The Mello Millionaire with Tommy Mello - The Counterintuitive Truth About What Actually Builds a $100M Business

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

🔗 Build Your Freedom → https://homeservicefreedom.com/Sam Parr built and sold The Hustle for many tens of millions — and his biggest takeaway? Your ideas aren't that important. In this episode, Tommy sits down with Sam at Spotify Studios in New York to break down what actually builds empires: the emotional ability to push through fear, why the world is more malleable than you think, and the one mindset shift most entrepreneurs never make.⏱ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Cold Open04:46 Sam's Journey Begins07:36 Building The Hustle13:50 Your Ideas Don't Matter16:19 Hustle vs Leadership20:00 Inside Hampton27:34 Growing a Podcast31:49 Advice Worth Knowing34:40 Success Leaves Clues40:32 Recipe for Success47:52 Young Entrepreneur Advice48:38 Things Take Forever52:55 Just Be Yourself57:23 Sam Loves History58:38 Find Sam Online🔗 Build Your Freedom → https://homeservicefreedom.com/📱 Follow Tommy:TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymelloInstagram → https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymelloFacebook → https://www.facebook.com/officialtommymello🎙️ Home Service Expert Podcast → https://homeserviceexpert.com

Thanks take forever. Yeah, a lot of people think they're going to get rich very, very quickly. They give up so quickly. Even with the podcast, so many smart people I know. They gave it 10 weeks. I think you got to hustle, but I always say the hustler has to die for the leader to be. Which I think you told me that, and that, like, resonated strongly with me. I wish I learned a lot earlier than 2018 to just success leaves clues and just be a guy.

You could be a fly on the one. Most people want to help you. Dude, you were late. And you got a story. Let's hear it. I was 20 minutes late. Have you heard of O's Perlman? No.

All right, listen to this guy. Okay, so I had to record my podcast. He was supposed to be at my office at one. I was going to be done at 2.30. Then I had plenty time to get here. He telling him he's going to be half an hour late. So that's one of the reasons why I went over. O's Perlman is a mentalist.

And his whole schick is he worked at Wells Fargo for four years, but he loved magic for a long time. And he transitioned to becoming a mentalist. I think I know him. He was on 60 minutes recently. The dude will tell you, like here's what, yeah, my cousin sent me his book. Oh my God. So I read his book and I did the podcast with him and I cried because he did so many crazy things to me on air. He was like,

imagine you're having a birthday party. How many people are there? Close your eyes. And I go, okay, I know how many people are there. He goes, it's 10 people. I go, yep, 10 people. And he, like, he guessed 10 people. I go, yes, it was 10 people. And he goes, but there's one person who's really special who flew in, right? I go, yeah. I mean, you really thought of about it. Yes. He goes, okay, now this person's really special to you. It's your brother John, isn't it? I go, yes, my brother John, he flew in. And he goes, he flew in from Missouri, didn't he? I go, yeah, he did. And he goes, but the cool thing is, is you're going to pay him back because you're going to go to his birthday on July 10th. And I was like, yes, that is his birthday.

My brother's down on the internet. And so he knew all of this stuff. Then he was like, can you do me a favor? Do you want to go travel somewhere? Tell me where you want to travel to right now. and I go, okay, I have something in my brain. He goes, okay, this place you've never been for. You've never been to, have you? And I was like, no, I've never been there. He was, well, the good news is you don't need a passport, right? I was like, I don't need a passport.

He goes, it's because it's in America. It's in Wyoming. It's Jackson Hole. I was like, yes. He goes, but if you don't want to go to Jackson Hole, where else do you want to go? And he goes, think about it. Close your eyes. I go, okay.

He goes, get really detailed about when and where you want to go. He started thinking about it. He goes, this June, you want to spend the summer, don't you? I go, I do. He guessed everything. Well, he was dead on. Every single thing. And the whole podcast that I did with him was how this can, like, translate to business.

But it was the craziest experience. He guessed everything. I've seen him guess, and I'm like, dude, the guy has to do some research. He wrote it down. Yeah. He wrote it down. He goes, he goes, close your eyes. He goes, I'm going to write down where are you going to visit.

He goes, I'm going to write down here for the camera. And it's a Jackson Hole. And he goes, this is it, isn't it? I need to meet this guy. Maybe you can do an intro because I would be blown away. I'll tell you where I my big thing is Italy and we've got family in the village. It's never been. But I went to Hungary and that's where my grandma was wanted to go.

She's Hungarian. Anyway, getting off topic, that's the coolest story ever. And how does that relate to business? How did you guys relate that to business? Well, first of all, I was like, so he was a magician and so he started doing mentalists and magic is like tricks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, whatever. Mentalism is influencing people or guessing or like influencing to guess certain things.

That's how he explains it. He was like, I don't read minds. I read body language. And so I was asking him all about body language. How do you get Wyoming out of? I don't know. I was like, dude, I'm wearing like a Western shirt. Like, I don't know.

Like, is there like a. And he was like, and then like throughout my office, I have like 20 people working there. He like was like playing this game. He guessed what one lady was going to name her baby. There was a pregnant woman there. And he was like, don't tell me what you're going to name this kid. And then he did it and said it. And then he goes, but you want to know something even crazier?

He goes, I've done this with thousands of women where I will be around a friend or a friend of a friend who's pregnant. And I'll be like, listen, I'm going to do something special for you. I'm going to tell you what you're going to name your baby. I'm going to write it on this piece of paper. I'm going to put it in an envelope. And after the baby is born, open it up. And I guarantee you it's going to be the right name. I, geez.

That's weird. I know my first boy is going to be Tommy Mello. Junior. Yeah. Yeah, well, the third because I'm the second. So that's why I'm late. No, it's a good reason to be late. He said, you're going to be late to the mellow millionaire to go visit time.

Well, I made a joke. I was like, so he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. He guessed Joe Rogan's PIN number, like his ATM PIN. And I was like, if you can read minds, you're just blowing it guessing people's pen numbers. Come on. Let's go do something. And he was like, like, told me how he would like commit crime.

Anyway, that's why I'm late. So, great story, worth it. Before The Hustle, you had some pretty unconventional businesses, notably a hot dog stand and a whiskey e-commerce company. Let's just talk a little bit about the journey to get where you're at today and what you're looking forward to. So the company that I'm known for, yeah, it was called The Hustle. We sold it for many tens of millions of dollars when I was like 31 years old. It was amazing. And you're 36.

I'm 36 now. So that's five years. And I have a new company that I'm building that is going to be, God willing, we're going to pay out, make that look small. But I got to Silicon Valley. I moved to San Francisco when I was, basically I left school when I was 21 because I used to work for this guy named Mike Wolf, who was the host of American Pickers. You ever heard of that show? Yeah, Mike Wolf, his partner died, yeah. Yeah, he was cool.

He is cool. I met him on the street. Yeah. And he, like, let me work, like, full T-shirts at his, like, store, like, you know, like an $8 an hour job. Where is he at? Nashville, Tennessee, where I was going to college. And then I got inspired by him to start a business because I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur, but I, you know, This was the first time I met like a real life, like, entrepreneur.

My dad was an entrepreneur, but I didn't think of him as an entrepreneur. He's my dad. But then I met this other guy. And I was like, I can do this. So I started a hot dog stand. And I was selling hot dogs. It was called Southern Sam's Winners as big as a baby's arm. And some days I would kill it.

