Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en and we did it and he tweeted it out and he went from 20 000 followers to i think close to 100 000 followers at this point in 24 hours [Music] andrew what’s going on the return of andrew we promised that we promised that you would come back and um sometimes that’s just something we say we’re like oh we gotta do this again sometime but this was a real one so uh we’re like all right when do you want to do it yeah we had like what like 20 things to get through we got through like four so what do you guys say we also [ ] around this time and not not address half of the topics again and set it up for a third parter i want to i do want to [ ] one thing and this kind maybe andrew you’ll know a little bit about this but listen let me tell you guys a story really quick andrew do you know a guy named chris pronger no he is a hockey player he played in the nhl for like 20 years or something he um it’s from canada i think ontario and uh he played in st louis blues he’s like the fifth or sixth or seventh highest paid player of all time so for some reason he reached out to me on twitter and i started talking to him and then we went and got dinner and he wanted to he’s like hey tell me how this twitter thing works like it looks cool like should i try this i was like yeah dude here’s what we’re gonna do tomorrow call me on zoom and the day before you call me send me five titles of what you think a tweet could be and we’ll just sit and i’ll just kind of like write while you talk and i’ll just find the interesting stuff uh that you that you’re saying and we’ll go from there and we did it and he tweeted it out point in 24 hours and the tweet was read by 10 million people and got 30 something thousand likes and this is the fifth time i’ve done this so i did this with my friend ramon and he got featured in all this he got he got on the how i built this podcast and business there because of that i did it my friend val who same thing we did it with um i helped do it with my friend anthony who talked you guys see the tweet thread about him living in africa and eating like only meat with like his the tribe he was staying with anyway this is this is crazy if you just take interesting people and it’s not like i did any of the work they were just talking their stories i just helped them write it it’s pretty wild how how this game works and what were the stories what did you share chris’s was easy it was just let me let me let me tell you one because let me tell you one of them because he got picked up by bro bible so the bro bible headlines did it really nhl star chris pronger ex-nhl star chris pronger shares traps that pro athletes fall into including spending one million at a strip club and um so why do you how did it get so many like so much traffic right away i think because the story got picked up by bigger outlets like bro bible too so that adds a lot of fuel to the fire it’s hilarious yeah and i retweeted it early on and but i think it’s just like a he’s already somewhat famous and cool and like i think sometimes they like i’m not trying to say this to brag because the reality is is like it’s not that hard because the guy is already like a big deal and has an interesting life and like who’s if you earned a hundred bucks dude he’s not that big of a deal like well but what i mean is not that many people know chris pronger but what i mean is if you earn 100 million dollars in as a professional athlete you have like one you have there’s only a thousand there’s only 100 people who have that insight that you have so like the insights that are i wonder what you like if you think about the value you think about the value of what you did for him that’s insane like if you went to someone and said hey i’m going to get you 10 million impressions on a tweet or i’m going to get you 100 000 followers what’s that worth people pay like that’s like honestly i’d say it’s like a million dollar tweet or something that you gave him well uh yeah but you can’t guarantee that right so it’s like a hard service to sell oh dude you should do it right here right now you should say i will write i will write tweets for you but depending on the outcome and the number of followers you have to pay me a certain amount so it’s totally variable um yeah that would actually be worth your time so andrew i um i uh had a right before this i was on a a twitter spaces with logan paul i was talking to logan paul so you’re only the second most famous person i’ve talked to this morning only a little bit more famous holy crap that’s crazy what’s he doing these days he just launched a um like a marketplace like a fractional ownership nft things so he basically created this thing called liquid marketplace where like i don’t know if you’ve seen but he’s really into pokemon cards like charizard cards and stuff like that like that’s been his thing over the last few years like these collectible either sports cards or pokemon cards and so what he did today was he launched a fractional like a rally road style uh marketplace where he would put up like you know his charizard card and you could just buy like a share of it rather than he bought the thing for two million and you could buy you know a piece of the a piece of the the pie there so that’s what he launched today so that’s why he was kind of doing like a promotional thing and i i was like i’ll just shoot my shot and so i just like you know raised my hand or whatever and went and talked to him it’s crazy the power of a the moat of a