he sold it for $850 million, two years later, a year later, AOL wrote it off for like, you know, a giant tax right off and just like, and nobody uses Bebo now, Facebook won and Facebook beat it. And so some people,

say, oh, he got lucky, right? You know, he sold it for whatever. And I definitely don't think that's true because he's built like multiple companies that have been successful. But what I figured out, the thing I ended figuring out was it's not lucky that he won, but it is lucky how much he won. So he was going to be successful either way. But whether that number was 20 million, 80 million, or 800 million, there was a large

degree of luck and timing that was outside of his control that contributed to that. He could just easily, just as easily have been an 80 million guy versus an 800 million guy. And that I don't think was necessarily in his control. That was right place, right time, right circumstances, you know, the right person had the right drinks at the right bar next to the right person. And I think that, you know, the magnitude of success is a lot more based on luck, not the appearance of six, not the existence of the success. He was going to be successful no matter what. All right. And I'm going to jump around.

Another one, Ivy League-ish schools, so I don't know how we're going to define that, but a top 20 university is totally worth it. Even if that means that you have to go into a lot of debt, I think it's totally worth it. I think state schools where you get some type of in-state tuition and you still get a college experience, totally worth it. Most everything in between, if you have to go into debt for it, I think it's absolutely not worth it. You're like where I went to school Where I went, I went to Belmont University

I was fortunate, I got a little bit of a scholarship And my parents paid for it for 100% not worth it It was at the time I think 30 or 40 grand a year And it's a no name university that It's just completely irrelevant 100% not worth it But I know people who went to I my wife went to an Ivy League school I know people like you went to Duke And like you have a handful of connections

If you go to Stanford you have all these connections that seem 100% worth it. And here's another thing. If you have Stanford on your resume, you're going to at least get the interview. This is true. If you look at how people recruit, they just got to scroll through an Excel sheet

and it just says where you graduated, Bellarmine and Kentucky, that costs $60,000 a year or whatever it is, that is not the same as Stanford or Darth, Darth, Darthman. Like, you're just automatically going to have an increased likelihood of getting that interview. But even more important than that,

you're going to meet people who have been, maybe been around the world, have rich parents, like that stuff actually matters and actually those connections and that influence on your life, it really actually matters and it's worth going into debt to debt.

I kind of disagree here. So I went to Duke, which is not technically an Ivy League school, but is like considered up there with, Ivy League is actually like a sports thing, but like, you know, whatever. It's considered like a top school. And it wasn't worth it for me

because I was not ready to figure out how to make it worth it. Right. It's what you. you make of it, it is not going to be handed to you just by showing up. And I had the total, I had totally the wrong mindset. I thought I'm here. I got to, I don't know, do the thing I've been doing to get here. Get good grades. You know, eventually graduate, pass the test, you know, go to med school, do whatever I'm supposed to do. It was like a track. And there are some people

who made it worth it, the people who were like, yo, we got these resources for free or I'm to go and meet these two professors or I'm going to get exposure to these other classes that I want to learn about or I'm going to use my time here to socialize plus spin up some side hustles because man, there's no better time to find co-founders and build a startup than when you're in college. Like there were some people who had that right mindset. My light bulb is not on, right? Like now I got this floating ass light bulb. There was no light bulb on at that time. And so I misused it. I think the majority of people misuse it. I did have one phone call that was really important. And I'm just going to say it out loud here because if there's somebody who

needs to hear this, you know, I got lucky that my dad gave me this phone call. Maybe your, maybe your dad doesn't have the same sort of wisdom that mine did. So I'm going. I'm going. I was like, hey, he's like, how's it going? And I was like, I don't know, it's okay. He's like, what do you mean? Like, how's your, you know, how's school? And I was like, well, grades aren't great. He's like, oh, man, what would happen? I was like, no, they're not terrible. I'm not failing. I just like, you know, I'm a B minus student here. And like, you know, I've been getting A's in high school. So B minus was like, no, not very good.

He's like, all right. That's all right. He's like, are you trying? And I was like, yeah, I'm trying. But man, like everybody here's smart. Like, you know, everybody here is just as smart as me, if not smarter. And they all work harder than me. And I'm trying to figure out this whole hard work thing.

