My First Million - We hosted a slumber party with 12 billionaires (our minds are blown)

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 671: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) recap a weekend spent with billionaires in Greenville, NC.  �� Show Notes:  (0:00) Intro (4:49) Fish Where The Fish Swim, Not Where The Fishermen Stand (12:45) Man Does Not Sell Chocolate, He Becomes It (18:48) Non-Obnoxious Confidence Beats IQ (22:53) I Am (24:51) Take Your Billions and Shove It (30:20) Hardwork.....maybe? (32:41) Health is the New Status Symbol (37:39) Midwit meme in full effect — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together. We got to talk about it. We just lived in a house for a weekend with 25 other founder-entrepreneur types. Probably five to ten of them were billionaires. A bunch of others were close. And we didn't just like talk or hang out. We literally like slept under one roof, sat and saw us together, played basketball together, went to Walmart together a bunch of times.

My Airbnb had bunk beds. So we bunked, we bunk bed together. It's as close as two men can get. So we had an experience. And I have in front of me several sticky notes of golden lessons learned. And I phrased each of them, I don't know if you do this, but I phrased each of them to make it fun because nobody wants to hear your vacation. story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling is just never tell a vacation story because it's so fun for you, but they weren't there. Nobody cares. But I think we should tell the biggest

lessons learned with the story that backs them up. So it's real, not just a generic lesson. And I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius, like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear. Yeah, I dig that. And to give the background, basically, I think like three years ago, you tweeted out, I want to play basketball with interesting people. I think Mr. Beast like DM'd you and you're like, wait, is this real? You ended up phoning him and he was like, yeah, come to my place. I want to meet interesting people. The first year, it was like you and Ben organized it. It was like 19 of us in an Airbnb and we're like, what are we going to do? So we play basketball. The second year, you organized it a little bit more and you had like an itinerary this year.

You guys killed it. It was awesome. It was an amazing event. I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events. I just hate conferences or events. Like I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go. And I know it's good for me. And I know in the end I'll meet some cool people. I just hate the format. I hate the structure.

So it was like, well, what's the, you know, instead of just complaining about it, what's a structure I would like? It's like, well, I don't know. What if it was just doing the thing I love

or was playing basketball with those people? We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. And that was the core idea. It's to use basketball as the icebreaker. And you broke your knee in the first two hours. Yeah, yeah.

So this was an event where you could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. And I still had a good time. That means it must have been a good event because normally that's pretty brutal. I did have a little pity party for myself, but I feel better now. Are we allowed to say who was there? Yeah, I think we could say some of the people that were there. Yeah, let's go for it. So Mr. Beast, who like, you know, everyone knows him as the guy on YouTube with hundreds of millions of subscribers.

I think he's a paper billionaire. I think that's public. Yeah, he's one of the youngest billionaires in the world. I think he's 26 years old and he's worth a few billion dollars. He's one of the most famous people also in the world, one of the most recognized entertainers in the world. And when you hang out with him, he's also one of the most intense fun to be around,

just wants to play all in. Somebody said this once about Elon. They go, he's playing life as if the simulation theory is true. Elon has a simulation theory. It's not just be one of many simulations. And so he therefore just goes all in because, okay, whatever. Let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation. I think that's how Jimmy plays life too.

So we are with him. It was one of the founders of Airbnb who on paper, according to Forbes, is like the hundredth or 90th richest person in the world. It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. It was the founder of Reddit. It was Jesse Itzler who's on the podcast, you, me, Al Done, who runs like a quilting company that does nine figures a year. Tons of people. David Perel, Nick Huber. It was awesome.

You want to start first? Yeah, let's do it. All right, I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up. And this is about the business ideas that these guys were thinking about. So if you're out there and you're wondering kind of like, where's the opportunity? What should I be working on? Here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America. And it says, fish where the fish swim, not where the fisherman stand. Confucius, aka me. Did you just make that up?

