My First Million - We decoded the business behind this influencer’s perfect life

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

*Sam’s guide to run your life like a $100M business:* https://clickhubspot.com/dfbn Episode 835: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about people w...ho have turned their lifestyles into a business. — Show Notes: (0:00) escape aesthetics (4:06) putting the life in lifestyle (17:28) Law 25: Recreate Yourself (20:20) Your word is your wand (25:06) unclear words, unclear thinking (27:24) America amazes world cup tourists (33:43) the game of more (49:07) no hedging — Links: • Your Word Is Your Wand - https://a.co/d/05683tU7  • The 48 Laws of Power - https://a.co/d/0ghzjpKk  — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — 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 - Shaan uses Mercury for banking across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/  Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 When I was at the Tony Robbins event, he was like, you think I just woke up like this? I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker. I decided that that's who I needed to be. And then I created him. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. All right. I've got something that every woman listening to this is going to be saying to themselves,
Starting point is 00:00:23 no, duh. But I think it might be interesting to you. There's a chance that your wife has already indoctrinated you on this. But have you heard of this thing called Ballerina Farms? Why does that sound familiar? What is it? What's about Lina Farms? Awesome. I love that you don't know this. All right. So check this out. So there's this woman named Hannah Nealman. And I started following her on Instagram, along with like 20 million other people. She's got 20 million followers across all of her platforms. So definitely was not an early adopters to this.
Starting point is 00:00:51 Yeah. Yeah, you're welcome. But basically, her content is like these like warmly lit videos where it's sort of a little Martha St. Stewartie, and it's her on her farm talking about how she's making like sourdough bread, and she's making, like, getting her own milk from the cows and making, like, different recipes and all this amazing stuff. And it's blown up. And it's this whole category of influencer called the Tradwife. Have you heard that term Tradwife? I've definitely heard Tradwife. Definitely seen the TikToks, which are like somebody churning their own butter. Yeah. So it's sort of like that. And frankly, I don't think. think even Hannah Nealman would call herself a treadwife. But she's got 20 million followers across
Starting point is 00:01:37 all social media. And it's crazy because I think she has like nine kids. And so part of her videos are like her kids running around barefooted. And it's a very calming aesthetic. And I think she's got a, she has a company. It's called Ballerino Farms where they sell sourdough mix. They sell a electro like mix. They sell, I think they sell meat. And at one point they sold milk. And I think it does like 80 or 70 million dollars a year in revenue. That was some. estimates that I saw on like some pretty reputable sites. And it's kind of this phenomenon where now her store, she has a physical store as well as an online store, has become this destination that these young women just like are kind of obsessing over. And I found this to be very fascinating for
Starting point is 00:02:17 a few reasons. But she was just actually in the New York Times last week. And let me read it to you. Let me read one of the paragraphs. She said, you might recognize Midway, Utah as a storybook backdrop to Hallmark Christmas movies like Christmas on Duty. And if you're, you're from Utah, you might recognize it as a village that looks like it's from the Swiss Alps. But if you're a woman with any degree of susceptibility of gigham, aprons, hand-hams, milk cradling on a thick layer of cream, then you might recognize it as this place called Ballerina Farms. Ballerina Farms, which supplies a store in this town, is a working farm about a half-hours drive-away from Midway. And it's in between snow-frosted mountains and cow pastures of rural northern U.S.
Starting point is 00:03:01 Utah, but it's also ballerina farms. It's also a woman named Hannah Nealman, who's a Juilliard-trained ballerina who gave up dancing to become a farmer and mother of nine. And it goes on to like explain the story of how this woman Hannah has blown up, but it comes with a lot of hate what she's done because a trad wife, it comes with a lot of political baggage. It also comes with a lot of, I don't know if you describe it as jealousy of I'm a young woman. I want to live that life, or if I don't like, if I think that this is somehow like anti-feminist, like it comes with all this baggage. But regardless of what like people think about it, it's pretty amazing that this phenomenon is happening. The article says that teen girls were lining
Starting point is 00:03:46 up as if this was Disney World. And I think this is so fascinating. And I wanted to talk a little bit about this like traditional life movement, but more so what I want to talk about is how she has gone all in on a lifestyle. And I think that if you're creating a brand, particularly around content, I want to talk about like the tactics that I think you can use around this, because I think it's super, super underrated. So when you say lifestyle, I almost think, I'm not even sure if that's the right word. It's either, the word I would have used is either aesthetic or escape. So I noticed this with, you know, my wife and my mom, they love to watch Bridgeton. And it's the crown. And there's this fascination with like this kind of Royal England lifestyle or Bridgeton,
Starting point is 00:04:32 which is like this like fantasized version of that. And I think that in the same way that dudes will get really into sci-fi or Game of Thrones or different sort of gladiator, there's like, you know, the whole meme around guys fantasizing about the Roman Empire. I think that there's a handful of these kind of escape aesthetics. And if you position your products as part of that estate, aesthetic. I think that you differentiate from the, you can sell the same commodity product, but differentiate it. And what I would want to see is instead of people doing it for apparel, which is where this is most common, right? Apparel is the classic way that people do this.
Starting point is 00:05:12 You'll find apparel brands that are golf brands and people wear it who don't play golf. People buy running shoes, they don't run. And people will buy, you know, aesthetics that are, you know, summer in the Hamptons or whatever it is. And I think that it would be really interesting for people do this with like dental care, for people to do this with supplements, to do this in categories that you wouldn't expect it in. I think it would work. I think that if you created the same, you know, whether it's like creatine, collagen type of supplement brand, but instead of just looking like every other supplement brand, you look like you were part of a different aesthetic, or same thing on any sort of everyday staples, consumables. I wonder what would happen.