I would make like $1,000. Other days I would make $50. But it was Tennessee and it was summertime. And I was like dying. And I was like, okay, let's start something on the internet. So I start an e-commerce store selling whiskey. Killed it. And then I realized I was breaking the law.

And I would go to my entrepreneur, ship class. They had like office hours. I'm like, here's what I'm doing. And they're like, oh yeah, you can't sell liquor like this online. Like you're breaking out of law. So I had to shut that down. And then I eventually dropped out of school. I eventually graduated. I left school because I got an offer because I cold emailed this man who owned a company at the time called Airbed and Breakfast. And I was like, your company's cool. I think it's going to be the shit. And he's like, do you live in San Francisco? I go, yeah, I live there. I didn't. I live in Tennessee. And I was like, I'll fly out and see you on Monday. I didn't say I'll fly you out. I go, I'll see you on Monday. I flew out. He

offers me a job. Two weeks later, I moved back out there full-time, leave school. The day before I'm supposed to start, air bed and breakfast, obviously is Airbnb. I was going to be an early employee there. The day before I'm supposed to start, he was, they called me back and they're like, we don't hire liars. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, on your resume, you clicked that you didn't have a misdemeanor, but we found out you do. Because in college, I was a wild guy. I had a bunch of demons, and I liked drugs and alcohol, and I got some DUIs and fighting, and I spent time in jail. I got in trouble. And then I'm sober now.

I got everything. I got my act together, but I was a wild guy. And so I was stuck out in San Francisco with like, you know, nothing. And I started a company then because I was out there and I had to do something and lost my job at Airbnb that I was never even started. Sold it for $100,000. This one company I started. And then after that I started the hustle, which is kind of the long of it. And then the hustle.

I mean, what was the strategy and vision for the newsletter? Do you know who Ted Turner is? Yeah. I liked Ted Turner. I read his biography. He was amazing. Ted Turner's the guy started singing in. Yep.

He's cool because he was Southern. He's got a crazy story about that, by the way. He's a wild man. He's like a crazy person. Do you know anything about him? I've heard, but I haven't read that. I'm going to read it. He's wild.

He was a cowboy. And I remember reading his biography. And I kind of remind, I was like, oh, I kind of view some of my attributes, very similar to your attributes. And he got into the media world. He was from Atlanta. His father started a big. billboard company. And with that billboard company, he made a little bit of, his father killed himself when Ted was only 25. So at 25 years old, he took over his father to billboard

company, parlayed that into buying a crappy radio station and some newspapers, parlayed that into eventually starting some local news stations. And after 20 years, eventually started CNN, which was at the time was breathtaking because it was. There was no other thing like it at the time. It was a 24-hour news network. That was no such thing. Back then, you know, there was only, I forget, a handful of channels. He lobbied Congress or regulators to change to allow him to get access to some of the satellites to beam down and get his content everywhere. Anyway, he's a cowboy. And I read his biography and I was like, I want to do this fucking media thing.

That sounds awesome. But I didn't know how to start a cable news network. But I knew that email was a really powerful marketing channel because I had started a conference and I used emails to sell the conference. And I was like, what if I created a media company only using an email address or an email newsletter? And people laughed at it at the time. But I was like, if you do that.

How many years ago did you start that? I started a conference in 2014 called HustleCon. 2014. And then in 2016, I remember it because it was 420, 420, 2016 is when I launched the hustle. And that was the newsletter. And the idea was like, I'm going to create a daily email that tells you, the reader, everything you need to know about business that day. Like Wall Street Journal for 25-year-olds. And I wrote it.

every day. And then it just started growing. It started growing. And I did the math. And I'm like, well, I think this can be a hundred million year, a hundred million dollar year business if we do X, Y, and Z. And we were on track to do it. I sold it in year four when we were kind of doing good. But the original vision was, can I have two or three or four writers reach like three or four million people a day and build a whole media company on an email newsletter? Which doesn't sound that interesting. But now email newsletters are like crazy popular. When I started it, it wasn't. So it was like, I pioneered something very nerdy and cool in a very small niche, if that makes sense.

I'm very familiar with HubSpot. Why you guys use them? Well, yeah, we use them. You mad at them? No, I like them. I don't really get involved with that. That's not my passion. I know how to, I like creating content, but...

You're not passionate about CRMs? I'm passionate about CRMs, but emails, you know, obviously SMS. I love marketing, so that's just a piece of it. But what was their interest? in the hustle. So when we sold the hustle, I think I had 1.7 million subscribers. The year we sold,

we were probably going to do 18 million in revenue. And how did you monetize that if you don't mind? I don't mind. How was it worth that? What was? Yeah. So. Just because you got the attention, I guess.

So it's crazy. So this is getting like really inside baseball, but I will if you want to nerd out over media. Do you remember BuzzFeed? Yeah. So basically here's their business model. They get a million followers on Facebook. They post an article and 500,000 people see the article and a bunch click it.

Over time, they had a million followers, and it was clear as day that they were reducing how many people would see your article. So at first, if you had a million fans, 500,000 saw every article. Six months later, 100,000. Nowadays, you probably know this. If you post an article, a link on Facebook and you have a million fans, like 10,000 people will see it. Their whole business model was to hire 1,000 writers and write 300 articles a day and post them all on Facebook, and they're going to get traffic and they'll make money via ad revenue.

It was very clear that reach. The analogy we used was that it was like building a store on a landlord's property where he would raise the rent every month. It was very clear. So that wasn't a novel concept that I noticed. But what I noticed that was novel was that email is like a pirate ship. And every email subscriber you get,

it's like a little bit of winning your sales. Because you get someone's email, and I could talk to them for 30 months every single day before they would unsubscribe. So I only have to acquire you one. time and I could talk to you every day versus playing the Facebook game. And so our idea was, can we just write a business newsletter, just news? That's only 1,500 words, but once you subscribe on day one, I'll put ads in the email. So I had an ad sales team with 15 people selling ads,

and we would charge like $50 per 1,000 to have an ad in the email. I would convince these, at the time, advertising in newsletters wasn't popular, but we convinced all these people, Amex, Fidelity, all these big guys, we convinced them to do it. And so once we had a million subscribers, we must have been making $30,000, maybe $30,000 a day in ad revenue just from that little... Wow.

And so that was the business model. And so what we knew was that every email subscriber was worth something like $10 a year. So I had no problem buying ads on Facebook to get a subscriber for $1. Does that make sense? No, 100%. Yeah, that's just a reverse engineering. A lot of people just don't do the math.

And they get into business, they don't understand the math. So that's what you've been really good at. I did that with the business in the first place. So my, I met a wealthy guy when I was younger and I grew up not wealthy and I wanted to have money because I was like, I saw like the gas meter in my mom's car like go down and I was like, I don't want to run a gas. Like I remember like that distinct feel. I run out of gas all the time. Like I distinctly remember that feeling. Like you ever like, yeah, it sucks. Yeah. It was like, oh. Sucks when it's mom and grandma and she's working three jobs. Yeah. I distinctly remember that feeling.

I was like, I want money. And so I met a rich guy and he was like, hey, $20 million is a lot of money. So I was like, okay, how do I get to $20 million about the age of 30? Well, I like, I like, this media thing. So that means I got to get the media company to like 15 million in revenue. So I could sell it for like 30 or 40 million dollars. You know what I mean? It was all reverse engineered. Well, you've built a career out of decoding business concepts for large audience. What's some of the biggest misconceptions people have about entrepreneurship and success? It's mostly an emotional game probably. I think that like it's, I'm a fairly emotional person and I sometimes they get the best to me. But I would say like, I don't think people.