personal brand and a following right like those guys they can build they could build 100 businesses off of their following and that chris pronger guy the reason that’s so valuable is he can now start his own business doing whatever he wants selling shirts selling nfts starting a consulting business managing money for other hockey players you know whatever off of that hundred thousand people the optionality of it is insane obviously the downside of it is if you’re logan paul you’re logan paul and you’ve ultimately got to be the face did you um yeah did you just say sean i was just telling him go ahead sorry we got a little delay uh yeah i was just telling andrew i talked to a little ball this morning that’s the that was the on the phone or in front of people in in front of you on a twitter spaces just randomly i saw that i was listening but i i didn’t his name on twitter is not i think it had a nickname on it so i couldn’t tell if it was logan uh was he cool yeah he was cool i mean he was like promoting his thing which is you know he was so he that’s why he was he was on there uh like because he launched a new like rally road competitor basically and uh and so i was just joking around with him basically that i know you guys covered it in the middle of a couple different things um we uh but that personal brand thing andrew you kind of got that early on because you built your personal brand back i think before a lot of people were doing it um because you kind of built it i would say pre-twitter even was that right like did did you kind of have a blog following before twitter or was it all on twitter yeah i had a blog and stuff but honestly like we’re pretty quiet until coved and then during kovid i was bored and lonely and wanted to talk to people and so going on podcast was like a way to socialize um and then i realized the power of it like once i started getting uh you know thirty thousand forty thousand twitter followers i realized that when i talked about a business i was incubating i had our first thousand customers in a split second and so from my perspective you know i talked about last time about being like a dust bowl farmer mindset of what if you lose everything there’s such power in that you could literally go bankrupt you could lose all your businesses you could reboot in two days with a business idea if you have a twitter following and no one can take your twitter following away obviously dude you were not low-key before twitter you were famous before that yeah yeah thank you exactly well no no i’m saying like i i i wasn’t i was i was never i wasn’t on a single major podcast and i was i was well known like when i went south by southwest there’d be people all the time recognizing me um from twitter but that was a very small nerdy community or whatever so i was well known within like the design community but that was it all right well whatever you say i feel like before covid we had you on the podcast and it was already one of the more popular podcasts because you were on it and people were like people already knew your story so i don’t know i feel like you might be uh the timeline in your head might be a little bit different than than kind of at least the way i perceived it which was you were famous you were famous when we started the podcast yeah we started the podcast before covet so that’s the word yeah my perception is like all of it has just been last three years or whatever can i give you guys saying it’s true that like you you your personal brand does like kind of give you it’s a door that opens more doors uh but the downside is you have to say you’re you have to say to yourself i’m building my personal brand which is one of the lamest statements you could say so you know if you can live with that if you can sleep with that at night then it then it works out for you i know that it’s hard for me and sam to to do that can we give you that’s kind of why i haven’t started my own podcast or consistently tweeted or anything all right i like i to be honest like i’m hacking your audience right i’ll come on here once in a while when i have things to say but i don’t want to have to always come on and always tweet and when i was tweeting consistently i was driving myself crazy because i was constantly going like okay what’s my big tweet today can we um let me give you let me give you guys an update on the pod i don’t know if i told you this sean or you andrew so and then we’ll get into andrew’s stuff when we first started i think i told sean or he told me i was like let’s just get to a hundred thousand downloads an episode and i bet we can do that so sean we are now not consistently for all episodes but they just told me that a lot of a couple of our episodes are now getting over a hundred thousand downloads which is like pretty it’s pretty good wow that’s no that’s been the goal for all of like a while like i feel like i’ve been that’s been the north star of what would it mean to like kind of make it in podcasting it was like if we could do it where a hundred thousand downloads per episode because everybody else bullshit’s like and we do this too like we get this many million downloads a month but it’s like yeah you just pump out volume and like you know great the only test that really matters for a podcast how many lists per episode do you get uh that’s like the best metric you can get and uh i remember we were saying the hundred thousand number back when we had like under i feel like slightly under 10 000 per episode at that time that’s when i first kind of