But like, you know, just going to be honest with you. It's like these guys just live in the library. And I just don't even like, I just figure it out where they go. They go to the library. they go to office, I was like, I didn't even understand where people were going with their free time. That's what they were doing. Were your, was your dad paying? Yeah, parents were paying for it.

So this is what I told him. I go, you know, you're paying a lot of money for me to go here. And, you know, I could go to UT, you know, state school. It'd be, I think, 10 times cheaper or something like that, like five times cheaper maybe. I was like, you know, if you want me to, like, I'm willing to transfer, by the way, just because, like, I don't think I'm going to do that well here. And so I don't think it's worth it for you to pay this. amount of money. And so I told him that. And he goes, but I had been telling him, he's like,

he goes, why do you say that, you know, you're not like good there? And I was like, well, like, dude, my, my, this guy who lives next door to me, he's like a freaking genius. He's like, you know, he just gets the physics stuff right away. And then he's also good outside of class. Like, you know, in the summers, he goes and he drives an ambulance and the Palestinian warfront just for fun. And like, yeah, that's how he spends the summers. Like, you know, I'm over here picking boogers with you. Like, like, and, you know, like, I don't even know what to do in December. These guys all got plans and internships and this and that.

And like this guy's uncle works at JP Morgan. He's doing that thing. That's the point. And I was like, and he goes, yeah, that's the point. He goes, that's why you're there. You're not there for the classes. You're there because when everybody around you is like that, it will just raise your standards. You won't even know what mediocre looks like.

You think you're mediocre. But that's because you're hanging out with exceptional people. If I take you and put you in a state school, you're not going to have as many exceptional people around you who for them that's normal. And he goes, so, you know, the point of being in college for you to go to that school is not so you could graduate at the top of the class and get the best grades and be the smartest kid in the classes. It's so that that becomes your network and that becomes your normal.

And he's basically said something to that effect. So you're proven my point, by the way. It's pretty deep. You're kind of proven my point. I know, I know. So I'm saying like that is the saving grace of it. I don't know if the, I don't know, like that light bulb went on for me halfway through. Then I started to focus.

on, oh yeah. Then once I realized that, I started to get to know those people. Before that, I was like, oh, they're just different. I'm going to stay away. And like, I don't know. I got to find people who are like me who are just basically bumming around here who don't know what to do. Instead, I was like, oh, the point is to be hanging out with these people and become more like them and not feel like I'm competing with them or intimidated by them. All right. I've got a few more. And I'm going to actually merge a couple of them. So another one, having a technical skill, if we're talking about internet companies, this mostly means like being able to like code or design.

In my case, it was writing, which actually I think counts, but it's a little bit less more important. But having a technical skill, like in training to have a skill set is a massive, massive advantage. And I think being a generalist is not,

that is just a bullshit excuse, but you should actually be good at at least one thing. And particularly coding or design would be better, but copyrighting counts as well. And there's a few other things. Sales actually, I think, can count. But you need to. be good at something. And I think that most people don't do that. You need to be great at something. You

got to like train for years to acquire a skill and then go beyond that. But you need a skill. And I think it's a massive advantage and people dismiss that as being a generalist. And that's just like self-masturbation. That is a bull crap excuse. In reality, you should be, you just try to get great at something. You know what's the funniest version of a generalist. So generalist already is like you're teetering on the edge of just being a bullshitter. Yeah. It's people who call themselves a polymath. Have you ever heard somebody call themselves a bullshit? Dude, yes. That's like people who call themselves a contrarian. It's like, dude, if you got to label it, you're probably not it. You can't be the one who calls yourself a polymath, nor can you call yourself a contrarian.