You saw me ready. These five minutes before we went live. Well, I thought you had heard that. Did you hear that somewhere else? There's a scratch out on it, right? But did you get, like, Chinese food last week? And that was, like, a fortune cookie. Dude, I've had my share of Kung Bad Jig.

All right, let me just tell you some of the ideas that I heard from people who were in at this event. So you mentioned, you mentioned Jesse Itzler, and I think one of the public things that he's done is he got really into racing, like running, running endurance races. So he just followed his curiosity. 100 mile races. 100 mile races. He started to do 100 mile races. While he's doing 100 mile races, he notices that the runners that are trying to do these amazing physical feats are drinking

coconut water. And coconut water was a big, like a big part of that niche, super niche community. And he became a believer and spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company, ends up finding Zico coconut water partners with them. And Zico now is a big success. They ended up selling, I think, to Coke. And, you know, they're in Whole Foods. They're, you know, it's one of the big coconut water brands.

And he found it when he was small and just like just exploring these uncharted territories. So here's some other ones that I heard. There was somebody there who's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling board games. I'd never even had that on my bingo card. I didn't even know that was an option. I did not even know that you could do that. There was somebody there that was investing millions of dollars into women's sports. Like, you know, not even just women's sports.

Like they're trying to do things now where you just. buy a piece of a college program. I don't even know you could do that. Like, that's for sale? What is that for sale? Where is this listed? I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned like the Timberwolves, Mark Lazary or something.

And he was talking about the bucks. The bucks. And he was talking about how he's trying to buy college. Do you buy the rights? They're going to like the University of Alabama or whatever. And they're just like, cool, we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program. And we want to own 51%. But it's like, do they do they, do they,

Do they buy the future earnings? Is that what it is? They're basically, I think what's going to happen is, again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how it's going to play out. But I think the short version is the college will spin out the program, their athletics program is its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it. They'll use that equity to finance all of their sports, like women's lacrosse, like things that aren't going to be the big revenue generators. So they use it to fund all their programs and maybe even school stuff. and then those and then and the costs now are are born by the the private equity person but now it's this asset that didn't even exist before like these college programs can make a lot of money media rights and all the stuff but they weren't even for sale somebody was doing that

there was somebody there that was like yeah seven years ago I just got really obsessed with water I'm like yeah me too I thought my whole life he's like no no like I got really obsessed like do you know what kind of water you're drinking and I was like uh no like is this bad with microplastics? What's going on? And he was just like, yeah, like, I got obsessed. And so I just started studying, where's the cleanest water from? Where's the healthiest water from? And I realized that water was going to become like oil, that people were going to more and more be drinking, not tap water, but they wanted, they're going to want basically bottled water, canned water, things like that. And that water's going to have to come from somewhere. And I wanted to find

the best sources of water. And so I went to West Virginia and I bought this aquifer, this spring. I brought this giant water source. And he was like, you see that drink you're drinking right there? is like some brand, like popular brand. He's like, that's our water. And they use our water. So that's good water. And I was like, what? This was just a side quest that he went on.

And again, it was curiosity driven. Was this one of the billionaires? Yeah, basically. I mean, not billionaire, but yeah, like, whatever. Close. Close enough. There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom in Missouri Star Quilt Company.

And they sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts. His co-founder is his mom. I have a planned vacation. So he owns this thing. The company is called Missouri Quilting Company, and he basically bought, he did a podcast three years ago with us, where he explained where he bought a town.

Hamilton, Missouri. He bought like an 1,800-person town where they own every building, and they're building the Disneyland for quilting. Just the thought of that. So first to go into quilting, smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business.

Goes into quilting. It's like, what are you doing, man? You're throwing it all the way on quilting? Does a business with his mom, right? Like, again, independent thinking, not just following the herd. So then starts the business. His mom does the YouTube channel.

He does the business side of it. Business keeps growing. And then it's like, you know what we could do, we could create the Disneyland for quilting. And he literally goes and buys a town. Again, is that for sale? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that just kept happening, which was like people who were playing games that didn't

even seem popular. Another lesson there was there was a person there who had sold a piece of their company to Chernin. and Churnin is now kind of known. I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago. And Churning is this really interesting investment for... Peter Churnin was the CEO of Fox. So he's like a big swinging dick.