Starting point is 00:05:50 I'm not sure it would work, but I really wonder what would happen. Milk. You take a milk, you create a milk brand, but the milk brand looks like way further down the spectrum of like, you know, whether it's farm or even, you know, maybe a different, less expected direction. What do you think about that? Well, what I'm describing is basically when I say lifestyle, I'm putting an emphasis on life. And what I mean by that is I have invested in a couple companies as well as I'm just a fan of certain bits of content where the person goes all in and they live a certain life and they bring me along with them.
Starting point is 00:06:22 And I find that fascinating. And this woman, Hannah, gets a lot of hate because her husband, his father, founded JetBlue. So he's, if he's not a billionaire, he's whatever, he's up there, he's very rich. And so there's a lot of like, well, you can, it's easy for you, this and that, you know, which I think is nonsense. But what I've noticed is that I've started following these people on Instagram, like, there's this one kid who you actually showed me. And he was like, the opening line for his Instagram was, I just graduated college and I had barely any money, but I've decided to move to rural Virginia and open up an Airbnb. And like, there's this, shtick where people actually live the life that they are wanting to live, and then they happen to sell a product that goes along with that life. And the point I want to make is that I think that is super underrated and not enough people do it, and brands could benefit from doing it a lot more than they currently are. So I used to work for this guy named Mike Wolf. Mike was the star of the show called American Pickers, which when it was on TV, it still is on TV, but at its prime, it was like
Starting point is 00:07:28 the second most popular show on TV. I think that they would get like six or seven million viewers a week, whereas David Letterman was getting like one or two million. And the way that Mike got the show popular was he actually, and this was in early 2000s, it might have been in the late 90s, where Mike's job was he would drive around a country and go to old barns, find interesting stuff, and meet the people and find the stories of the people and the objects that he was buying. And he would bring like a little camcorder. This was before smartphones. And it got picked up. and it became this whole lifestyle. It was called pickin. And there was this small niche that was quite large of people who identified with being pickers. They love collecting antiquing. I also, I'm an investor of this
Starting point is 00:08:09 thing called... All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life. And the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have took me 10 years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show. There's this guy named Brent. Brent was partners with Ryan Holiday. And do you remember years ago, I think in 2014 or 13, there was an old abandoned mine town that was for sale for like $2 million. It was 500 acres.
Starting point is 00:08:55 You remember that? In California or Utah? Where is it? California. And then the pandemic hit. And Brent, who is kind of the main guy leading the charge, he was like, screw it. I'm going to go live in that town. And now he has a YouTube channel with millions of followers.
Starting point is 00:09:09 And if you go to YouTube and type in Ghost Town Living, every single one of his videos gets a million views. It's crazy. And he's documenting how he's turning this town into a hotel. And it's been a huge pain in the butt because that's like a lot more work than a cast iron skillet to sell. But it's just like so fascinating to me because I think that going all in on something with your life is a more fun and will increase the likelihood that you will succeed. And I think that there's a framework behind it. I think that you have to find a thing that sings to you, that you're interested in. So the easiest one. So basically the moment you start
Starting point is 00:09:51 typing on a computer, by the way, this concept gets kind of lame. And so this mostly only works for products where the creating of the thing is the content. And like easy ones are like farming or fitness. Those are like the easiest ones. So for example, I worked in finance or I worked in tech and I said, screw it all. I'm moving to a farm because I want to eat better meat or I want to drink better milk or I want to make some supplement or I think college or not collagen. What's the breast milk that comes out right with the baby's born? Chalostrum. Yeah. Like that That's like all the rage, where it's sort of like there's a story arc of I was this person, I want to become this person, come along this journey.
Starting point is 00:10:35 And for the few of you who truly are bought into this, I happen to have a product that you can buy. But the making of the product needs to be the content. This is timely because the World Cup has gone on. Have you ever seen World Cup Dad? So basically there's this guy, Zach Duke, and he posts on TikTok one day that he's, I think he's 34, 35 years old. He's like, I'm a 35-year-old dad who's never played soccer, and I'm training to be on the World Cup team.
Starting point is 00:11:03 And he's got kind of like a dad bod, he's got a little bit of a gut. And he's like, you know, he's kind of like, he's definitely athletic at the same time. And so he's like this weird, like, you know, immediate visual hook of this unathletic-looking guy, but he's doing pretty athletic-looking things. And he says he's never played soccer and that he's going to make the World Cup. Like, what does that mean? And he went mega-viral. So it was basically, can a dad who's never played soccer, make it to the 2026 World Cup?
Starting point is 00:11:28 And he started training, like, hard every day. He would post everything that he's doing. And he would, he didn't say, like, I want to see what can happen. He was like, I will make it. It was very, like, manifestation oriented. Like, I'm doing this. And so the haters loved it in the comments. But then there were some people who were pretty inspired by, like, what he was doing.
Starting point is 00:11:47 And like, hey, it's actually not bad. He actually is looking way more fit. Hey, actually, he does have pretty good touch. You know, he's not bad. and so he started doing this and he actually like you know he kind of made it pretty far so he got in legitimately great shape
Starting point is 00:12:01 if you go look at his videos we put him on the screen here he got really got pretty good at soccer like if for a guy who never touched the soccer ball and then he started getting like all these like brand deals and opportunities to play on these like small like three on three seven on seven the Adidas Cup and so all this like kind of amazing stuff happened
Starting point is 00:12:16 like no he didn't make it onto the US national team but you don't have to he transformed his life you don't have to I bet his videos get more views than eight of the 11 guys on the starting team on the actual World Cup team. And so in a way, he like, yes, he didn't make it, make it. But, man, that's pretty impressive how far you get. This got changed his own life just with doing what I call like man on a mission content.
Starting point is 00:12:40 So I have these like different content buckets in my head. One is called man on a mission. Another one is called, like you said, like this sort of escape lifestyle where you say, oh, this is just how I live. Like, I'm just the type of person who does this. There's this woman who goes viral on Twitter because she just walks every day and eats like natural food. So she'll just post a tweet. I think we talked about her before. She posed a tweet in the tweet's basically like walked, you know, six and a half miles and ate a chocolate cake.