It's other people who got to point it out. That's when that label works. It's like you can't nickname yourself brain. It doesn't work that way, you know? You got to you either you either is or you a Yeah. No, no, that's not how that works. Other people can call you humble. You can all get to call yourself humble. Yeah. So polybiz is like the, you've, you've, you've, you've fallen over the fence like humped, dumpty, and now you're fully in bullshit land when you're calling yourself a polymath. So, okay, that's my, that's my rant on that. I think you're 100% right. You got to have some what do we say. You got to have some attributes. Yeah. You got to bring some attributes, man. You got to have some size, strength, time. You got to have attributes. You can't just be a dope.

I hired a guy that I thought was going to be great because he was like, you know, saying all the He was hustling. He was saying all the right things. And within a month, I realized, guys got no attributes. He's got to have some attributes. What are you good at? What can you do?

Oh, man, I can help with anything. Okay, you can help with anything. What can you, what problem can you go solve? What are you great at? If I hand you this thing, what can you just nail this part of it? I would also consider myself somewhat of a generalist, but it's, you can only really,

what people mean when they're actually a good version of a generalist is they're great at, one thing, but they decided not to just specialize as that one tool for the rest of their life. And they've decided to go broader. But they got that in their back pocket. One or two core skills. They're amazing at paid marketing. They're amazing at copywriting.

They're amazing at building at, you know, coding. They're amazing at sales. And they could just do that as their job. And they could be, you know, in the top 10% of people if they did that just as their job. Not the top 1%, right? Because they're not specializing and being like, I'm going to hone this craft. every day for the rest of my life. But they're in the top 10% already at that. And then they're in the top like 30% at four or five other things. That's a real generalist. Not somebody who's just

average at everything. Or good at nothing. Or good at nothing, right? Yeah. What did Rhonda Rousey called it? A DNB? You remember that? What's that mean? She goes, she was talking about when she was on the top and the O.C. And she goes, all these other girls are just dnbs they just do nothing bitches and i was like wow that is an incredible phrase and so in my head when i hear of a generalist i'm like let me make sure you're actually not just a dnb um yeah dude a dude nothing bitch like you need to do something and in it or like in your case your skill set could actually be like charisma and like attracting and recruiting people and like putting them in the right direction that that's a skill set you know leadership is a skill set uh getting things started that that and be

like the initial match that gets like a fire started. I think that's a skill set. But I think having a skill and actually being great at something that's really important. All right, I'll give you a few more. Assume that people don't change. I think that's like a safe rule. You know, we have this attitude. Maybe it's an American thing.

I don't know where it's just like you can change. And I do believe that's possible. You know, I've had demons in the past that I've overcome. I know a lot of other people who have had things that they've overcome. That shit does take place. It's fairly rare. And if you are a person that talks to the talk and you don't walk the walk, you will never change.

And if I meet someone like that, I just assume, oh, they're just always going to be like that and they will not change. No amount of encouragement is going to make them change. Sometimes that happens. Assume it won't. And I used to have a different attitude when I started my company. I'm like, oh, I'll just get these people and I'll teach them how to be great, yada, yada, yada.

as I've grown with this pod and talk to people, I just, the people who act a certain way have always acted that way. Yeah, there's, my sister says this. She goes, no, no, people change for the worse. Like, they will decay more often than they're going to be like turning it around and like, you know, going from A to B. And so I think you're right. That is the working assumption. You know, innocent until proven guilty, you know, same till proven different is how I feel with people right? Exactly. You got to show that something is changing.

I am not going to assume. And I'm not going to be that, you know, the stereotypical, like the woman who wants to fix him. It's like, don't, I'm not that. I don't want to be that when I recruit people anymore. No, I'd rather just recruit people who are great and like just let them do their thing versus somebody that I'm going to train and groom and turn around a project. It's like, why do all that effort? No bonus points for making it harder.

I can find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better. All right, the last two. So I actually don't think necessarily that the time and effort put into a project is going

to dictate the outcome. I think to build like a company, now I would have to like put numbers on it. To build a company that like, like, makes you potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, you don't necessarily have, you can achieve that by having balance. But I think to have these massive outsized world-changing companies, things that create tens of billions of dollars in 10, 15 years, and have a meaningful impact in the world, like a Tesla or something crazy like that, or a stripe, something like that, I think that working 80 hours a week, raising lots and lots of money and having zero balance

is 100% needed. That said, I think you can still achieve a huge amount of success compared to the average Joe and actually do it working 40 hours a week or in some cases after a while, less. And that's like an interesting dichotomy, but I think it's true. Yeah, I'll go with that. I like that. What else you got? Any one more?