He's been a baller for years. But they're most famous amongst like normal people because they bought Barstool what it was nothing and helped make it something. And they just had this again, independent thinking where they were like, hey, I think these things that other people see us, all kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money, you know, media brands,

blogs, YouTube channels. I think these things are going to be big. I think basically, and they had this thesis, which was content to commerce. It's like, I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're going to be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships, you're going to be able to sell stuff to those people. And they had this content to commerce thesis. And they go and they buy barstool.

Content ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. they buy they bought exploding kittens and they bought a meat eater and they bought surfline all these niche

content rents we had a guy on the pod the plant daddy I met with them a couple times there was like early discussions

well you know three meetings with the that I have with that the hustle and I was like what the fuck do you guys know

didn't get that one right turns out they know a lot they know a lot did he just like slide a P&L across

the table and he's like, I'll leave you three minutes alone with this. Like, they told me this story and I was like, you're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about. Like do you, you know, you're talking about my company, right? I was like, you know, like, but they were right. I think what the premise was correct. But I, yeah, I, I, I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now. And dude, they made a fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high-flying tech companies, but they became, you know, multi-hundred million-billion dollar brands. I really admire what TCG did because there's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just, what's your thesis?

AI. You know, AI is going to be the future of everything, right? It's like, okay, you're not wrong in that, but like there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine or this blog or this YouTube channel. They did it with Doug DeMorrow, who was on our pod. We've had a bunch. We've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the pod to those guys. Right, right. And they've been right. And they've been right in a very, very big way. So I'm very impressed by them. So to me, that's the principle. Fish where the fish swim. So fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fisherman are standing, not where everybody, all the entrepreneurs are huddled up. This, this portrait cookie says, man does not sell chocolate. He must become chocolate.

Okay. So what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event, Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast, had launched his chocolate brand Feastables. And it was like, okay, selling chocolate to little kids. I had the opportunity to invest. I think I had a $40 million valuation was like the Series A. And I passed. In like the Beast Empire or chocolate? No, in Feastables itself.

So kind of thought about it. I was like, I don't really get it. I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry. I thought his involvement was going to be like this. normal influencer brand is I'm doing my thing, I create my content. Oh, my manager hands me this. Hey, buy this.

Smile. Yeah. Put it down. Move on with life. So I thought he's just going to influence it. I thought he's just going to hold it up and buy it. I didn't, what I didn't realize is that this guy was going to go so deep into the world of

chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate and end up running this company like an absolute maniac founder. If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring his full intensity at this, I probably would have thought about it differently. I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people clicked the link. I was dead wrong.

So I want to tell a quick story. You were there for one of the Walmart runs, right? No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories. So we're sitting there. We're about to record. He walks in. He's like, hey, before we do this, do you guys want to go to Walmart?

Which I realized, like, at the time, sounded like a sort of a strange request. Nobody's ever asked me on a mandate to Walmart. We walk in and he takes us to the chocolate aisle. and basically gives a like 10 minute masterclass on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle. And while he's doing it, he's not just like explaining like,

well, this is how it works. This is how we do. This is our revenues. This is whatever. He's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle. Like he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like three inches recess.

They were pushed back too far. Some of the bars had followed over. They were crooked. He straightens every single one of them out. He puts the right flavors in the right spots. If a bar was crinkly or broken, he'd throw it to his chief of staff, like, hey, can you buy this?

I want to have, like, we should only have good bars, no broken bars up front. And he would basically restock the thing, but his hands were moving at a speed, which showed you, this is not the first time this guy's done this. So he restocks it. And one of the popular flavors was out. And so he takes out his phone and he's like, oh, I have a badge. And so he just badges into the back of Walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it. And I was like, does any vendor get to do that?