put that out there and then it’s just been like climbing since then that’s kind of crazy that it even happened without us like it’s kind of like when i looked away from it and stopped paying attention to it like sure enough compounding just worked and it like got there you know without me having to stress it in december or no january one of the one of the last couple months we crossed two million downloads per month that year prior that same time i think was 500 000 and so i my prediction is i think we can get hit three million by december i’ve got no math or anything behind that but i think that seems like it could happen so anyway just want to give you the biggest like tim ferriss do per episode do you know i have to imagine he’s a in the 500 000 to million range i think he’s probably even a little bit higher than that i know that bill simmons or joe rogan i forgot which one it was i was looking to at the time they’re they’re two of the biggest i remember they were getting like three or four million downloads per episode um i think it was bill simmons at the time three or four million downloads per episode is what he was getting and he was like consistently in the top five you should do you should track though think about like um so tim ferriss has been podcasting for what eight or nine years or whatever and that’s how long it took him to get to that scale you guys might actually be growing faster than tim ferriss if you chart it out well i’m already six over six feet so i did outgrow him a while back now goddess you are a very dad dad all right let’s do one of the let’s do some of these topics um you got a bunch on here i’m just going to say them out loud and i have no idea what these mean but i’ll just pick the ones that sounds most interesting we were we were having a text thread we were kind of um texting about the idea of getting rich fast versus getting rich slow taking a big swing versus doing something boring dude i forgot i thought that was on the podcast because no that was a text message we should do that andrew can you frame it uh because i think you had you had a good take and i’m also going to give you the advantage of framing the frame the debate a little bit uh what is the debate here so i think i think anyone who’s in the tech world um generally you read headlines about people who swung big and they they won big like jeff bezos and i always say for every jeff bezos there’s 100 jeff bozos right so the guys that tried they failed they didn’t raise the convertible debt in 1999 that allowed amazon to survive or you know they timed it slightly wrong or they were in the wrong market or whatever it is um and so if you think about it you know on one hand startups um are like a house like would you would you buy a house that had an eighty percent chance of being worth zero a ten 10 chance of making your money back and had a 10 chance of making you rich right and then let’s say there’s another house and that house there’s an 80 chance of giving you a pretty solid return 10 chance of zero and a 10 chance of a poor return which of those houses are you going to buy and if you think about it you know when you start a business you’re really saying i’m going to put 5 to 15 years of my time into this right so i am i’ve certainly chosen you know the boring house the 80 chance of solid return 10 chance of zero 10 chance of poor return uh i’d be curious to know you know how you guys think about it sam you want to go first so i think your numbers are i think your idea is right the problem that i had when we talked about this was i think your numbers are wrong like the whole 80 percent 10 percent now i i’m gonna let you talk about any numbers that you want to talk about with your life if you don’t want to talk about anything then don’t even bring it up but let’s just say that so everything i’m saying right now is just made up let’s just say that you you want a business that makes 10 million dollars a year okay or no let’s say that you want to get a net worth of 50 million by the time you’re 50. how much do you think that you would need to make a pr profit to get a 50 million dollar liquid net worth how much profit do you think that you would need if you started that business at 30. i would think that you would need a profit i actually go i did the math on this actually before and i wrote it down so if you have a million dollars at age 30 and you can invest you can produce uh profits of maybe 300 to 500k a year at between ten to twelve percent you can have a hundred million dollars by 60 with compounding so say that okay million dollar net worth is your stock so let’s say you have a million dollars let’s say you have a million dollars at age 30 and you start a business and that business produces 500k a year and you just take that 500k a year and you reinvest it and you manage to rein to invest it at about 10 which is a little above historical market returns let’s say that you’re a good investor you’re a nick huber you’re gonna just put it in steady eddy real estate that outperforms a little bit or something there’s a full 100 million dollars by 60. yeah but there’s a flaw here which is do you have you’re assuming that you have zero living expenses sure yeah i’m not talking i’m not really addressing that first so you’re just talking about i guess the point 300 the number you need the number you need the number you need to start with does it doesn’t need to be that big like a small number can compound into something staggering if you have a long enough time horizon especially