Last one. And this is like an, this is one of the very. few irreversible decisions. So having some type of success and taking a meaningful amount of risk, before you have a family, meaning you have less time, you've got less responsibility. Unfortunately, it's an irreversible decision. But getting an early-ish win early in your career is 100% a huge advantage. And you are at a massive disadvantage by having a young family and not having like achieve something and then wanting to go achieve it. It's not impossible.

But like taking those risks early on, people should be encouraged to do that more because it is life changing. Yeah, I think so. Paul Graham has this essay, the hero. I don't remember the name of it. But he basically was like, assume I forgot the exact metrics. I read this a long time ago. I was in my early 20s and I like stood out to me.

He was like, assume you start out with seven points as an entrepreneur. And these are your set the seven points is like your capacity to like take risks and like achieve what you want. And then he's like for every one of these things like, you know, minus one. Right. It's like mortgage and whatever minus one. Kids minus two. You know, and he's basically like, you know, you can still do it. But your margin of error and the difficulty that you're going to have and the stress and the stress you're going to have pulling this off.

Like assume you are sort of sapping your. your life mana, your points in terms of how much ammo you have to go attack this thing, it's being sapped by each one of these factors. And I don't remember what all of them were, but it's worth, you know, go and find this essay. Because I think it's actually a true. It's an uncomfortable truth. People don't like this because it doesn't sound politically correct because, like, you know, the politically correct thing to say is you can do it.

You could do anything. And you could argue, and you should, by the way. If you're 40, you shouldn't be listening to this part. you should be saying, screw that. I got all the wisdom. I got my purpose, my kids,

I got the experience that a 20 year old will never have. I have, and yes, you have different advantages. But objectively speaking, it is much easier to take risks. And if you were going to just play it out

in an ideal scenario, you would take your risk earlier when you have less to lose. You have less pressure, less stress, less financial obligations. It's just a more like game theory optimal way to play.

You don't have to play it that way. but it is, I think, sort of objectively speaking, a preferred way to play. But, you know, if you didn't play that way, it's okay, you can still win anyways. So that's the list. That's my unpopular truths, my not awesome stuff to discuss, but I believe it to be true that I've learned from the pod. And I'll end with all of those rules,

wherever I described them as, can be completely broken. And there's tons of examples of all of them being not true. But that's what I believe to be true. So that's my list. Okay, I like it. Let me give you another idea. All right. So I was doing, do you do like gifts, like company gifts for the holiday or something like that?

Do you like send out gifts? You don't seem like a, no. No, that wasn't, that wasn't a me thing. Are you doing that? Warm, tender person who might. You know, gift giving is out my love language, bro. Words of affirmation are. Silent nods of approval.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A pat on the back is the greatest gift. the greatest gift is the lack of criticism that I provided you today. So I was thinking about it. I was like, oh, you know, and I remember at a previous company I worked at the office manager, she was good at the stuff and she would get like everybody's address and then she would send these Harry and David gift baskets.

Have you ever had a Harry and David gift basket? No, what's that? Oh, dude. Imagine somebody's at the door. Who could it be? You go to the door? Hey, we have this amazing, huge gift basket for you. You take it into your kitchen.

You're like, wow, what's going to be in this gift basket? Sam, take a guess. What's in this gift basket? Chocolate, I guess. Could be chocolate. Could have been chocolate. It's not chocolate, though. What else could it be?

Like local foods, like bricks of salami and cheese? It could be slami and cheese. There's a little bit of that. There's a little bit of chocolate. There's a little bit of cheese in there. Pears. They had these jumbo pears. And they know because pears are the most underwere

They are the official fruit of my first million as far as I'm concerned. I agree. These huge delicious pears were in there. And I was like, what the hell is this? And I was like, what is this giant gift that I received? Why is it so awesome? It's called what? Harry and David?