And he was like, not exactly. But they know, like, I just do this. I care. I really care. And two things stood out to me. The first was obvious, which was when high-intensity, obsessive people want to win, they do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12th. Like, they just take the knob and they just crank it past even where you think it could go.

And for example, he was like, I think you were there. He was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this. He like told the story about how apparently he flew to D.C. And had a connecting flight to North Carolina or something wherever he lived. And he was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm driving from D.C. to Green, North Carolina. It's normally like, I don't know, a three-hour drive or something, but I noticed

that there's 14 Walmarts in between on that route. I'm going to stop at every single one of them to learn. And it turned like a three-hour drive into like, you know, a 20-hour drive. And he told me, at one point, he goes, I have scanned. I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart, and it teaches you about each skew. He said he scanned every single product in Walmart. And I don't know if he was, like, if someone said, oh, no, I've scanned all of them. You'd be like, oh, so it's like saying it's a thousand degrees outside. You're just exaggerate. But with him, I was like, oh, I bet you you literally have scanned every single one of them. In the podcast we did, he was like, yeah, like, you know, we want to do a thing where you buy

every item in Walmart for somebody in a video. He's like, you know, but it's $16.2 million. It's like he knew the actual cost of the total inventory. If you bought one of everything in Walmart, like what it cost. I forgot what the number was. But so, but I don't want to make this just a Jimmy Love Fest because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target. Yeah, man.

I heard him nerd and out. It was wild. He took us to this shell. and he was like, this shelf right here. He's giving us a tour of Target. And it shows you how the store works. He's like, this shelf right here is the most profitable shelf in Target is the highest profit per square inch, which is how Target measures success.

And he's giving us this Target Masterclass. And we're like, are you also in Walmart? He's like, yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so well. And I asked him, what's exciting for you coming up? And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company. I assumed he was just going to say, I've got some board meetings to line up. I'm taking the family to Aspen. And he goes, actually, I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate.

I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I'm going to be, he goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target. And I've been trying to figure out why. What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished, the most high net worth to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking the skews himself. This other guy, going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. You know, they don't have to do any of this, but they're going to do it anyways.

They're not just doing it now, now that they're successful. That's how they got here. And so that was the first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business and how that leads to success. That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there or one of. And there was a point where I was hanging out with him. He goes, can I get your guys' opinion? You know, I'm thinking about potentially like making some type of business. move, which would value us at this valuation. And we were like, what valuation? And it was like

in the billions. And we were like, do you know who we are? Why are you asking us this question? Like, what, like, what are you talking about, man? Like, you, I don't know who you asked this question to you, but not like, he was the most, like, humble person there. And he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild, that guy who you're talking about. All right, I have one. Confidence beats IQ. So, you know, there are a lot of, like, really successful people out there. Like, when I read Warren Buffett's biography, he does the opposite where he was like, oh, you know, I'm just this guy. And it's like, dude, you're a bonifine.

Awshucks downplaying them. Yeah, it's like, you're a baby genius. Like, he was like, when he was like four, he was like making 10 grand a month selling Pepsi. But in general, the group of people who we had there, there were some people for sure who are genius. I think Jimmy is one of them actually. I think when you talk to him, you know, he's like brilliant. But, and like Mario, co-founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company, which is one of the hardest things ever to do. It's worth publicly traded $4 billion. So he's like the man. And he doesn't even speak English or he does. That's a second language.

So like, he's from Germany. So imagine, he's genius. Dude, imagine going to Germany and revolutionizing the German health care bar. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty wild. extra degree of difficulty just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit. Yeah, which is wild. But, you know, he was a genius. But in general, dude,

the wealthiest people there, I noticed we're not even close to the smartest. And here's an example. One of the billion there guys was there, he goes, man, AI is just going to change the world. You guys, I don't think you guys get it. Like, I use it every day.

And I was like, how do you use it? He goes, I could show you right now. And he pulls out his phone and he talks to chat, GBT. And he goes, hey, chat, GBT, you know, I have a question. And he like starts like reading a question to it. And then he's like, now watch how amazing it is.