I think that capitalism is interesting to me because business is like the most practical way to like put your dent and like make change. And I don't particularly care for money or like, I don't even like business that much. I love like impacting things. It's like it's like fun to like kick your debt in the world. You know what I mean?

It's fun to like dream up an idea and like how, like you get like a high that it turns into reality. And I think that with business, a lot of people don't realize that like your ideas aren't that important, but the emotional ability to, like, do things when you're really scared is, like, actually the skill set. Do you agree? Yeah, well, it's risk. And you got to be willing to take risks and we'd be able to bet the farm and very few people like to get out of their comfort zone. But when you were raised out of your comfort zone, like, what's the worst thing that happens?

I go back to where I started. I think that what I've been thinking a lot about risks lately. And I've been thinking, I'm like, it's actually not the risk that scares me so much. It's the uncertainty. And I think that's where people freak out. is the uncertainty. And so I think, like, being an entrepreneur, you somehow get like, okay, like, I'm okay. I'm okay with uncertainty. Risk still freaks me out.

Uncertainty doesn't. Like, I, like, would you stay up at night thinking my business is going to go under because I made some big bet? Or is it like, we're trying this new thing and I'm scared it's not going to work? I just don't have it. I just like, I'm used to just putting in the chips

and I bet on myself. And by the way, I fail a lot. What I've learned is a little bit of discipline in the last five years. of like, let's try this, let's prove it out rather than bet the farm. But I think I graduated past that when I got my first exit, and I'm like, I'm a little bit more diversified now. But, like, I get into things that I know I can make an impact.

Like, if I have you on the podcast and we're talking about software that I use myself, you're going to pick up an extra million dollars of an error, just from that podcast. So that's because I don't lie. I don't cheat. I'm not getting people on there to make a dime. I'm out there saying, this is what works, and I know it works, and you should do it. but the problem is people rarely implement software correctly. What do you think about hustling?

You know, the hustle. Do you think that kids still need to hustle? I think that like there's a, there's some threshold where like a 40-hour workweek is adequate. I think that might be a little controversial. I think that like maybe your first 10 million in revenue, maybe after 10 million in revenue, when you could afford to hire executives, you can hustle less and think more. Do you agree? I think you got to hustle, but I would say the hustler has to die for the leader to be

Which I think you told me that and that like resonated strongly with me and that's really hard. Well, it's because we say yes so often and the skill set is to say no. It's got to be hell no or hell yes. I think that like after some there's some threshold where business kind of gets boring. Like is your business boring a little bit? Because we reinvented ourselves so much like it gets boring and then we like get this massive growth spurt. changes. Like now we're a software company that does garage stores. It used to be we're a garage store company. But it's boring a little bit sometimes on the day-to-day basis compared to when you were hustling in year two. Yeah, I would say I still like what I do because my role is shifted now.

Like I think more I like making content to grow the business now. That's what kind of happened. Like this is actually going to grow the business. Yeah. I just think that like when it comes like so how often how often do you work? I work from I'm up at six. I'm at the gym at 630. I get my kids out of bed between 7.30 and 8. I go to my office at 9.30, probably. I'm home at 5.30. I do family time until 8.30. I'll be on my computer until 10, and then I go to bed. That's my day, Monday to Friday. I don't work typically Saturday and Sunday, except now Saturday and Sunday, Friday and Saturday nights, I'm dorking around with AI. You know, it's really hard because I don't have kids yet, but I don't know what. It's really hard to look at my calendar.

Is this work? We're here at Spotify Studios in New York. Is this considered? work because for me, I don't know if I can actually say this is working. There are times where Colin will be like, dude, we got to go shoot content. That kind of feels like work. But this is like, I get to hear your story and it download everything and actually learn. It's very hard for me to consider this. And when I go in and I'm doing orientation for three hours to 64 guys next month, brand new technicians. Like I said, guys, this is my favorite day.

Welcome to the first day of your last career. Yeah, I saw a photo of you doing that. It looks pretty awesome. It's very hard for me. And I think you've got to enjoy the journey. We were just talking about that earlier, enjoy the journey. And when you're not enjoying the journey, you've got to just make a change. I hated running my first company.

I hated it. Now I like it. And that's, you're talking about Hampton. I like Hampton. Hampton's fun. The hustle, I built it. I built the whole business to sell it. Built to sell.

Yeah. Great book, John Worlo. Yes. And I read that and it changed my life. That's, if you build it to sell it, it's your best asset. And we treat this. You know, there's a guy out there with kick charge. Dan Antonelli, and he charges like 40 grand-ish to build the brand.

That's really like... See the guy who did your trucks? Yeah. And a lot of people don't want to spend that money. I'm like, dude, that's your best asset. Like, it's got to be memorable. But I get it because the first time I had to spend the money with them, I was like, dude, I don't know. Dude, now I see all the trucks.

Once I saw your trucks, now all the trucks have copied it. Yeah. No, they, he's the most well known. He's done 3,000 brands. Tell me a little bit about Hampton. I know what it is, but I want the audience to get. familiar with it. Basically, are you familiar with YPO? Oh, yeah. So it's, um, it's a little bit similar, a similar business model, but basically the way it works is, uh, there's EO and YPO. There's EO, there's YPO.

There's EO, there's actually a ton more. YEC. I can tell you something nerd out. It's crazy how big these businesses are because I think your business will eventually have a component of your media business. Um, but basically like when I was running my company, I had a group of like six or seven people. We are having our own little mastermind and changed my life. Um, and I wanted to like build that for other people. So the way Hampton works is our average member does like 25 million in revenue and you have to apply to get in and we're in 16 cities. And if you apply and you get in, you're put to a core group of eight other entrepreneurs and you meet once a month. And we have 100 executive coaches on staff who lead your monthly meeting. And it's like the one group of people

who are supposed to have full context on like either your daddy issues and all your personal life and also like your work life. Because like your work employees, you can't like complain about like what's going on at home. And then like your spouse, you don't want to. You don't want to. to talk to them about like cack issues and like nerd out over that stuff. And so it's like the one group that has full context and you are supposed to be with each other for five, 10, 15 years and you help each other grow. And so that's what Hampton is. And we have 16 chapters, thousands of members. And I think it could be a great thing. You know, I was just, you know Ryan Panetta? Yes. A real estate dude out of Vegas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the black hair. Yeah.

So he's like, he always says like, dude, dude, you need to come to my event. Like, I want you. Like, he's all like, like, he's the coolest dude ever. And I like him a lot. But real estate. I was heavy into real estate. I'll get back into it. But anyways, he's like, dude, what do I love to do? I love to network and I love golf. So he started the 19th hole or whatever it's called. And so he's like, I bring entrepreneurs in that love to golf that love the network.

And he's like, dude, this thing's already worth like $15 million. I don't remember what he told me. They sell for a lot of money. It's crazy. Have you heard of Vistage? Yeah, I have. So what do you know about Vistage? Well, Vistage is, there's another one, too.

I don't know everything, but... So Vistage just sold for $2 billion. So Vistage does nine figures a year in profit. So... Isn't that crazy? What's the other one that I keep getting invited? Tiger 21? Tiger 21.