Starting point is 00:13:05 And it'll just be pictures of like the scenery where she walked at a giant chocolate cake that looks really great. It'll have like 10,000 likes on that one picture. And she just posts the same thing every day. That's the whole content schick. I think it's kind of amazing. This idea of like you can make this decision to become this person, you don't have to be the person at first. So for example, one of the reasons I love the man, the entrepreneur, Ralph Lauren, is because he had this great line where he was like, you know, some people, he's like, I'm a Jewish guy from like New York City and yet I sell like Western wear. Sometimes people would criticize me. But the fact is, is I would want to be more brave. And so I would sometimes wear like vintage military gear.
Starting point is 00:13:48 or I would want to be a little more adventurous and I would dress like a cowboy. And you could kind of tease me for being cosplaying, but the fact is, I eventually would go on a farm and I would dress like this and you become this thing. Like I make a decision to become a little bit of a farmer and I own a ranch now.
Starting point is 00:14:05 The point that I want to make to the listener is, and also to myself, I'm learning about this as well and I'm being inspired by it, is you can sort of just change who you are publicly and you don't need to start at all. In fact, probably you could, it's a better story to start at a horrible place where you're nothing like the person who you want to be or the aesthetic that you want to be. And I just think that it's A, more fun to do it and B, it will increase the odds that you will succeed. This guy who I'm going to talk with on Thursday, his name's Mark O'Brien.
Starting point is 00:14:34 So check this guy out. So his old photos, what I used to look at him, he was a normal looking real estate guy in New York City and he wore a suit. This guy is AI? He looks like AI. No, but this guy has a lot. a really striking look. And now, on all of his more recent photos, he's wearing, like, a white t-shirt, and he's doing manly stuff, like restoring townhomes.
Starting point is 00:14:55 And his whole schick, which from an outside, I'm going to talk to him on Thursday, so I'll get a better sense of it, is he finds old brownstones in Brooklyn, and you literally will see him bring a sledgehammer and start, like, renovating it, like breaking the stuff and explaining the story behind it. And this guy, if you look at his old photos, was wearing a suit. And he just looked like had this normal real estate guy. And he kind of like leaned into this like, you know, this lifestyle to where now I think he actually is that person. And it's, I've been enamored by by following his journey.
Starting point is 00:15:28 And I'm just realizing how powerful it is. There's this other company called, I think it's called Maui Nui. They make beef jerky made out of the venison in Maui. You know what I'm talking about? Right. Yeah. And if you go to their Instagram handle, it doesn't say anything. about how they're actually like making the stuff
Starting point is 00:15:47 or how like, like, you know, like for hunters and things like that, you could actually show them like doing the hunt, setting it up and how they're doing it ethically and why this is better. I just don't think that there's enough brands who are doing a good enough job of bringing you along because it's scary. It seems stupid at first. You might look dumb.
Starting point is 00:16:03 And I just think that it's far more compelling and more people should do it. I think you couldn't like figure out what are the innate feelings that we all have right now. I think that there's this innate feeling. I think there's categories. of like cleanliness, both in terms of the food that you eat, but your home, of like, feeling clean and feeling tidy. I think there's this whole mother category of how do you care and protect your children the best. I think there's just another category of people who want to master something and be craftsmen and be great at stuff. And I just think there's this massive
Starting point is 00:16:32 opportunity. It's always existed, though, to look at what popular shows and content existed in the 90s and 2000s and just redo that with your phone and bring people along with you. You know, you could be like the Anthony Bourdain, where you look at restaurants and you can start selling products. And I just think that it's, well, people will often say, well, there's so many other people doing this. Well, there's always room for more. There's always room for better. And it's just an underrated tool to go all in on a lifestyle and then eventually sell a product. Yeah. On one hand, what you're saying sounds like you're saying there's this great opportunity, which I think makes most people think there's this new opportunity.
Starting point is 00:17:10 No, it's not new. And I think in this situation, it's, no, what you're saying is not new. it's being done, it's been done, and it will always be done. But it is easier than ever. It can still be done. And in some ways, it's easier than ever to create. It's easier than ever to be discovered. It's also harder than ever because it's more competitive, right?
Starting point is 00:17:27 And you get to choose which part of that narrative you're going to feed your energy into. I have a couple of examples that work here. First, I'm just going to read you from Robert Green, who came on the podcast. A really interesting guy, wrote 48 Laws of Power. Law number 25, recreate yourself. It says, do not accept. roles that society foists on you. Recreate yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting
Starting point is 00:17:53 others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions. Your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life. That's exactly what we're talking about here. Exactly. The power to reinvent yourself, to dramatically do it and to never bore the audience. Have you ever heard of a guy named Anthony, I think his name's Anthony Mahavik, you know this guy? No, no. What's he do? Well, Anthony J. Mahirovich, born into a family that had a lot of trouble, blah, blah, blah. He ended up reinventing himself as a guy you might know named Tony Robbins.
Starting point is 00:18:27 And so that's Tony Robbins' birth name. And when I was at the Tony Robbins event, many years ago, 10 years ago, maybe, he tells a story where it was part of the Q&A. It wasn't really part of his script. He was like, you think I just woke up like this? You think I was just born like this? You think I just stood up on a stage and suddenly talk like this? You think I looked like this?
Starting point is 00:18:46 You think I had the power to compel people like this? And he just goes, you think I woke up with discipline? One day I just had discipline suddenly. And he was like, no. And he goes, I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker. It goes, I created him. I decided that that's who I needed to be. And then I created him.
Starting point is 00:19:04 And he goes, and now it seems like, yeah, that's just how it is. But he goes, you have to decide for yourself, like who you are going to make yourself into. And I just remember feeling like that was just a very powerful way of saying it. There's no accident. You know, like the sort of the bitter and the haters will always say it's like, oh, it was luck. You were given something. It was, yeah, it's easy for you to say, no, no, no, no. It's easy for you to say that.