And he like, it repeats the answer. And I'm like, oh, so you're saying that you just use chat GBT like all the time? Like, yeah. And I was like, well, like, have you like trained it? He goes, you could trade it? Like he didn't know that you could do these things. And this particular guy, I read a company doing billions a year in revenue. I guess what I mean is like this, the, the percentage of intelligence,

greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not like that. It wasn't core. Totally. Totally. Totally agree with that, which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen. One, you just get to sample like it's Costco and it's new at Costco and you're just getting to sample different lifesty. Oh, what do you do?

Oh, wow. You seem kind of stressed out. Gotcha. Like, not interested in going down that aisle. Yeah. You seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this?

You've got kids, too. How are you doing both? Right? And you get to sample people. people's lifestyle when you're hang out with them like this for like, you know, 48 hours straight. On top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing, which kind of sucks because you're measuring yourself against like some of the most creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. But a big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right?

It's like those little children's games is two pictures. What's the difference between these two pictures? And on one side is me and the other side is them. And I'm always looking at what's the difference. And sometimes if it's like a Mario or whatever, it's like, oh, cool. like his brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain. All right, cool.

Like, I can live with that. I can sleep easy. But there were other people where it was like, oh, it just seems like they didn't limit themselves. That's what I mean. They just kind of went for it. Or their courage was just a little bit higher supply than mine. And you're right that when you look at the diff, very rarely was the diff. These people are smarter than me.

Or they had some advantages I didn't have coming up. Right. In fact, it's usually the opposite. It's like, damn, they had this huge chip on the shoulder because their dad wasn't around and because of this happened and they were dyslexic. There's a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic. Dude, I wish I was dyslexic. Yeah. I know. Like, I thought autistic was the goal. It's dyslexic. Dude, every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper. Did you know that? Like, not only rich, but also cool in a group of men heldled around together, right?

Yeah. Like, I wish I was charismatic like a dyslexic guy. Like, it's crazy. It's like if you're, if you're, it's like if you're blind, you're a good piano player. And if you're dyslexic, you're like the most charismatic guy on earth. Yeah, exactly. I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this. I am. I am.

So my trainer has a like a clothing brand that he creates. It's called Super Conscious Goat. So one of the shirts he gave me from Super Conscious Goh, my favorite shirt, it just on the side, it just says, I am. And then it's after, and underneath it says, the two most important words in the English language, for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness,

if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way. And then it becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right? You'll work at a different speed. You'll take different risks. You will go for it in a different way. Several conversations I had at this event where I realize, damn,

a lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the little director of your movie who's deciding, like, what kind of movie is this? Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy?

Are you a joke? Or is this a hero? Is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world? And like, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you because the director says, you know, what happens in the story, where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought, damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and

what they're doing differently comes from the little voice in their head just has a different script in mind for what their life is all about, the I am statement. Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bringing his sauna? Jesse Isler brought his sauna. And he had two guys and I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we bring these saunas. Like whenever he wants to go to some. We keep the sauna hot. Yeah. He's like, whenever we go, when he wants to go to like a conference or something, like this sauna is like a really cool way to like create a bonding experience, which it was, by the way, just chilling in the sauna. It was freaking awesome. And I was like,

wait, Jesse, you got these two guys who's just like job is to like trail around this like sauna like across the country to break through events. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. He's like, yeah, isn't it great? We get to hang in the sauna. I was like, yes. And that's like another example of like intensity, but like on a more relatable scale. Right.