Yes. Tiger 21 does something like 90 million a year in revenue with 30 employees. Something like that, give or take. Well, here's the deal. Like, I just, by the way... Isn't that crazy? This is nuts. So last night, and I got to brag about this because this is like changed, like, this is the black

card. We went to Centurion last night. Is your number on the front? No. No, it's not. So no, we didn't get that. So the deal is I'm sitting there at this restaurant and I have no business. I don't know what New York's like, first of all. I've been here a few times. And you just know everybody in there is like not only made it, but they've like one percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm walking in there and I'm like, I pull up my napkin and I put it on my lap and I'm trying to do the right stuff. but I'm like, what a freaking killer place to network. Like, dude, like, I have a buddy of mine and he goes, dude, I got three kids. Two of them are diabetic.

And he goes, I have a business. It's a plumbing age-act business. But what do you do when you got two diabetic kids? Like, I was there for them. I pretty much shut off work. It started failing. It went down for four years. He goes, so now I got no money.

So what do I do? I went and took a loan. And I was, like, thinking I'm like, yeah, you had to go work. And he goes, no. I rented a Porsche and I joined the most expensive country club in California. And I was like, that doesn't make a lot of sense. He goes, so I'm golfed with Wayne Gretzky. I'm golfing with Michael Jordan.

And I'm golfing with these really, really wealthy people. And this guy Robin that he got to golf with, he's like, I love the home service base. I love blue collar. He's like, I'll invest in you. So he gave him a few million bucks and he kicked it back off. But I was like, that's just a weird story, right? Like, I don't have any money at all. So I'm going to.

That's the exact opposite decision. I was like, dude, you get dressed out there and you work and you get back in the truck. That sounds like bad inputs, but a great output. Yeah, it was. I got so many questions. You're going to have one of these businesses, by the way. I think. Well, right now we have 400 people in my group, the Freedom Group, and it's all home service.

But it's a little bit different. There's coaching involved. We look at your financials. We help you fix your, we help you fix the holes. But it's different than these groups. You ever been to, when I go into a new market, it's funny because I went into Atlanta, and I haven't been to a B&I meeting in over a decade. So B&I does a hundred million a year in profit.

Yeah, I actually had the founder on my podcast, and they're very interesting, but I hate, you know, the problem is you get to, it's like you've got to give, I have to refer. And I'm like, I don't want to have to refer if I don't, you know what I mean? And I get it. But you get like a one-minute pitch, right? And, but that's a similar thing. It's just a little bit, even toast, what's toastmasters worth? I don't know, but that's the public speaking one.

Yeah. The idea is that like, there's another one called World 50. Have you heard of that one? No. So World 50, it's a crazy, fascinating product, another one that does hundreds of millions here in revenue with 50% margins. So it's a company where it costs 80 grand a year to join and it's meant for Fortune 5,000 executives. And so the way it works is they have a CMO community, a chief HR community, a chief CFO community, all the C-suite that you can imagine.

Yeah, CHRO. And you get three things. The first is you get a concierge, and you could call the concierge, and you could be like, hey, I'm the chief HR officer. Black Lives Matter is going on. I need to talk to some other executives to, like, figure out how do we... Navigate. What do we talk about?

How do we do? Because that person can't tweet that, you know what I'm saying? And so you get that concierge. The second thing is you get a digital community where you could type in and ask them these questions. And the third thing is two events a year, where you can go. go with your 50-person group and you could talk about some of these off-the-record things that you need to figure out. And that business also sold for over a billion dollars. And so these network

businesses, people don't realize how there's no, there's not that many serious entrepreneurs getting into that space because why would you when you just go to an AI company or something, you know, sexy? And so it's kind of like my opinion is it's not a lot of people are talking about it. And I think it's really cool. I want to learn more about it. Where do you get that based. Is it here? Hampton? Yeah, Hampton.

Well, we have 16, so we have 16 chapters. Our office is here. We have about 20 employees here, 40 total. Okay. But we're here. And like, let's see. Like yesterday, our New York chapter is probably 200 members. They went to NASDAQ.

We like some, someone, we got a tour of the NASDAQ. So you get your core group and then each chapter is cool events. So the Boston chapter, rents. at a box at the Red Sox and everyone brought their family. And then there's like our Slack community. So you could post anything. You're like, I need a good accountant.

Who's got a good accountant? Or I, there was something crazy in Slack. Someone was like, I own, everyone has a digital component, but someone's like, I own this company and we have retail stores. I caught someone an employee having sex after hours. In like, who's a, what do I fire her? Like it was like, what do I do in this situation? Like people post this type of stuff and they're like, I need to talk to someone immediately to help me figure out how to navigate the situation. I've never been here. And so it could be like kind of wild stuff that people learn about. That's cool. And it's super private. Where does the my first million come into Hampton or they just? No, the hustle, we owned our daily newsletter. We owned a handful of conferences. And then we also owned a handful of podcasts. And I owned or Hampton or the hustle, my company that I owned, we owned my first million. And when I sold the whole company, I sold it to HubSpot.

and they pay, they now pay MFM media, which is Sean and I, they pay us like a talent fee. And what's the biggest lessons you've learned? This is a selfish question. Dude, it takes forever to grow a podcast.

So here's the biggest lessons that I've learned with the podcast. Podcasts, so for those listening, MFM is a popular podcast. Like, I would say that maybe, like people say top 10. I don't know what top 10 means, but of all the business podcasts,

I have to imagine where one of the bigger ones, we get millions of long-form downloads a month. and it's pretty powerful. You came on, I don't know, people, like, I think you said people DM'd you, but like, we'll talk about some tax software, some MFM is like, it's half jokes and messing around half serious business stuff, like you saw. Like, we have a good time.

It's fun. It's fun. Like, we're lighthearted. And there'll be times we'll mention a software company and it will, like, they'll sell like $3 million for the software. It's crazy. But MFM was started because my Sean and I, we were both. had companies and we were like we started 19 he started 19 he started it and I was the publisher

and after a handful of months he was like come do this with me and um it got popular right off the bat and then it went down and got not popular and it took five years so we've done people don't know this we've done 850 episodes and so the thing that I've learned is we call it the RSS feed so iTunes Spotify podcast listening not YouTube so like just podcast first The hardest thing I've ever had to grow was the RSS feed. So Spotify listenership and iTunes. The most predictable and engaged and valuable audience, though, has been podcasts. There's something very intimate about being in someone's ears for 50 minutes.

So on our RSS feed, our average listener time, we've done work with Spotify. And our average listener time, I forget exactly what it is, but it's something, this is average. So every time someone listens, it's like 30 minutes. YouTube, where we are also popular, we have almost 900,000 subscribers on YouTube, that maybe gets one or two million monthly views, like long form views, not shorts. The average view time on that is like 14 minutes. So it's like 14 minutes compared to like 35 minutes. That's crazy.

And I will say something in minute 56 and the next day, I'll get 10 people in Manhattan come up to me and say, hey, I heard you liked this one thing. And I'm like, I said that? They're like, yeah, you said it? I was like, oh, yeah, I did. I made an offhanded comment about X, Y, and Z. But no one will say that about my tweets or my Instagram. Yeah.

No one. So it's crazy. The podcasts are so powerful. I love doing them. I really do, but I don't use them the same way. I mean, they get popular, but for me, it's actually educational, and it's a great networking tool, and it introduced me to guys like you. We went to Patrick Bet, David's office in Fort Lauderdale. He's a machine.

And he's pulling up all the data. He's got his core team there, and he's like, let me show you something, Tommy. And he's jumping around. He's grabbing my arm. And he's like, look at this. Look at this short versus this. He goes, now here's the thing, Tommy. That one got a million followers.