if you’re out performing 10 i think is quite low um compared to what you can earn with skills so let’s go backwards so you said 100 million by 60. i think the trick with most compounding is it all kind of comes to you at the end the last two cycles three cycles is where you make all the money so so backtrack what do you add at 50 and 40 in that world i don’t know we don’t get public math i just did the headline calculator you can kind of you can kind of guess if you’re at a 100 at 60 you’re probably in the range of 50 at 50. yeah you basically double every seven years right at that pace so you’re at seven and seven percent doubles every ten years 50 million ish which is sick that’s right that’s sick okay here’s here’s the question so you know everyone loves to point at people who are sitting on massive paper gains like let’s say um let’s say that sam started a startup and vc’s invested at a 5 billion dollar valuation in reality that doesn’t mean sam sam’s a billionaire on paper but he’s not going to realize that until the company ipos maybe he takes a small secondary maybe he’s got a 10 million 20 million dollar liquid net worth but he’s really not a liquid billionaire until that company ipos or sells to somebody and typically the timeline even in a tech startup is 15 years right and so my argument is you know you can take a big swing with a venture bet but i mean statistically you can argue all you want but most venture businesses fail right at least an eighty percent failure rate and maybe five at mo five percent at most go on to be something at scale and large right so i think what i advocate isn’t uh go uber conservative and go get a salary or go buy a dry cleaner and work there for the rest of your life it’s more what’s in the middle what’s the third door and i like to look at somebody like nick huber who found a niche and he said look i’m going to go buy a bunch of self storage businesses these are businesses that have been around for 100 years i have a very specific view on how to make them more profitable and he knows he can earn between 15 and 40 percent buying a bunch of those he just does that for the next 10 years he’s gonna be worth hundreds of millions of dollars yeah i’m actually with you i think uh i i did this rant on the podcast that nobody liked which was that you’re an idiot if you go for the olympics uh like going for the olympics is a trap that you know society has tricked you into giving up your entire life to like turn yourself into a human tool uh that can just you know bob bobsled at one tenth of a second faster than anybody else and uh you know people didn’t like that because everybody likes the olympics and we’re supposed to honor our athletes and blah blah blah but basically venture like venture back startups is the same thing it’s the olympics of business where you’re basically saying okay i’m going to swing for this billion dollar prize which only point one percent of the the startups are gonna be able to you know like to achieve this type of outcome and if i miss i get essentially zero that’s kind of changed nowadays because you get to maybe take secondaries along the way if you make progress but like a lot of times i would say the average you know the median result is essentially zero or you know you’ve underpaid yourself by 50 to 75 percent of market salary during those you know seven years that you seven to ten years you spent trying to um and you worked way harder and you had a worse lifestyle the whole time so you know like the venture the venture thing is like the olympics thing you sacrifice your your lifestyle for this very rare and often like you know like at least in the olympics case sort of a trivial you know here’s here’s a piece of metal um you know at least at least with startups if you if you hit big you do become a billionaire so so that that that does pay off but i’m i kind of think that the venture path is that and you really only do it for ego is my like my current understanding of it which is like either you do it because it’s your calling meaning you stumbled into a business opportunity or a problem you tried to solve it just so happens to be that the way this looks is going to be like a winner take all massive massive business if you do it right or you are like i want to play the ego olympics and i want to prove that i am the toughest smartest you know entrepreneur in the world and so i’m gonna go down this path and like everybody will cheer you on the media will cheer you on because hey what’s it to them you sacrifice yourself for their their pleasure uh the investors will all cheer you on and call you a hero because what’s it to them they get to go home every day at 4pm and you know to their house in atherton they don’t they don’t care you know how many hours it takes you for your like low probability of success they have a portfolio um you know so really it’s the entrepreneur who in some ways i feel gets tricked into it i say that as somebody who who in many ways was tricked into it um not by anybody’s evil just by the way that the game is set up and now i’ve come to the realization that like more nimble small lightweight businesses that provide like a lot of cash flow or businesses that you just buy instead of trying to start a new genius idea from scratch is definitely the way to go from a logical rational perspective you can still choose to do the other one because you want to do it it’s more fun to you but the logic and reasoning is so far on the side of going for cash flow you know cash flow business