All right. I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass. Is it a Seneca? Yeah. Put that on one of those inspirational posters that you see in your office. There is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies and presumably a billionaire like you know investing in Tesla at a 60 million dollar

valuation i or 100 million dollar valuation you know i don't know what that is that like is that like a hundred thousand times so something like that yeah we don't do public math yeah like a lot it's now it's now a trillion dollar company yeah so it's a big deal um you know there was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard and like he was grinding and his kid was sick and he's like I had to take a week off to like go and help my kid and you know that was a big deal because I was working so hard and then this other guy came and he goes you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours weeks a 16 hours a day on your companies right now I'm doing that as well but my company is my family and I have retired from

business and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family and when he said that I was like, this is awesome. And I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because I imagine he still does some type of deal making or something like that. But I don't know them well enough to know. But I thought it was so cool when he said that. And I thought like you have it figured out. Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys, I don't want to, I can't say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy where I was like, this is, this is the way. And this is all personal preference. You know, Jimmy wanted to be Elon, cool. Go do that. But when I heard this other way of talking, I was like, you know, after, this is easy to say because everyone was wealthy. But after some

number, I don't know what that number is, 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers, not a lot of it really matters. And just like having a good time with your family is something I really admired. And I, and I thought it was really cool that that guy said that. And it made me realize that I was getting sucked in this vortex of like money, money, money and achieve. achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree? Yeah, 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics, what techniques, what strategies, what approaches work? And instead, the better question almost every single time is, what game are you even playing? And picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win. the wrong game. Dude, there was people there who were like mini gangas cons where it's like they want to dominate. Like they get joy out of war and domination. They want to build cities.

They want to dominate industries. They want to do that. That's one game you could play. And by the way, no judgment. Great. Do whatever game you want to play out. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick. And other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. I think I'm more of 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's my ideal. So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was full-time stay-at-home dad personally. But okay, that's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse and I was like, Jesse, what do you do? Like, what do you do every day now? I'm training for races and I'm coaching my kids sports things.

I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars. He's like, it's not going to make, he's like, I'm not making a fortune. Like, these guys, you know, they'll do that in a day or two, a week. Well, we'll do in a year, but I don't know. I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing. And he was very at ease with that.

He's at peace with that. And I think, obviously, some of that comes from maturity. But a lot of it comes from, it's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace. When you're doing the thing you like. And if you're kind of, I don't know, like masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much more important question at every phase of your life.

And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different than the one I'm playing currently in my 30s. It's probably going to be different than what I play in my 40s and 50s. And I just got to kind of reinvent myself. Dude, there was one guy there who said he worked with Elon. And apparently he had to do a meeting or something with Elon. And like the secretary told him like, all right, you're going to do this meeting. But I need you to know that Elon makes. his companies make $20 million every one hour.

So this better be a $20 million meeting. I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him that he was like, Elon would have a meeting, but he would, there would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting. And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like if the right, if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that will just fly everybody. here and we're going to have this, you know, 45-minute block. And that way, everybody's here because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his hour. Which is like such a

such an upset. Like it's hard to, it's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal. So there was one guy. You weren't there. Sean like busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had to stay at home for like this whole one whole session. And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was one of the more successful guys there. He was like, I work like 20 hours a week. He's like once my companies got to be like some type of like predictable, stable, like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're going to go 50% a year, hopefully like it's going to whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week.

And he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays. And it was really interesting. to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people? The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not. Meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. Like an easy example is YouTube. If you stop uploading, the game stop, the music stops.

There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space to the same exact thing who are ready to eat. lunch. And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like, we just had to get this shelf space. Like, it was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target. And he was like, basically seven years of the company was just dedicated, it was just like hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost important. possible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, like this little rack you're looking at, this is $300 million a year. And you're just looking at it. You're like, oh, damn. Like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target is a, is like the entire revenue streams of like these online only companies, but you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take a,

take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That was an interesting thing. Do you have a quick one? Health is wealth. In a room full of very wealthy people, how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about? Everyone but Joe Gabia looks schleppy. Joe Gabia looked great. Even in a workout gear, he was wearing some. he looks like he should be in like a Taylor Sheridan show. Like if he, if he made an, if he made an appearance on Landman, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even blink. Everyone besides him, dude, do you know he's on the board of Tesla? I didn't know that either.