He's just like, you can see he's got the machine. He's like, Tony Robbins flies in here. The coolest thing I was like, it's at a hanger. That's just built for wealthy people to come in. But, you know, I look at a lot of people. But he does politics. I find that to be miserable. See, here's the deal.

I could do politics. I could do religion, but I don't think I can handle the haters. You get mad with somebody. I don't know how Andy Elliott does it. I get mad with somebody like says anything. I'm like, you don't even know me. And they're like, Why are you even commenting?

It's just frustrating because, I don't know. I think when people get to know, this guy just sent me this long message. He goes, I thought you were the biggest douchebag when I met you at Victor's event. And he's like, I think God's working through you now. And he's like, I was wrong. And I was like, that's awesome. And I'm like, I probably was a douchebag. I probably was drinking.

But you guys I get it. I come off, either come off super confident or this cocky asshole. But I'm really- You come off as cocky asshole or confident? Aren't those the same thing? No, there's a big difference. but they get misconstrued is like, because sometimes they take it too far.

But that's like you say, I'm like, you know, my biggest weaknesses I like to sing in the shower. Yeah, I come off cocky and confident. No, I can give you a million weaknesses. Like, I'm very good. Like, I don't even want to do a 360 review at work because I could probably write 10 pages of my weaknesses. Like, I can write way more weaknesses.

And I'm my own worst critic, though. What piece of game-changing advice do you wish you knew in your early 20s? I wish I knew earlier how malleable the world is. I think that, so I'm 36 now, and I've hung out with like a lot of the titans of the world, like these billionaire types, I mean, people like you, like, and I wish that there are some people whose engine just has more horsepower than me, but a lot of the people who I really admire who are like who shaped destinies, I didn't realize how normal.

they were except for their ability to be consistent and to take actions when they're nervous or scared. So, for example, I used to have this conference called HustleCon. And I would tell the speakers, like, let's say someone had a talk at one o'clock in the afternoon, I'd be like, you have to be here at 10 a.m. for sound check. There's no sound check for conferences, but I just wanted to hang out with them. Oh, yeah. And so I would be backstage with, like, the founder of WeWork, the founder of Casper Mattresses, the founder of OKCupit or IAC. IAC.C. this guy, Max, who started Grammarly, who is like a multi-billion dollar company. And I would just be like chilling, sitting.

And I wouldn't say a word, but they would all be talking to each other. And my biggest learning from all of that was almost all of them weren't significantly smarter than me, but they were significantly more successful or more. And when I defined success, I mean like self-actualization. And it was because they were just really good at doing things even when they were scared. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I didn't understand that earlier on.

I used to put people on pedestals too much. And I've learned not to do that. I mean, I still do it. I'll tell you one thing, Sam, that I would do if I were you, that every time I look at somebody other than Elon Musk, because he's a freak. But I don't want Elon's life. No, I don't either.

But I look at people and I go, it has become way more than money now. But why not me? Like, if I see somebody having a great relationship with their mother or their kids or with their wife. And so when you could recognize it, these things. I think that's the emotional intelligence. The smartest people I know, it's like Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. They're so smart, but they don't understand how they make people feel. They're so looking inside at themselves instead of saying, this is the way that I think you're perceiving me. And that's a very big skill. So when I, other than, like I say,

the tipsy nights, because I know I come off like that, but it's really not, it's not supposed to come off like that. But normally I'm just like, I'm really coming off this way. And I'm very sensitive to that. Not super confrontational with people. And that's one skill I want to get better at. Wait, what did you learn earlier? Do you wish you would have known earlier? I think the biggest thing is I wish I learned a lot earlier than 2018 to just success leaves clues and just be a guy. You could be a fly on the wall. Most people want to help you. I go like I went and visited every $100 million shop and they told me everything I needed to know. What was your revenue in 2018? 17, it was 175, and then it bumped up to 25 million.

So, and how old were you at 17.5? 24. No, no, no, no, I was 34. 34 years old. Did you have profits? Not a whole lot of profit. Okay. And then I learned that.

You were like promising but not self-actualized. Yeah, listen, I consider that successful, though. I always thought revenue was a badge of success. Well, it's like a precursor. Sometimes. Sometimes you go bankrupt because profit makes a work. world go round. Revenues for vanity, profits for sanity. That's what I always say. That's one of my mentors taught me that. Dude, I didn't learn the definition of profit and revenue

until I was like 30. Like, I thought revenue was the money that you collected. I didn't know the difference between and profit. I was like, we're making all this profit. Why doesn't our bank balance go up? Yeah. And so now in my head, I say cash flow is. People talk a lot about gross profit, which is way different than EBITDA or real profit. But your EBITDA can go up from some businesses, your EBITDA can be huge and like your cash poor still. Yeah, cash flow. If you saw I had Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary at one of my events and he always talks about cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.

And it's got to be good cash flow. Like a count receivable is not really a good thing. Do you want to hear a crazy story? So I told you my wife is interesting. So my wife is her father's Russian Jewish. And he owns a moving company, really successful moving company. Still to this day. He gave it or sold it.

So he has two daughters, Sydney and Sarah. my wife is Sarah. Neither daughter wanted to take it over, so we sold it to Sydney's husband, and it's a commercial moving company. Okay. Kills it. And he, Jeff, my father-in-law was like, I think he graduated high school, but real blue-collar type of guy and just murdered it. You know, they have a Hampton's house, and they got a penthouse, not a penthouse, but a fancy Manhattan, just like the American dream. And then my mother-in-law, his wife, is a Haitian immigrant. She came from Haiti when she was 16 or something like that. She stayed-at-home mom, raised the girls, my wife. When they went to college, she wanted to start a business, but wasn't sure what to do.

So she got a real estate license. It didn't really go well. And then when Sarah and I had been dating for three or four years, one day she says, hey, can I drive you to the airport? I go, okay, it's an hour long, Smithy, why don't you want to drive me to the airport? And she goes, hey, listen, so here's the deal. I love sewing. I want to start a business making pillows, throw pillows. Throw pillows. fancy pillows. And I was like, okay, well, I'll do what I do all the time. I'll give you generic advice, but I just know in my head you're never going to follow through on it, whatever. I didn't tell her that, but in my head, I'm like, I love you, so I'm going to give you my it all, but you're just going to go one in or out the other year, because that's what happens to everyone. Two weeks later, I get a link, and she goes, okay, now what?

And I'm like, what's this? She's like, that's my website. I flew down to South Carolina. I bought the materials. I made the photos for my website. I have a little space. where I'm sewing the pillows, and I've got five friends to buy the pillows and give me a good review on Etsy. Now what? And I was like, keep going. And so this was five years ago. Now she has a business that does seven figures a year in revenue. She has five full-time employees, and she's making amazing profit for an e-commerce business. It's like crazy. She's paying herself a lot of money. She's killing it. And I bring this up because most people were saying like e-commerce is like a horrible, or is it's not in good business

It's like... Yeah, it could be a race to the bottom. Oh, my God. If they do how my mother-in-law ran her pillow business, it's like the greatest business on earth. But I thought you'd get a kick out of that story. No, it's a great story.

I still gotta... So we might need to hit just to tie it all together and then you can have fun with the rest. So just asking... What do I do? Kick him out? Well, he has a dinner. I can be late.

I'll get the... This stuff, this and that. That's really all. Okay. Do whatever else he wanted to do. Good luck kicking this. guy out. God damn. You're a bounce's worst nightmare. Well, now that I know that it's flexible, that makes me feel better.