Starting point is 00:19:31 It's actually incredibly hard to do what I've done. And I think people should take pleasure in the fact that you can today on the drop of a hat. You could right now, you could be listening to this podcast right now. You could pause it. You could open up your Apple Notes app and you can literally write down like, you know, yesterday I was this and today I'm this. And you can start to reinvent yourself like starting in any given moment. There's incredible power once you realize that. And I think there's a lot of power by labeling yourself. So like you wake up the next day. I remember when I was like mildly fit and I woke up the next day and I was like, I'm an athlete. And I used to joke with you. I was like, I'm a fitness influencer now. You said it with a smile, but you weren't joking. No, I was like, and I think that like you can tease me and make fun of me and all you want, and I think I deserve it. But like there is power to like labeling yourself as something and you are that. Not I'm working to become this.
Starting point is 00:20:22 There's this old school book. It's impossible to read. It's like so dense at this point. But the title itself actually tells you everything you need to know. It's called Your Word is your wand. I think it's by Florence Scoville. That's a great title. And the basic idea is that the words that come out of your mouth are like spells that you cast.
Starting point is 00:20:39 You cast on yourself, you put yourself in a trance, as well as others around you. And so be very careful the words that come out of your mouth. My trainer always says this, he goes, when I say something differently than I used to say it, you know, one day I'm going to versus I am or I do or I haven't done this yet. The word yet is actually a very powerful word. It implies that it is inevitable. For example, my company that I named 10 plus years ago, before I had anybody, before I made my first million, My LLC was called inevitable outcomes.
Starting point is 00:21:10 And I basically thought, it's an inevitable outcome that I would be successful. And I'm going to invest in other things that I view to be inevitable as well, that they will be successful. You know, my trainer made this shirt that said, I am.
Starting point is 00:21:22 And it said the two most important words in the English language are I am, because whatever comes after it defines your destiny, decides your fate. Just take it as a test. Just try to riff off top of your head. I'm the kind of guy who,
Starting point is 00:21:34 what comes out after that? Is it I'm the kind of guy who, you know, when things get tough, I fold. And then you can define like whatever you say is true, right? It will be true. It will always be true. And so, you know, I think one of my superpowers is that I'm a pretty analytical guy by nature, by training. And if you can marry that with a little bit of the soft stuff, right, not just EQ of
Starting point is 00:21:56 how you deal with people, but the sort of, you know, the sort of manifestation world, that sounds like total hocus pocus. But when you start to realize, like, actually the way you think will show you. shape the actions you take, right? What you believe will change what you do, and what you do changes your results. Once you realize that, you will approach things somewhat differently. I think being willing to go kind of Eastern Western in that way, I think it can take you very far. My most annoying trait, according to my wife and probably everyone who knows me is I'm like a stickler for words. So when people say like, well, it's just semantics, I'm like, yeah, it is just semantics.
Starting point is 00:22:29 And it's just really important. We are purposely using certain words. So like, for example, I'll say to someone like, well, what do you think about? what do you think about this? I'll say, I don't know. It's like, well, I didn't ask what you? No. I said, what do you think? So, man, what's the point of words?
Starting point is 00:22:41 What's the point of words if we're not going to use the right words? That's right. I remember being at Twitch after we got acquired, and on the ninth floor at Twitch was the main meeting room. And that's where the CEO Emmett would sit in, the COL at the time, Sarah. She would said, they'd sit at the head of the table. And then basically every 30 to 45 minutes, a new team would come in. So then the trust and safety team comes in.
Starting point is 00:23:04 The growth team comes in. The mobile team comes in, the international team comes in. And they basically come and they just dump their problems on the table. And then the CEO and the CEO would try to help them work through it. And I remember sitting at a bunch of these tense meetings. And I thought at the beginning, I thought, man, this Emmett guy is kind of a genius, but he's an idiot. Like, he's really smart. But man, he gets focused.
Starting point is 00:23:23 He gets hung up on the dumbest things because he would always get hung up on words. And you could tell that the teams hated it, that he would get into these what he would call the Socratic debates about things. And he would just be debating the team endlessly. about the most like minor sounding things. And over time, it came to appreciate that, well, there are sometimes that he took it too far. There's a cost doing it, but there was a great benefit in doing it too.
Starting point is 00:23:46 I remember in one meeting he was talking to the team that decides the homepage, and they said something like, oh, yeah, but that's algorithmic versus editorial. And he just like got hung up on us. He's like, what does editorial mean? And then they like laughed, and he's like, no, what's the debt? What do you mean when you say the word editorial? and they're like, well, there's like editors who pick it, so it's editorial. He goes, and who are these editors?
Starting point is 00:24:08 And how do they pick it? And it's not like he had some destination in mind that he was leading them into some trap. He literally wanted to understand the specific meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouth and get a shared understanding of what each of the words mean because of his view, and his view, it was like, we will never get to the right solution. If you say words, that mean one thing. And I say those same words and they mean another thing. We're screwed.
Starting point is 00:24:33 And so he would always go to this painstaking, like, semantical debates with people that for a while seemed like, are we just going in circles here? Like, what? Does this really matter? And, you know, there was a bit of a method to his madness that you saw play out, you know, maybe not in that first meeting. But three weeks from then, or four weeks from then, or seven weeks from then, when the teams then realized they had to be really precise in their language. And they had to really know the details of their shit, because it would be tested. And even just knowing that he might ask, made sure that they came in knowing everything about what they were going to. to say in being way more precise about their thinking, their level of clarity on their thinking.
Starting point is 00:25:08 My sophomore year of high school, we had to take a class, a speech class. That was the best class I've ever taken in my life. And the best lesson that they taught us was, you must always define your terms. And I deeply believe that that to be true. For anything that you're discussing, you have to deeply define your terms. The downside of that is that you look like an asshole. and it's pretty annoying. It is quite annoying when we do this, where someone will say something, you're like, what do you mean? And they'll say it again. It's like, those words don't make sense to me. Can you use other words? And what you find is that if they have unclear words, they have unclear thinking. And so it becomes really obnoxious and annoying, but I do think it's really powerful. I just saw this other story.