Harry and David, right? So they do gift baskets of all kinds. But this one was a giant pear basket that we got. And I still remember this thing. And I was, dude, you came over to my house. I don't care if you're the cleaner. You're just a guy walking by. I was slinging pairs to you because I had the juiciest pairs that were going to go bad.

They were massive and I needed to offload these things. And everybody asked, oh, wow, where did you get this? I said, my company sent it to me because they love me. And that's how I felt. And so I thought, I always remember this experience. And so then I started digging. I was like, what's up with this Harry David thing, by the way? Oh, man.

They're huge. Harry and David sold to a company that you know of 1,800 flowers for $142 million back in 2014. And they have a couple, you know, main brands of this guy. Harry and David, which is these gift baskets. They have Wolferman, which is gourmet English muffins and other foods like that. And they have stockyards, which is, you know, prime, you know, prime meats, basically. And Harry and David, it's a super seasonal business, fall and winters when they get a lot of their orders. And they got 50 retail stores that, like, you know, help them fill the stuff.

And it got me thinking about Harry David. It got me thinking about 180 flowers. I did a little deep dive. So 100 flowers starts off as a phone number 42 years ago. Literally, it was just 100 flowers. And it goes on to build basically like a $600 million plus business. They, you know, for a long time, it's just the phone number. Then 1985, they start e-commerce because they're like, oh, we need this.

And they basically have like thousands of locations in fulfillment centers, not all owned by them, but like fulfillment partners. Somebody you can send flowers to you. And, you know, basically these guys are, it's like four. It's like a bundle of 14 brands. And let me just give you their revenue last quarter. So they're publicly traded. Yeah. What's that?

Publicly traded. They did $485 million in revenue last quarter. So that means they're now a, what is that? 500 times a quarter. Well, and that's not even a popular quarter. Probably their February revenue like trumps like the, the, you know. Winter's probably their biggest. Well, let's say it's probably a billion and a half a year.

This is pretty safe to say. The gift baskets, which are the Harry and David section, they're doing. they did $148 million last quarter. So that means that's probably like a $500 million your business. Florals was $300 million. And then, yeah, basically they have like whatever. They have some other stuff. They got Cheryl's cookies.

They bought her for $40 million. They got, you know, personalization mail, which is something, I don't know. They bought for $250 million. They got Sherry's berries. Sherry's berries. I love Sherry's berries. Yeah, right? It's great.

Popcorn factory. They bought that for $30 million back in the day. So they own all these brands. So I'm like, okay, this is great. Now, I've also been doing this food gifting thing lately because I'm like you, I'm not a big gifter, trying to get better at it, inspired by our buddy Ramon, who is a prolific gifter. The best gifter, some would say. An absolute savage of a gifter.

So he got me thinking, man, he really highlighted my gifting deficiency. So I said, I'm going to start sending gifts, but I'm not a big plan ahead guy. So day of, where do you get a last minute gift that can get to that person's house, same day, same hour, maybe, maybe it's 11 p.m. I'm trying to squeeze it in before midnight. DoorDash and Uber eats. That's what I've been doing. I will just door dash you food because food is, you know, the universal love language. Yeah, but what are you going to do? Send me a pizza at 11 a.m. That's stupid. I'll send you a pizza and wings. I'll send you four slushies. I'll send you boba tea. I'll send you a Cinnabon. I'll send you, bro, I got options. I got a whole like

menu of my gifting foods that I'll go to because I got to know I got to know what you like right like I know you got that sweet tooth right I might hit you with 16 pints of ice cream and you'll be like this is Sean this is simply too much ice cream I'll be like I know because I love you that much right so I'll just hit you with these kind of these kind of gifts so I think that somebody should build a 1 800 flowers type of brand because the things I'm gifting they're not made for this they're not made to be gifted right the Cinnabon is not made to be sent to a friend for their birthday but I think somebody should build basically birthday eats or last minute gifts on DoorDash on I completely agree as a cloud kitchen I'm just getting stronger as the idea builds uh as a cloud

kitchen nationwide it is optimized for gifts so baskets that are nicely like put a bow on it um handwritten notes that's got to be a part of it uh so something that's going to be able to give you a note or even a little like little trinket that shows that this is a card that this is for the occasion and then help me help you. Help me gift to somebody else is how I feel about this. Now, the Cloud Kitchen is already good, but if you remember back in the day, we had the idea of not just a Cloud Kitchen, but a Clout Kitchen where you partner with a celebrity. So this is where I need your help. We need our celebrity partner. Who is going to be the face of this last minute gift brand, this gourmet gifts brand that we're going to create launch nationwide across