I want to wrap up real quick. So, Cortec bought a company in the same fund of me. Who? Cortec is the company that I partnered with A1, so we own half each. I saw some other garage company just got bought for $800 million the other day. Yeah, I'm with them tonight. I did. Really? I was with them last night. Yeah, nice. Great company, great guys. In fact, I gave him a hug, and I'm like, congratulations. And we're talking about a lot of business tonight. But, um, uh, little, Sleepies. This lady just started selling, she had a kid and she didn't like any of the clothes. So she started making them in their garage. They're doing about $100 million of EBITA.

Little Sleepies? Little Sleepies. That's what it's called. That's fucking awesome. I'm going to go buy it right now. Yeah, you're going to love it. Could you say again slowly? Could you ask him what the name of that hot dog thing was? Yeah. Go again. Tell us the name of the hot dog. Sorry, I talk fast. Yeah, you're good. Southern Sam's, Wieners is as big as a baby's arm. That was saying of my hot dog. Weeners as big as a baby's arm. Oh my God, okay. So don't have a gross mind, bro. No, no, I did because you did that.

But you interviewed Alex Ramose, a big fan. I tried to coordinate with him. I text him on a cell phone, his assistant. He's probably gone through 87 assistants. Mr. Bees, cool dude. What I like about Mr. Bees is he did so much. I didn't meet him, but I'll tell you, like I started watching that show on Netflix and I just can't get into it.

And then Prof. G., whatever. Do you think there's a recipe for success with these guys? Well, I think that there's different levels of success. I don't know where you fall on that level. You might be the Mr. Bees type, but Mr. Bees is maniacal. Yeah. When your enemies are drawn, it's to go, those in their mouth. Yeah.

I think Hermosie's maniacal. I don't know if Hermose is happy or not, but he's... Well, that's the Tony Robbins. He's sitting there in the interview and he's going to outwork you. He's maniacal. And Layla. Are you maniacal? No.

I'm not maniacal either. I can be obsessive and I want to win, but I invite the garageer companies in because I'm like, we're stronger together. And so we've got garageyard of freedom. But my life is not built on only work because you're leaving so much on the table of like, dude, that's why we're building the Idaho House. Like, relationships matter. I think that what I've learned, I've been so thankful with this podcast,

is I've learned that there's a billion ways to get to the end goal. but do you enjoy the journey? Me? Yeah. Yeah, dude, I have super rich life. I love my life. I love my family. I define my rich life as I have a strong woman in my life. I am physically fit.

I enjoy my coworkers. And I like my family. Yeah. So what are entrepreneurs? What are some of the people that you had on the show that you're like, I want that life? Jesse Isler was quite good. I do like Jesse. He has a rich life.

I think he feels like, I think he's happy. this guy named Darmash, who's the founder of HubSpot, he's a billionaire, but that's like the least impressive thing about him. He's a really happy person, and I think he loves, he's a computer nerd. He loves coding and doing things like that. And he has designed his life exactly how he wants it to be. He founded HubSpot, and not one person reports to him. So he's never, he's like, I don't like managing people, but I love making products.

So I'm only going to do that. Yeah, that's really interesting because a lot of people say this is how a CEO must work. You've got to have these one-on-ones and everything. But in this new world, they can make it as dynamic as you want. But he launched in 08 or 05, I forget. And anyway, I love people who just live life the way that they want to live, regardless of what the rules are. Richard Branson, I think of, I had to think of somebody that's like, dude, if you're going

to come talk to business, I'm flying you out to Switzerland, where I'm at. We're going to talk an hour about business. Then we're going to go ski the Alps. You know what I mean? He seems like a crazy person. The Epstein files? Well. He does have Epstein vibes, by the way.

Everybody's on the Epstein files. Dude, not you. Not me. No, no. I mean, half the women on the viewer, what be Goldberg was, but anyways, I thought you weren't going to talk politics. That was no politics.

Oh, but I know if you're holding back. So you encouraged your listeners to make chance you be to your life coach, and I'll tell you, what I do is I... Claude now. You like Claude better. Way better. I don't even think it's close.

What do you think? Well, I think OpenClaw changed the game. Do you use it? No, I'm not literally like we're going to do a whole thing of me getting the mini Mac and like setting it up. That's still a little too dangerous to me. It's kind of dangerous. Why? Dude, check this out.

My partner installed OpenClaw and he had OpenClawn. The OpenClaught could steal all your shit. He had it be his assistant. And the assistant started messaging everyone in Slack. And then the next morning we see this message from this new guy named Jake. And he goes, hi, I'm Jake. I fired Emily, the old assistant. open claw had made because she did x, y, and Z, I'm now in charge. Like, it said that in Slack.

So when you talk about claw, open claw is a piece of claw. No. They're just similar name. No. For the sake of the conversation, no. Okay. So what, tell me the pros and cons between, by the way, Sam Altman, I don't trust him at all. Of course, neither do I. Uh, open claw is, I don't know the best way to explain it that would make perfect sense, but basically imagine they are, open claw is using clod, but it's its own machine with its own rules.

Okay. Claude, Claude, Claude is a closed system, and it has many similar features as open claw. But for all intents and purpose, imagine there are two separate things. And open claw goes on its own computer, and it's working 24-7 and making decisions. So does that make sense? It does 100%. I figured out, I know there's a way to take, because there's too much in chat, GBT, but there's a way to export that into Claude. So I'll make the switch this one. I love Claude.

Also, here, I'll give you a cool example. Claude has Claude code that I love. I made this, you got big of the legs, right? Are finding pants hard? They could be. Finding pants for me is so hard. I built a Chrome extension where I uploaded my thigh and waist width, and it goes to the stores that I already go to to online shop

and it automatically scans the sizes, not just the waist sizes, but the size guide of each pant and it goes like, these are the ones that you should. We should do that. I got to come out here again, and I have the hardest time finding good shoes. So I need to just do all the measurements. My arch is like crazy.

I created a Chrome plugin that just, and I did it last night in Claude and it took me 20 minutes. And now I like, I like bought pants already. I'm like, all right, these are the ones that fit. I don't have the brows anymore. Dude, we've been working on this garage door health thing for a long time and Luke built it in a day and it's badass we sent it to the first guy he's like $12,000 or so that would have taken a year um but anyways so you tell it to be your life coach

and by the way I agree with you but I don't want to be relaxed I still like the social side of like meeting people of course so talk to me a little bit about that so I did this test called um deep personality.ai it's this um my friend Andrew made it but it's based off of just an old test and it's like a 30 minute test where I tell it all about my personality and then I upload it to Claude so it knows about me and so it can help give me advice

what's funny is it has a feature where you can click a button and send it to your partner meaning your boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse and it has some sexuality stuff because it does ask you like questions and it like makes judgments on your sexuality not like if you're gay or straight

but like you know I forget what some of the things could be like I don't know fucking know like just like Freudian shit yeah whatever it is I don't know exactly I don't understand it But then you could share it with your coworker or you can share it with your friend.

And when you share it with your coworker, it gets rid of the sex stuff. Well, my business partner thought partner, business partner, and you could send it to each other. And so this way, I can load my, my clod with his compatibility stuff. So this way, when I'm talking to him and I'm like, you know, Joe and I aren't aligned. I need to, like, communicate differently. What should I say? He mistakenly set the partner one. And I see, it's like, well, you guys aren't sexually compatible.