Like, he does a lot of interesting stuff. Everyone besides him looked like we're like, we were like at a slumber party. Well, we were also. Yeah, but during the day. Yeah. That should be the title of this. Slumber party with billionaires. So the, but the health is well thing was very real. There was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health. What you're eating and not eating. How much, who's your doctor? Who's your, what's your protocol? But, dude, no one was like that jacked or ripped or anything. Were they other than Joe? Yeah, I thought people were in pretty good shape. If you go to other industries, non kind of like tech, internet, not our bubble, right? But like, go to like a conference with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever, like pick any industry.

their body shape looks a lot different. They look way different. They looked like a healthy 55-year-olds. Dude, basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game, come home, go into a 250-degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina

and go plunge for three minutes. Then go back into the sauna. Then go back into the plunge. Then there's like a masseuse doing bodywork and myofasher release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's eating clean. Every single person is eating clean. while we're there, right?

Like, it's like, dude, that was the norm. I got, that is not normal. You know, if you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event. Dude, me and Nick Huber got Taco Bell at midnight. It's secrecy. Yeah, like, we didn't want to tell anyone. Secretcy.

Dude, I took like a feastable bar in my, like, I like hit it in my hoodie and it crutched over to my bedroom. I ate it like in shame over there because what am I going to do? Sit here and need a chocolate bar in front of these men. Haze is 52 years old and ripped. Yeah, he looked great. I was like, wow, this guy is, you know, on the Forbes, you know, self-made billionaires list. And also just ripped for fun as a side quest.

Dude, yeah, yeah, I mean, he looked great. And then- Jesse's 56 and runs 100-mile races. How many 50-year-olds are ripped and run 100-mile races? Nobody does that shit, especially successful guys. Jimmy wanted to do like a taste test. He had everyone, like, gather around to do a taste test of like Hershey's versus his stuff. and I like, I pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before.

But like at every Airbnb in the kitchen, did you see this? At every Airbnb, it was like literally 100 candy bars. And I literally had 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. Like I could, I did, I didn't need a taste test. I can tell, I'm already an expert on. I can tell you about all.

all the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones. He's like, you don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. It's like, no, no, no, this is how I'm thorough. Like, I've already, I've already know. Like, I've eaten all of up and I had M&Ms and Hershey bars on the plate on the way here. Like, I can tell you about all of them. The hilarious thing is when he's like hanging out with like the upper echelot of the group, he's just like, and just try a piece of this one.

You don't have to eat the whole thing. But like, you know, it's more for younger people, but like whatever. That's what he's going because it's for kids. It's for kids. And he's like, he'll give you like the dark chocolate. Yeah, I was doing there with like cookies and cream all over my face. And I'm like, I like it. I like the cookies and cream one. It's like my daughter just learned my favorite, Jimmy. You have more of this one? Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more. But I feel like this more.

More more. More. More this one more. I was doing this all the time. More, more, more. Can I give you some of the negative ones? How about the guy who goes at that point, I was broke. I think I only had like $20 million. Yeah, he's tells some story. Well, there was a hilarious conversation about pre-ups, which is, you know, nothing more can be said except for there was an incredible conversation about pre-ups. I was about to go outside. Me and someone else were going to go outside of the sauna. And someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about pre-dub? And we were like, oh, up, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. It was one of the most, like, next three hours was one of

most entertaining three hours of my life. I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, ten years. Like I was literally like belly laugh crying. Some shocking set setups. People are, billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they're not like you. They are not like you. I would say is the midwit meme was in full effect. I'll give you one example. So the way we played our basketball tournament was three teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the, you know, the top two teams play for the finals. But all the teams finished the same record.

Like we all had one win, one loss after everybody played each other. So I was like, okay, well, which two teams advanced to the finals? And so I, but everybody's getting tired. So I had to make something up. So I was like, all right, we're going to do a penalty kick shootout. So what's the most exciting, you know, like thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout. And it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and

people are getting hurt. We got to like, we can't play an extra game to figure out who's going to go. So we said, all right, everybody step up to pick five, each team pick five guys. they're going to shoot a free throw, and then the team that makes the least, like pressure's on, everybody's watching you. So it was interesting. One team, my team was like, this is a dictatorship. Like, y'all are the five best to the other guys.