Starting point is 00:25:54 It was on 60 minutes last night or the week before. You probably have never heard of this. It's called the Mountain Pass Mine. And the story on 60 Minutes was basically these two hedge fund guys. And I think that they were like mildly successful, but they somehow raised money. And they, I think they raised $20 million. And they bought a mine in, I think at the border of Nevada and California. And now, if you Google Mountain Pass Mine, I think the company name is called MP Materials Corp. It's a $10 billion publicly traded company. And the whole story, which was really cool and they had to use the platform of 60 minutes as opposed to their own, and I think they should use their own, was two hedge fund guys who knew nothing about nothing are now wearing hard hats, driving an F-150, and they're in the thick of it. They are literally learning this as they go, although it's been 10 years now, so they've probably have learned a lot. But they're like these yuppies who knew nothing about blue-collar work. Now they're living that life, and it's paying off. And I heard this story, and I'm like, I'm so in. I'm so in on a mine. Well, I've heard of M.P.
Starting point is 00:27:00 materials. I didn't know the backstory of Mountain Pass mine. How have you heard of that? Hedge fund guys. Well, it went public. It was like a SPAC, right? It was like a Tumoth SPAC I'm pretty sure or something like that. He did it? Either he did or he did the pipe or something like that. I'd heard of it at that point. It was like a rare earth company and I was like what are rare earths anyways? And how does this work?
Starting point is 00:27:19 So yeah, I've looked at it just kind of been passing that way, but I didn't know, didn't know the backstory. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done. The brief is written. Everyone's a and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content, that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help.
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Starting point is 00:28:00 coming to America for the World Cup and discovering America for the first time. And it's sort of like when a friend goes into town and suddenly you're like, okay, yeah, let's go to Alcatraz. And you've been living here for five years. You've never been to Alcatraz. But because somebody's visiting, you suddenly will go that week. Right now on social media, there's a whole swath of people. Have you seen these that are going viral?
Starting point is 00:28:18 So Freddie L.A. is one of them. But basically this guy, like, comes to America for the World Cup. And he's just touring through America, kind of like you did when you rode your motorcycle around America. And he's also like this one, for example, we found another surreal place on our way. I know some people will say I'm too positive about everything, but this place is crazy. And he's at an out, like a Bass Pro shop, outdoor world. And it's just pictures of like, you know, there's just the enormity of this place. This giant fish tank, he's like, there's a shooting range inside the store. He's like, they're literally selling rifles in here. And so he's just been stopping at like
Starting point is 00:28:54 buckies. And he's been stopping at like, you know, we found this river in Chattanooga. and we're in a tube and the guy said this. And, you know, at the airport, we asked this. And the guy just gave us a ride. It was incredible. And so he's just like, you know when you have kids and you get to like rediscover the world again because your kids are discovering the world?
Starting point is 00:29:13 And it's like, yeah, you know what? If you take like a straw and you like squish the paper down and then you drop a drop of water on it, it expands like a snake and you're like, and their mind is blown. And you remember when your mind was blown when you were seven and that happened, but you just, you know, took it for,
Starting point is 00:29:29 granted, forgot about, and just throw away all your straw paper now. And so this guy, basically, this is this group of guys on Twitter and Instagram that are coming to America that are just posting all these things that are very, like, run-of-the-mill American things, but they're amazed by it. And it totally, like, makes you proud to be an American in a way and, like, rediscover, like, yeah, do you know what? Like, America's pretty awesome, actually. And we have these kind of amazing things. And actually, have you guys been to Waffle House? I can't wait for for Freddy to go to Waffle House, right? You want him to go to the next sort of like part of real America.
Starting point is 00:30:03 It's like more entertaining than the World Cup to me. Look at the title. German tourist Freddie is going viral as he visits Louisiana on the way to World Cup. That's awesome. Exactly. There's this great book. I'm sharing it now. I don't know how to pronounce their name, but it's Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip.
Starting point is 00:30:22 I read this a few years ago. It's so good. So basically, and it has very few reviews. On Amazon, it has 40 reviews. a paperback copy is $400. And so in 1935, well into the era of Soviet, communist Russia, two Russians came over and they took a road trip throughout America and they described what they're seeing. And this book is one of my favorites. It's so good to hear the history of America from people and like what they're seeing.
Starting point is 00:30:50 And it's very similar to what people would experience now. It's huge and everything's big and like there's processed food everywhere. It's funny. The same stuff in 1935. people would say today. Yeah, I'm into this. So let me, let me show you this one. So this is this Japanese guy. And he goes, USA, a Mexican restaurant. We have not ordered anything yet. And yet the food is already arriving. Chips, salsa, unrequested, free. I stopped the waiter. We have not earned these. They just come with the table. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation. Wade carefully. Return to the proper season with an interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you could pay for dinner. It is not an appetizer. It is a declaration. We trust you. Eat. I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. And then I must report calmly. This basket is empty. And new one appears. Did we refill? It's bottomless. Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagine. My friend warned me, don't fill up on chips, dude. Too late. I accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished. An unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not hungry. I was. not uncomfortable. I had been defeated by courtesy. Generosity arrives before the request can be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made peace with my basket. One basket. Two at
Starting point is 00:32:10 most. Who am I deceiving? There's no number of baskets I refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa. And I intend to honor all of it. That's beautiful. There's no way that's real. Is that real? I don't think it's real, but it's hilarious. So I don't know if it's real or not. But have you seen all the Japanese, like, lore that's just being honored in America for the World Cup? Have you seen what's going on? No, man. You're World Cup deep. I'm in New York City.