Therefore, like, and I'm like, oh, my God. That's crazy. But yeah, I use Claude all day as like, like a help me respond to this person in a tone that is appropriate to them. No, that's great. How do they use it? Like, what are some of them? Yeah, so we're young entrepreneurs.

Oh, well, it's quite simple. I think if I'm a young entrepreneur, I would say, ask me 50 questions or as many questions as are necessary, so you could help me make a five-year goal for where I want to be, and then ask me more questions so you can get to know my personality and my strengths and weaknesses so you can make a SWAT analysis of my personality. And then when I come to you with questions on, well, this decision allow me or not allow me to get closer to my goal, I want you to guide me based off

of where I'm headed towards. Because I think unless you have a goal, unless you have a very specific time frame with a specific goal, like having ambition can be almost useless. Yeah. If you don't know the North Star for sure and understand, and that's a lot more things, we can dive into that. Because it's like, for example, it's like, oh, I want to have this amount of money or I want this type of lifestyle. And then you're saying like, okay, should I raise venture capital? it's like, well, you said you wanted freedom, so no. But it's like, oh, you want impact and you don't care about equity? Yeah, raise venture capital.

No, I'm going to go do this this week. You got two days busyness and then Friday I'll be good. What advice do you have for somebody trying to make their first million? Just dedicate way longer than you think to it. Yeah. Consistency, don't give up. Don't quit. Yeah, I just don't think.

And I make this mistake all the time. I don't think people realize how long things take. Thanks take forever. Yeah, a lot of people think they're going to get rich very, very quickly. They give up so quickly. Even with a podcast, so many smart people I know, they gave it 10 weeks and they thought they were going to be, you know, Tony Robbins. No, our podcast has been around for five years.

We've done 850 episodes. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right. What number was that, 850? Yeah. So you got me beat. The hard part is sometimes I feel like I'm Robin Peter to pay Paul, but it all kind of works out.

What does that mean? who are you robin well i got 12 hundred people depend on me at my main company that's the main source of income but also that's how i heard about you and i don't live in one of your states but if i did and if i owned a garage i would use you yeah no you're right there's a byproduct i also think that like your company's cool and i'd be like if i met a young guy in arizona or wherever you all the cities that you serve i'd be like hey this company seems like the CEO seems pretty badass why don't you go work there it's i think it's more important for the CEO to build a brand than it is for the company itself because you don't go work for a company,

you go work for a person. Yeah, Chris Hoffman, I think, is a good example of this. Hoffman brothers. Yeah, great guy. We'll see him tonight. He's in New York? Yeah, that's cool. Is this like a HVAC?

This is just a Service Titan CRM meet up. Oh, cool. And I'm on a panel tomorrow. Like, man, you put me on a panel? Sounds like a riveting conference. It will be. We're going to be talking about culture, which actually is my favorite thing. I'm just joking, service Titan.

Service Titan. What's one word you would use to describe your entrepreneurial journey? The motto that I live by, it's kind of cheesy. It's like my version of live, laugh, love, so you can make fun of me. It's like bold fast fun. Bold fast fun. Yeah, BFF. Bold fast fun.

Bold fast fun. I love it. That's like the basic version. That's like my live, laugh, love. Yeah. You can only pick two? No, no. The one is, is you could pick best quality.

You can pick quickest. You can pick the cheapest. Yeah, you can only pick two out of the three. Here's the thing. cheap labor isn't skilled skilled labor isn't cheap you have all the phrases I have a lot of fun

I think you do too you gotta have fun but here's the deal you know as well as I do I've had people that I've sent to you and you're like dude not a good guest for me

and it's a great story who was it the other a few weeks ago we don't need to say Richard yeah yeah I'm like I just don't know what to say

it's a cool story about it's a cool guy but what am I supposed to talk about I think he should talk to the guy who wrote... Oh, I'll introduce you to some cool people. There's the people that you can introduce to. He wrote the book about... Driven.

Driven people and what it looks like that. You and love reading that book right now. But the deal is, I think you got to bring it back to success, but here's the problem with most successful people. 80% of the billionaires I meet, I don't want to be them. I don't want anything to do with their life. Like, with money comes misery for a lot of people. And I'm watching and now going into this next bite.

are they Apple and I'm like Who do you admire? If I had to tell you a billionaire you know, not to get political but Mark Cuban seems like a pretty freaking cool guy and he Is that political?

Well, because I don't agree with his politics necessarily. Do you want to hear a cool story about him? I tweeted out that my friend with cancer needed a certain drug and Mark contacted me and took care of my friend two weeks ago. That's why I like him because

emailed me personally. He personally emailed me. He doesn't know who I am. Well, he does. I mean, you give yourself probably far less credit than you deserve. But he took care of my buddy. That's really, really cool. I mean, I'm glad I picked him.

He didn't reply to the tweet. He just saw the email. I put my email there and he goes, hey, I'm on top of it. What do you need? Tell me anything. That is super cool, man. Bad ass, right? Yeah, there's a lot of people I admire.

You know, I like Dan Martel a lot. He's not a billionaire, but I just like... Dan Martel really, really like, he's not the drive I would see. He's just like, dude, I'm going to work out. I was up there visiting him in Canada, and he's like, dude, we're going to go work out. We're going to have a coffee. We're going to shoot content. And he goes, he just lives his life and then work comes around it.

A lot of people build their life around work. And I respect that. I don't necessarily, you know who I want to be really good at? Tommy Mellow. I want to be good at being me. And what I mean by that is just I'm not going to imitate or try to be anything I'm not. But I will be known for being the best at. the earth if i if i could choose and what does that mean it just means i'm giving time and giving

experience i just pray for health that's that's the most important thing and you know even if i had five girls i just want to be the coolest dad and i i don't mean to say it like that but of course what is even if you have you want a boy well of course i i i play a lot of sports i like and not to say women don't play sports i have two girls and my eldest girl is very boy like she's very precarious but i i wish i can i want two boys and two girls that would be awesome We've got to figure out this testosterone, you know, sperm thing, I guess. Give me one guess that just impressed the shit out of you that you weren't expecting. Rob Deerdick.

Rob Deerick. That's a good one. Yeah, I can make the intro. He's great. Yeah, yeah. He started really focusing on time management. And that's really what I... He had his, like, coming out party on that on our podcast.

And it went totally viral. I take a lot of pride. On MFM, we've... kind of been like the first publication for a lot of people. So it was him, Brian Johnson, the guy who wants to live forever. Andrew Heberman. Yep. We were early on.

How do you want to live too if AI does this job and we could break the genetic code and really? 130 seems reasonable. 130? That seems nice. So how long? But look, as long as I want to be mobile. And by the way, like some people are like, why would you want to live forever? All your friends?

I'm like, well, they're living forever too, hopefully. Well, you, if I had a guess, there's going to be a direct correlation between size and I think tall, big people, I'm tall, you're tall and big, are going to live less. You think so? I think that like smaller people live longer. Yeah, I think it's like dogs. Yeah, maybe, but I know a lot of people, I don't think that's a general rule, but we take more. It is, I believe, by the way, I think it is.

That's why the China people, you know, maybe. But here's the deal. Like, haven't you seen like a bunch of Asian people? Like, I have a bunch of Asian friends and I'll see their grandparent, and their grandparent is the smallest person ever, and they are 105 years old, and they're still able to squat in the ground. Yeah. Well, another thing is, like, if you go to Italy,

and I don't go to Italy, but I know what Giuseppe does. And the thing is you've got to walk everywhere, and you're always bad and now picking up stuff. But you can drink wine every night and still live long. I think New York is the best place to grow old in because you walk everywhere. My in-laws are so healthy, and they walk everywhere. Yeah, okay. I'll give you that one.