They're better than you. These five are shooting. Who was the dictator? I didn't even think there was another way. I was like, of course we're just going to pick our five best and do this. Like, honestly, I didn't even consider another method. And I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured. I'm on crutches.

So I was like doing that. The second guy, the second team did merit base. and the third was kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever and in the merit base thing a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall made it in the practice shot

and one of the guys who was one of their better players on his team just happened to miss so it's like damn are y'all really going to not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot I was just watching I'm like I just want to see what happens here I want to see what happened with the egos I just need to know I need to see this like I was like you sure

you want to do it he's like no no no you should do it You made it. If you want to, I'll do it. And then the guy's like, no, I mean, I don't know. I think I'm going to do it. He's like, okay, go ahead and do it. So the guy steps up and he shoots and he makes it. The guy who's probably like, you know, a weaker basketball players makes it,

clutched it up and has this awesome moment and his team advances to the finals. And I feel so happy for this guy. And I'm like, that was amazing. I'm glad that they kind of honored it. He had his Rudy moment. He honored it. He made it good for him. That was awesome under pressure.

I love, I wanted everybody to have, like, gold moments during the, during the event. But then after the finals, and their team goes on, wins the finals, happy, they're holding the trophy, it's all good. Afterwards, we're all like pack it up to leave. And he's like, he goes up to that guy, the other guy who sat out. He's like, hey, I want, can you and me go shoot free throws? I want to know if that was the correct like EV decision statistically. And the guy's like, oh, man, you already made it. Like, you already made it. We already won. Like, you're good. Dude, you did it. He's like, no, no, no. I need to.

no. I need to know. And he's like, no, like, it's like, honestly, it's done. I'm glad you did it. You made it. He's like, I need to know. And he's like, all right. So they go and they shoot. And of course, the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws and like the, with the larger sample size. And then the other guy was like kind of head down for like, he's kind of bummed out about it for a second. And I was like, what a, what an intelligently stupid thing to do. Right? Like, he wanted to know, like, was this a positive EV decision? Was this a, statistically the correct move. What does EV mean? Expected value. It's like if you're playing poker, you can, you bet your chips. And even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision, even if the result didn't pan out. That's so funny.

There's chances. And so I was like, way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was so many of these little moments where like there's this guy there who's like, he's a total catch. He's like smart. He's good looking. He's ripped. He's successful. All these things.

And he, I just thought. A guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her. I've always wanted to be that guy. You know, like this guy could have been that guy. It could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing. And instead, do you want to describe? So, all right, I think what he did, what did he scrape? He built a program that scrape LinkedIn.

Start with the desired result. He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman or something like that. I was there for the whole thing. Someone who fit his, like, heritage. And so he was like, cool. So he built an AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the, like, successful, beautiful, like, trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful. Like every woman who was, like, of a certain, like, look in New York, who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever, he had, like, a data. He had binders of women.

Yeah, we had binders of women. It was hilarious. And then he had this, like, whole system for how we could reach out to them with, like, it was amazing. I want to go into all the details, but like... He had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone. And I, he goes, I have two full-time engineers who have built this program that auto-d-ems them,

this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send a voice notes? He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. And he like, he like showed me the voice note. As he told this whole system, it's like, what's that thing called the Rochechek test or whatever? Where you see the blot?

And it's like, you either see like, you know, a killer or an angel or whatever. it was like some people were like this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen and then some people like the married guys who are like you know 50 40s and 50s or like brother you're you're it's too much you're doing too much here you got to just like just see a cute girl and go talk to it's okay let it let it roll organically baby it's going to work better that way and I just thought it was hilarious I'm really late I got to go I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now I got a jet I just realize I'm

way over that's it that's the pod I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off On the road, let's travel, never looking back