Uber Eats? Who comes to mind? This sounds like a rhetorical question. So, I have a feeling you have someone in mind. Honestly, only person I thought of was Ryan Cicrest and I don't even know why. I just thought, I might as well go with the hardest working man in Hollywood. I haven't seen his face in that app. I think he would like to be in that app. So I'm thinking Ryan C. Chris is a good option. Like, white women like you, you'd be fine.

Universally not hated. A recognizable face. But who else could be, who else could be the guy or the gal? you know, Mariah Carey, she's seasonal. Maybe Mariah's, maybe Mariah's is, maybe she needs to get out of the song game and get into the gift game. I don't know, but I do think this is actually brilliant. I've tried to order one. I'm the last minute gift guy too. And I'll try to order one eight hundred flowers the morning of Valentine's Day. And they, and oftentimes they don't let you. You know? They're just like, it's too late. If you really loved her, you would have done this three days ago. Yeah.

And it's super annoying. So I'm totally on board. I think this is awesome. I think this is great. Can you not do that now? There aren't any good gift basket companies on DoorDash? Like if I open DoorDash right now. So let's open this.

I can't get an edible arrangement. Also a great gift, man. Edible arrangements, wonderful. Yeah. Those are good. And I think you can get some of those. but I think we need a fresh brand. So like,

like, like, they have like, they have the flower and gift boutique on mine at least. Um, and it's flowers, you know, it's just flowers,

right? Like, it's like roses from full foods. A cookie in a bag, right? Yeah. A bath bomb. Come on.

Come on. Come on. You think Mariah and Ryan Seacrests are just going to lose to this? No, man. extravagant. I'm on board. I've experienced the same thing. And I've also studied 1-800 Flowers. 1-800 Flowers is a really interesting company because they will tell you all types of insights in their annual report. And they have so much intel because they own so many brands.

So I'll give an example. And one of their reports, they said, succulents are growing amongst millennials. And I remember reading about that, like in 2018, and I told a couple people about it. And they started succulent delivery businesses geared towards millennials and they kill it. You know, there's now the, the sill. There's another one called, uh, what's that other one called? Yeah, who knows? Millennial, millennial, you know, succulent businesses.

Yeah, I don't know. Dude, and they have so much insight. Or another insight that you can get for one and a hundred flowers is they're like, we're trying to, what do they say? They go, we actually don't make a lot of money from flowers, but we make a shitload of money from like when people buy vases. So I'm like, why aren't you like paint and cool shit on this vase and getting people to like spend more money on it, you know?

Like, why aren't, why don't I see like a free to, or whoever it is, like, painting on like this, like, sick vase and I'll pay you $50 for it. Right. Dude, 1-800 Flowers is actually a really, really, really good business to go and read their annual reports because they have such interesting insight and they've been doing it for, I don't know, how old is it now? It's from the 70s, I think. And so really interesting company of study.

I love that business. I love the gifting business. But their market cap sucks. Why is their market cap so bad? Their market cap is $600 million. Is it really? Yeah, it's horrible. They just like plummeted over the past.

Well, I guess everything has plummeted, but it's been really bad over the past year. That's interesting. I wonder if they think they're getting like, you know, disrupted by something. Yeah, 600 million is the market cap. That sounds. And the guy who runs, it's really interesting. I think the guy who invented it, who founded it, I think his name was Jim McCann and his son now is the CEO. And Jim is like a really interesting guy.