Starting point is 00:32:33 I just got done, like, burning him on a bus because of the Knicks. It's like, you know, one time I went to this basketball game and I was in the owner's suite and there was just all these like Instagram hose basically there. And they all had their phone out. And I was like, wow, they're so, like, they're so into capturing like the second quarter of this game. And I realized all the phones were pointed at them, not at the game. And that's me with the World Cup right now. I'm the ho. Where I don't watch the game.
Starting point is 00:32:56 I only watch the crowd. And there's this incredible thing with the Japanese crowd where they're all waving these blue, well, looks like blue like kind of like, is it flags? What is that? No, it's a trash bag.
Starting point is 00:33:07 And so they use trash bags to cheer. And at the game, it's kind of like their version of carrying a sign or waving a foam finger or a flag. And they were like, why are they all waving trash bags? Like, oh, because then we can cheer. It makes sound.
Starting point is 00:33:20 It has a color. But then we can just clean up after ourselves. on the way out. They clean up their whole section using the trash bags at the end. And they showed the locker room of the Japanese national team. And every single item is folded properly in the middle. The locker room is pristine. And that's how the Japanese soccer team is leaving the locker rooms. And I'm like, God, if Japan couldn't go any higher on my list of like incredible cultures and people that, you know, you sort of have to see it to believe it, they're just, the stock continues to go up.
Starting point is 00:33:50 It's untethered with reality. Before UFC was a thing, there was called Strike Force, and it was a Japanese fighting league or whatever, and they're the best videos to watch because in the crowd, they're silent. And then you hear the punches, and it's really hard to watch almost. And they only cheer on, like, the epic big punches. And it's, like, very strange and awesome at the same time. You know, I think a guy who we both admire, I think he's one of your heroes, definitely one of mine, is Jesse Itzler. and it's this idea of like buying into the lifestyle. And I think that in particular right now,
Starting point is 00:34:25 we're in this phase where people are trying to balance. Like, how do I work hard in my job, and particularly women? How do I work hard of my job and be a good mother? But same thing for fathers. How do I work hard and be a family person? While also being fit, like I see everyone. Did you see Jesse's story on Instagram the other day?
Starting point is 00:34:46 I just know that right now. He's like Uncle Rick. Jesse wrote the song for Go New York Knicks, you know, Go New York, and whatever the Knicks start playing again, that's his story that it brings up, and I love it. I'm not sick of it. So he was at Madison Square Garden when they won, I think, game four maybe,
Starting point is 00:35:05 and he leaves, and he sees this guy who's given, like, Rickshaw rides or whatever, you call it in New York, where it's like the guy's biking and you sit in the carriage behind it, whatever that's called. So he hops in, as billionaires do, and he was like, and that guy's playing the go to your go, go, go. New York go and he's like, that's my song. And the guy's like, no.
Starting point is 00:35:23 And he's like, what's your name? And he looks it up. He's like, that's your song. And he's like, I got to give you a ride around town. So he just rode around all of New York with this guy. And he just posted it. And there's a small set of people that I feel like they don't have any more time than the rest of us.
Starting point is 00:35:37 But they seem to be getting a lot more out of their time. And there's something to be studied and learn. And there's a reason that I get interested in these foot. Nick Gray is one of these people. I think Jesse's one of these people. There's a handful of these people that seem to kind of go with the, whatever way the ball of life is bouncing, they seem to just experience more and have a sort of like tap dancing through life sort of experience. Even when they do hard things, it just seems like, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:59 enjoyable in this way because they're like surrendered into it. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But that's something, I think the art of living well is is not well understood. And, you know, for me, it's a bit of a mission to understand what gets more out of the hours rather than like, always feeling like, if only I had more time than I'd get more. And it's like, actually, I think kind of bullshit. I think, A, you're wasting a ton of time, either doing fake busy work or just on social media. And two, even if I gave you an extra four hours, I don't think you'd get any more out of life. I think you just fill it with more of the same, more of the same feelings you currently are having, whether they're stress or anxiety or any of the others. I've been meeting these people,
Starting point is 00:36:35 so I live in a building in Manhattan, and there's rich people and there's poor people in this building, and I really like that. And we were contemplating, getting a big, we got a great place, but we're like, oh, should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff? And then I met this family that has, it's a family of four, husband and wife and two girls, twins, and the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that. And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. So the mom and dad lived there. And I was like, how do you guys, like, what's your sleeping arrangement?
Starting point is 00:37:06 And they're like, well, mom and dad get the bedroom and we just, we have like this Murphy bed that we sleep in the living room. And part of me was like, obviously, it's like, ooh, I don't want that. But then the other part, they start telling me these stories. and I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out. And I'm like, there's a lot of inconveniences here, but there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time.
Starting point is 00:37:27 And it's kind of nice. And I think that like, we are looking at this other place and I'm like, there's two living rooms. Why? I don't want two living rooms. I want one living room. I want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time. And I think that like there is this inherent want that many of us have, myself included of more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Starting point is 00:37:45 And I just don't think that that is oftentimes the answer. to creating a memorable life. There's an amazing post that's kind of gone a little bit viral. You might have read it by Julie. Yeah. Zao. I read your comment on it. So the blog post is called, yeah, Julie, the blog post is called to all the folks who
Starting point is 00:38:06 were about to be rich. And it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO. And she basically starts with like, you did it. Congrats. Like all the hard work, blah, blah, blah. You led you to this day. Your stock is about to be licked. You're about to be rich.
Starting point is 00:38:19 And she, I think when Facebook IPOed, and so she was kind of like telling a bit of the like, almost like your older sibling like, hey, like, you're gonna go to college, like guess what? It's gonna be crazy a little bit. And here's some things that are gonna happen. And so she's almost describing like what happens from here. And there were so many incredible one-liners in this.
Starting point is 00:38:39 And you know, part of it is like, you know, scientific studies say that like, you know, blah, blah. After one year, lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before. Yeah, exactly. And so there's one line I love. She talked about like the three groups of people from when she saw the Facebook thing.
Starting point is 00:38:55 Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech, like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean, off to find their true homes. Engineers who decided they're not going to code anymore. I saw people become chefs, hoteliers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation.