How many steps a day do you get? That's true, but I'll tell you this. I don't really enjoy it because I'd rather walk, but literally we took an Uber here. And it's like, and by the way, the hotel, all we're hearing is beeping and a lot. That's just not me. Well, you're in this neighborhood is the worst. You're in the worst area. Where she lives, it looks like Paris.

Where I live, it's quiet. I live in. I will come give it a shot. I mean, I'm not moving out of here. You can come to see me up. I have a 3,000 square of an apartment. It's beautiful. It's quiet.

We can book a bunch of more. Yeah. I felt the same way, by the way. I lived in Texas for a little while, and then I moved here, and I thought that New York was just what you were experiencing right here. There are so many areas where it's really quiet and beautiful. I love old architecture and beauty and art. I do, too. And so I live on the Upper West Side because everything's old and has a beautiful, like, French aesthetic.

And it's very, like, I live right down the street from Strawberry Fields, which is where John Lennon was shot. And so there's something that it feels a little magical. It's kind of cool. I'll check it out. I'll give it a shot. I'm just not a 24-7. Like, I think Phoenix is perfect. Anytime you want to come visit, that's my city.

That's going to be home forever. Dude, I'm not 24-7. I'm in bed by 10.30. Yeah, no, I know. But I'm just saying, like, this city is just too busy for me. Like, I don't like, I could get to busy in Phoenix and I could get to not visit. I hear you. And I could get to Vegas quickly.

I'm just saying where you are staying for your trip is the busiest. No, I've stayed. I've stayed, I'm not judging it. I'll tell you this. I'm from Michigan. And I'm just not the weather. I don't like the weather. Yeah, it sucks.

Yeah, the weather is bullshit. I hate it. I'm never going to move back to the cold. I can go to Idaho now when I want in the winter for Christmas. Give me your two best books that change your life. Titan, the biography of John Rockefeller. It's life-changing for me. Also, if I weren't in business, I would be a history teacher.

I am obsessed with history. It's my life's passion. And one of my favorite books about American history is the Patriarch, which is the story of Joe Kennedy, who is the father of JFK. that's one of my favorite books. You know, it's funny. I was in D.C. the other day, and I hit up R.F.K. Jr. And he's like, it was cool because I got to know him.

Well, not really, but he's a cool dude for me. I like him a lot. He's like, Tommy. Hey, Tommy, I'm catching that name you're dropping. I got you. I've got to that. Well, he said, hey, I can show you around, but, you know, I was leaving too soon. And he's a busy man right now.

So you stood him up? Or you didn't? No, I didn't stay longer because. Oh, that's pretty wild. Because I don't, by the way, what am I going to do? Sam for 30 minutes because he's making time. Yes. You can go back because Daniel Pink wants to do an interview.

Oh, Daniel Pink's the man. You know who Daniel Pink is? The author. Yeah, Daniel Pink, to sell as human is what he says. That book changed my life. He wants to get to do them. If you guys want to do last questions. Yeah, I know.

Was this fun for you? Yeah, this is great. Super cool. Sam, I always ask, somebody wants to get a hold of you. How do they do that? I try to be, I'm hard to get a hold of on purpose. That's okay. I would say you would tweet at me.

Tweet. Dude, I am, I could go on a long story on this, but I think that like people are lack of focus. And my focus is destroyed now because of like social media. And like I hate the amount of text and emails and slacks that I can potentially get and it has ruined my focus. So I try, I'm trying my hardest not to be reachable. You know what? That's one of my goals too. And it's very hard for me.

But that's the North Star for me. Have you heard of the Flynn effect? The Flynn effect? Yeah. Basically every 30 years, which is one generation, on average, since we've been measuring this in the 1800s, the IQ has gone up nine points. Since 2014 or so is the first generation that it hasn't gone up. And it's attributed its correlation, but potentially causation, that it's social media and in particular short form video. Yeah.

And so, like, you know, swiping. I do it all the time. I'm like a zombie. I'm like a zombie. And then now with AI, I'm like, I don't even thinking about this shit. It's writing for me. I'm like, my craft is. And so I'm, and then with the messages, it's just going down.

Have you read the book Sapiens? Years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It just kind of talks about how back in the day, the survival skills, the coordination, the, like, the IQ was actually higher. How many books do you read? A lot, but I don't finish them all because sometimes I'm reading five at once. Like, I'm going through Peter Till's, the one, um,

zero to one again. So I've got a, I've got several reading groups and then the problem is, what's a reading group? I got accountability partners and we read one book a month together. It's mostly family. I used to run a book club called the anti-MBA. Oh, nice. So I feel you. Well, I do. I mean, I love books, but I love books, too. Just business books you read. Mostly. I read biographies, but not business books. I, um, so I'll have you close this out. way, I want to do a lot more stuff. Like, I kind of feel like I, I just kind of mesh with you a lot.

Like, I enjoy being around you. No weirdo. How old are you? I'm 43. So I'm 36. So you could be like a big brother, but I admire you so much. I am. Like, there's so many things that you said that I'm like,

when you came on MFF, where I'm like, oh my God, I identify with that so much and you just taught me something. I think that, like, in terms of like, you ask me who I admire who's been on the pod, I think you are one of the 10 people where I'm like, that's the way you live. I really appreciate that. And you know what? You've changed my mind about a lot of things.

And I'm from Missouri and you're from Michigan. I think it's a Midwestern thing. Yeah. Close us out, man. Give the audience something to think about. Oh, my God. That's the... I don't know.

Anything you want. Maybe something we didn't talk about. Um, man. I don't know. That's too much pressure. I like, I don't know, go read a history book. Go read, uh, I don't know, man, too much pressure. That's how hard.

Well, we got a lot of great stuff. That's like you telling me like, uh, hey, I heard you're funny. Go, uh, go ahead, make me laugh. All right, I'll ask the last question to close this out. Yeah, I will. Well, okay, you want me to make you laugh possibly? Yeah. I can make you laugh.

Okay. Here's how I met my wife. Okay. My wife is a sophisticated woman. grew up in Manhattan, went to an Ivy League school. I saw her in a bar. She's beautiful. I was with a buddy of mine, my friend Lily, I go, Lily.

When this girl walks by me, I'm going to have to stop her. I'm not leaving until I talk to her. So she starts walking towards me. I wasn't sure what's going to say. So I just said the first joke that came to mind and go, hey, what is the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? She goes, what? I said, I don't pay $500 to have a lintel on my face.

Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Because I knew she looked like a sophisticated woman, but because she was both sophisticated and could laugh at my dirty joke, I knew she was the one. And I told her I loved her two weeks later, and we've been together for like 15 years. That's amazing. Well, I'd love to meet her. She's awesome. It's a pleasure to have you here.

I'm going to get to know you a lot more. Maybe in the Hamptons. That kind of makes sense. Hampton. No, but your father-in-law has a place to the Hamptons. He does, yeah. Blue-color. And then we can meet Sydney and Sarah, right?

Yeah, that's my wife. It's tattooed on me, Sarah. Sweet. I hope you're one. I hope Sydney's not tattooed. But anyways, thank you for listening to the Mello Millionaire, guys. If you get a chance, go check out the episode on my first million. We had a blast on that one, too.