I've had him on the, I've talked to him on the phone a couple times, really fascinating person. And his son is the CEO now. So it's almost like a really weird family. business. Another one that falls in this category, have you ever studied Omaha Steaks? No. So Omaha, do you know what that is? No, but that just sounds like exactly what it is. So Omaha Steaks, it's a mail-order business. They sell steaks. So if you want to buy someone like $200 of like prime rib and filet mignon and chicken and like Bratworths and shit, you order from there and they send it to you and it's an awesome gift. And I believe it's privately owned. They make many,

many, many hundreds. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually north of a billion in revenue. And they were one of the very first companies to take advantage of internet marketing. And so right when the internet got popular, you would see Omaha steak ads everywhere. And they were very, very, very progressive with like they're figuring out how to market on the internet. And they're still really, really fascinating. And it's a really, really interesting company to study. I think it's privately owned. I'm shocked you haven't heard of Omaha Stakes. But you also didn't know who Dali Parton was. So yeah, you're really shocked. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, look up Omaha Stakes. You know, I think they're in like,

the six or $700 million a year in sales range. They're invented or founded in like 1920. They've been around forever. A really fascinating company to study. So they, are they like in, are they mostly in stores or this is like? No, no, no, no. It's 100% online and you got to,

you used to have to call them or it was like a catalog and you like would order stakes. The very first thing it says, the classic gift, a $90 package of steaks. Dude, it's a great gift. Neville, my best friend Neville, who's also my neighbor, his mom, always is buying him, Omaha Steaks. And so whenever he gets an order of Omaha Steaks, we all go to his house and we grill him. It's an awesome gift.

Omaha Steaks is a wonderful gift. I'm shocked you haven't heard of it. No, but I also feel like this could be done with, like, the right influencer partners, like, just do a sort of, you know, a slightly different version of this. This seems like the type of thing that is, you know, it's got a pretty good moat probably because they're like, you know, they probably own the, the production. or something like that. No, that's not what their mode is, I would think. Their moat is the fact that, like, it's been around for so long. And so, like, you saw your parents gift it to people. And then you're like, like, oh, man, what should I get this guy? Like, oh, like, I guess like some fucking Omaha steaks. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, why does Warren Buffett like that? He's like, I don't know. Just because, like, that's just like the default gift that men give their wives. And, like, people have seen their parents do it for years and then they grow up doing it. I don't know. Yeah, local cease candy here near me, they opened up a nursing home in the store because everybody there is so old. It's an incredible. Genius idea on their part.

They're like, hey, actually, just a funeral home in the back. You know, there's like one in five chances you're going to drop in the store. Dude, seize candy is pretty whack. Like, I go and eat it. It's shit, but like it does seem kind of dead at this point. But, you know, I get it. Yeah, warm of it likes it because it's like a dating center for him. Like, I don't know what's going on.

Why is everyone 90 inside Cascar? Is that just my local one here? No, it's always like that. But it is like fire. Like you get some like just some truffles. You ever had a good truffle or a turtle? I'm all about the turtles. Dude,

a turtle is a great chocolate turtle. There's nothing to bat an eye about. But yeah, look up Omaha steaks. Look up 180 flowers. These are really interesting companies to study because like they're also interesting because you think Omaha steaks and you like judge them of like, or at least I did.

I'm like, oh, you know, it's just like some Omaha. company. They can't be that sophisticated. They are incredibly sophisticated, at least in terms of internet marketing. And so they're really interesting to go and study. Right. Okay, cool. Let's cap it here. By the way, there's a bunch of fun stuff coming. So I've got to say, I want to do the studio tour and breakdown of how we did this like studio change and what, you know, what we learned from it, what it cost, all that good stuff. I want to do a plan for next year. We're going to do our annual awards. We're going to drop the new intro.

music. We're going to do all kinds of different stuff. And we're going to talk about where the pod's going. So I want to do that soon. And yeah, I think in the next two weeks, I think we're going to have some fire podcast. Yeah, we got to have, are we going to do the Millie Awards? We got to do the million awards. Yeah. And let's get Andrew Wilkinson booked again. So we can do the Millie Awards. And we have Austin Reef. I'm excited for Austin. So it's going to be a good couple weeks.