Starting point is 00:39:13 Who would you bloom into once you were given the gift of true freedom? So that's like group one, she calls the fish. And then group two, she calls the leisure class, which basically people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure. So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin Star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture, forget IKEA. I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella.
Starting point is 00:39:34 I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. They become VCs or founders, and they continued to march to try to get a higher high for the next, you know, few years they're chasing the thrill of the climb. And she's not really saying one is better than the other, but she does sort of have her own take. But she says, I saw it play out in all three groups. I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals, like paying off their parents' house or having enough for retirement. Maybe they upgrade their car or their house. And largely they stopped. They didn't change how they carried themselves. They didn't change who
Starting point is 00:40:06 they hung out with. They did not take up the game of more. And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. And she was, I think the way she said it was like, there is a game. and that game is called more. And once the money lands, a question will be waiting for you to think deeply. Am I still playing? And I just thought, like, if you just take this idea of there is a game
Starting point is 00:40:27 and a game called more, but it's more of what? What do you want more of? Do you want more leisure? Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact? Do you want more authenticity to who you are?
Starting point is 00:40:37 Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? What do you want more of? And I think it's a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody is playing some game of more, right we've not renounced our desires we all wake up today we're going to go do some shit but in the name of what and i just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on like
Starting point is 00:40:54 what is the what is the game of more that you're playing right now i think it's actually a really really hard question i think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you if you looked at your actions and you said what is this action in the game in the seek uh what are I seeking more of? You know, if I'm going to post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of? I'm playing the game of more, and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige. You know, I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that. But like, I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really, really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that. Well, I want to know,
Starting point is 00:41:30 did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in and amongst your friend group? I And I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon. I've seen it happen many times. Not rich to super rich. Yeah. So versus like someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've like made money throughout their career. I was in the category of I wasn't and then I was. All of a sudden, I think you have been like accumulating along as you've gone. But we know a bunch of people who have overnight made it. Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who? who ends up in a place that more people would desire to be in that place? Yeah, I mean, this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most.
Starting point is 00:42:14 So I have some thoughts, but I bet in five, ten years I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really? Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying, like, can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed? I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out. So here's a couple of observations. I think there is actually a better and worse, even if there's not a right answer.
Starting point is 00:42:39 And I would say the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good. I completely agree. Sure, take a few trips. Sure, you could upgrade your car or your house, whatever. That's fine. But the diminishing returns are very real and very dramatic in that path. And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that like, everybody sort of looks back. It's almost like funeral-esque when people talk about them at some point.
Starting point is 00:43:05 because they're sort of seeking something, but they're in the wrong place, right? It's like searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say very few people can do what I call Slay the Money Monster. So very, very, very, very, very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want.
Starting point is 00:43:32 You have the freedom to buy, to do, to go, to fly, to whatever. And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever. You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing.
Starting point is 00:43:56 But for the most part, it's you choose to whatever your next project is. You didn't do it because this could be a 10x or this could whatever, right? So freedom from, I think, is very, very rare. The second thing I would say is very, very rare. It seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, like, Jesse, we've talked about earlier. Jesse is it a great example of this. Like, I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that could make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make, we could be making $20 million a year if we just did this.
Starting point is 00:44:21 And then we're both like, I don't know, man. He goes, and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse? He's like, I think I just like to ride my bike. He's like, I want to go do these races and triathlons and Iron Man's. I think I just like riding my bike, actually. And because we both agree, like, money at a certain point has very little utility to you. So at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say, in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility.
Starting point is 00:44:43 When you have no savings and no safety net, money has tremendous amount of utility. And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but if it buys you back your time, you don't have to work, you get way more utility. At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life. and I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars. And so I think that that's like probably the most common observation is, man,
Starting point is 00:45:13 that must be really hard to kick, that most people can't do that. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account.
Starting point is 00:45:31 So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife. Very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click and I get savings yield.
Starting point is 00:45:48 It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fistfight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to Mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC. insured bank, banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA, members FDIC. The other observation I have is that you have, like, man needs a quest, man needs a project,
Starting point is 00:46:14 but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up. And I don't think very many people are able to do a very good job of that, because we're incredibly memetic creatures. So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. If all our friends are investing, we start investing. And we rarely ask ourselves, what do I really want? You know, there's this idea of like memetic, which is Renee Gerard and Peter Thiel, like really, really popularize this idea around what we want, what we want because other people want it.
Starting point is 00:46:44 And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've sort of started to observe is people who are anti-mimetic, meaning people who seem to want things from their own internal volition and not because other people want those same things. Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category. Nick Gray is incredibly anti-mimetic. He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment and the next this and the next that. And Nick Gray was like, I'm going to prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm going to prioritize, you know, writing my blog. I'm going to prioritize going and traveling to India and living like a villager in India.
Starting point is 00:47:22 He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything. they're still not lit up. Why? Because they're choosing things that other people want. Tony Robbins had told his story once at his event where he was talking about eating dinner with his wife. And she said this thing, which she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with, you know, pickles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they were talking about this idea of like, are you even doing what you really want or are you just sort of
Starting point is 00:47:49 still programmed and conditioned by your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever? And she's like, whose burger is this? Like, why do I even order with pickles? I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently, right? Like, and I think that that metaphor applies to a lot of life. Like, a lot of what's around you is a burger you ordered that's like, is this even how I like my burgers? Maybe I like my burgers, you know, medium or rare. You know, maybe I like this. Maybe I like that. And so once you sort of become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who operate this way. Like, I think Palmer Luck is incredibly anti-mimetic. You know, he was doing everything, every project he's picked is incredibly unpopular.
Starting point is 00:48:29 when he picked it. This is sort of the test, right? Like, how popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like? And, you know, doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19 living in a trailer park. You know, he was not like keeping up with the Joneses, you know? And then even afterwards, when it happened, he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flip-flops. He didn't suddenly start wearing, you know, designer clothes and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry.
Starting point is 00:49:04 Start building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley. You were seen as sort of a black sheep for doing that. It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them it's what they want. There's this book I read last year called Status and Culture. And it was just like ideas of what does high status mean and how does that impact trends? it be fashion or whatever. And the book's author, one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing. And if you look at all the people who you admire, they're truly, whether they've
Starting point is 00:49:43 become that person or they're born that way, both are fine. They are truly authentic. And if you look at like who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. Have you heard this guy, his name's Grigory Perlman? No, who's that? Well, he's, one of the greatest math petitions of all time, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize, or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics? I forget. I think there's a math one. And he turned it down. And he's like, I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason. And then, like, someone calls him to, like, say, hey, you won the prize. And his famous quote was, you're disturbing me from picking mushrooms. And he hung up. And he never collected the prize.
Starting point is 00:50:26 He never collected the prize. Yeah, exactly. And you hear about these guys that are rebellious like this. And what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone, like, for example, I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned. And I've been a little bit half pregnant with them. And I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go all in on which type of person you want to be and to not half-ass it. And to go all in. Not hedge. Yeah, it's a very scary, that's a very scary feeling. But if you do go all in, so for example, I don't like everything Palmer Lucky does or says, but I respect the hell of the fact that he seems authentic and he does believe the way that he acts and says. But if you look at other people, for example, some of the times you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, dude, that's cringe. Why is that cringe? It's like, well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way and you're just doing this for laughs. And like, that's like the idea of authenticity. Yeah, exactly. Look at an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-memantic, Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became, at one point, the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car.
Starting point is 00:51:39 He liked his breakfast from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke. You know, he loved to read. So he read. He resisted basically every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble, basically. He did not participate in tech altogether because he didn't understand it. And he stayed true to his principles, right?
Starting point is 00:51:57 He loved to read. So he read. He loved to play bridge. So he played bridge. He had certain small set of friends. He stayed with them. He closed down his fund at one point because he was like, I just don't see good opportunities. He goes, I think what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. I can't understand it. And the fools are getting rich.
Starting point is 00:52:12 So I'd rather not play than play their way. There's literally like the definition of antimmedity. He literally closed down the Buffett Partnership. After like he had run it up to like a hundred million. He'd gone from like a hundred, a couple of people. At the 60s. To 100 million in the 60s or 70s, something like that. And I'm like, damn, that's incredible.
Starting point is 00:52:31 And so, and then I think, you know, practically speaking, it's kind of like, you know, when you want to get fit, like if you were to advise me, you're like, all right, Sean, you've been talking about getting fit, let's get real, all right? You want to get fit? Here's the first thing you need to do. Here's the second thing you do. What would be in the top three of things you need to do if you're real about getting fit? Probably eat your body weight and grams of protein.
Starting point is 00:52:51 Okay. So you pick one metric that you're going to optimize for. that like is a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit. Okay, next? I would say probably walk 10,000 steps while lifting weights three days a week. And what's usually the leak for somebody who's trying to get fit but they keep snacking? Are they eating like, what's to solve for that? Because that's the problem.
Starting point is 00:53:14 How do you solve that? You remove barriers. So, for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a one-year membership. or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad. You have to remove all friction. Just don't have it in the house.
Starting point is 00:53:31 And so that I think there's, what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life or living this sort of antimicidal life where you actually, if we take this train of logic, which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living authentically and in line with what you really want
Starting point is 00:53:46 and living in line with your own values, to me it's basically like, if you spend all day, spend three hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and TikTok and the way they're living their life, I think you're basically, it's the equivalent of having like a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house. This sounds like such a silly hack, but I've noticed whenever I wanted to become something in life, if I unfollow everyone on Instagram and only follow the people I aspire to become, you 100% get closer to being that person. So like, I remember when I wanted to
Starting point is 00:54:16 get fit, my Instagram feed was literally only shirtless rip dudes. Yes. Immersion, total immersion. To dress better, I unfollowed everyone. I only followed people I wanted to dress like. Did I tell you this story of when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast? And he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You got to explain what he painted.
Starting point is 00:54:36 So I was hanging out with him and we see him every year once a year. So I was like, dude, you got an incredible shape. You know, congrats, man. Like, how'd you do it? What was the thing? And he goes, you see that really jackdove right there? And he points over it, like, a guy who thought it was like his bodyguard or something. He's like, that's my trainer.
Starting point is 00:54:51 He's just with me everywhere I go. He's watching everything I eat, everything I do, and I just hang out with him a lot. He goes, then I told all my friends, like, you know, his boys that he's grown up with that he does all his videos with. And he's like, hey, I'm getting fit. And this is going to be a lot easier for me.
Starting point is 00:55:06 If you get fit too and you have to be as committed as I am, otherwise I'm not going to be able to hang out with you. He's like, because if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm going to have to suddenly resist pizza. So like, how about we just all do this? Or if you're going to be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not going to be.
Starting point is 00:55:21 hanging out with you as much because like I just can't do that. This is my priority, so I'm going to do this. And basically like changing your peer group, what usually means is like you go join a different set of peers. You move to a city of really ambitious people if you want to, you know, go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor or you know, start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was like, for his own friends, he's like, you need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine. And otherwise this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much. I just thought that's actually like, again, a very direct path to the outcome.
Starting point is 00:55:58 You brainwash yourself. You just gave me a good ad. You use your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time. I'm just going to steal this word for word as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you. All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast.
Starting point is 00:56:17 Mahalo, dog. I'm not in a why actually that's good that's good that's good that's a cover story bye all see ya I feel like I can rule the world
Starting point is 00:56:29 I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on a road let's travel never looking back All right let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast because if you're listening to this you like podcasts
Starting point is 00:56:40 and what's better than one podcast another podcast and let me tell you another podcast you should check out it's called success story If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q&A sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

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