that promotes like you know it gives you an awesome lifestyle from essentially year one or buying a business that’s already working and just using your intelligence to grow it is like a far better path on paper than the venture path and i say that as somebody who kind of my natural inkling is to go towards that venture path because it’s so sexy well and also i mean it can all go away on the venture path that can all go away so fast right and i think the reason why it’s not done as often is people are attracted to get rich quick right nobody wants to get rich slow and like sean said the only way to get rich right now is like someone is in crypto and they’re liquid and they have a massive gain but those stories are so few and far between if you want to get rich by building a business even if on paper you’re a billionaire in year two my argument is you’re not liquid until 10 years 15 years anyway right it’s very rare that you start a business on year one and in year five you’re a liquid billionaire and to me ultimately liquidity is what matters so often in these things right either you have cash flow or you can sell your stock um or you can use it in some way have you met uh michael acton-smith you’ve heard his name he’s the co-founder of calm but before that he had um what was the name of his brand moshi monsters i think it is is that it’s either minnow or motion monster i think it’s moshi monsters so he was in the uk and he created essentially like a pokemon uh type of phenomenon so like i think moshi it was in the uk it was like this children’s kind of like um there was like these characters and then you would like uh i don’t know like it was like a game or something like that it’s like this online little world you would go into and do this and that turned into many things it was a brand that turned into many things they put her they slapped those characters on shampoo and started selling it over there and he dreamed of having a theme park and you know he’s a really like big dreamer big thinker type of guy super creative uh you know you wouldn’t you wouldn’t have created that in the first place this like phenomenon like like a pokemon or a digimon or you know these like these brands that just catch fire i think at one point like one in three kids in the uk were playing it um so it was like you know just an insane like cultural phenomenon and it was valued over a billion dollars and he was the [ ] man and he was you know he looks like russell brand if you see him like he’s just like this like kind of like you know good looking like wait does this guy have sex in public he seems like a guy who has sex in public and it’s like you know he’s got this free love energy and if you meet him you’re like yeah exactly he’s got like you know he’s got scarves he’s you know maximum two buttons up on a collared shirt so like you know the guys the guy’s walking around with two buttons right so he’s just living his best life and so he had the persona and then he had the the movement to back it up and it just seemed like this is a type this is the type of guy who crea he’s like a walt disney type of guy who creates this type of phenomenon and you know richard branson loves everybody loves it and then sure enough you know they kind of got ahead of their skis and all of a sudden you know like whatever third grade came around for those second graders and they were like you know what i don’t care about moshi monsters anymore i have moved on to the next thing and it’s like overnight the business starts losing relevancy the characters start losing relevancy and like nobody’s blind nobody’s buying the plush toys and the tv show doesn’t want to get made anymore whatever they started to unwind essentially it was very hard for them to like reverse that cycle because uh you know like as fast as you can climb as a like fad phenomenon uh that’s as fast as it can unwind and so i i don’t know exactly what his net worth was but i’m you know he was the main guy and it was the company was worth over a billion dollars i’m sure he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper but never got to realize it and then basically had to start back over from scratch as like uh you know just a guy and as you know just a guy who who’s like went through this went through this like roller coaster but like didn’t have the money to show for it which makes it even more amazing that they you know he went and and helped seed calm like co-found calm and then joined calm and helped grow calm into like a multi-billion dollar brand so he’s kind of done it again and uh i just think that’s amazing um i had the original agency and in the early days the agency barely made any money but it was a couple hundred thousand dollars and i read about the base camp guys you know doing these uh sas products and stuff and i was like man i want to make money when i sleep that sounds amazing and so i started just taking most of my profits and starting um you know sas software companies by the way you set up 90 10 right you put 90 back into the business into new stuff or whatever you live in the early days it was probably 80 20 but then over time i ramped it up so basically i was taking the majority of the profits anything i didn’t need to live on was almost all going into incubating businesses i incubated a bunch and you know some of those businesses ended up being worth uh you know one i sold for seven million bucks and was producing 600 700k year of profit or something like that so i was i made a lot of bets with that money and ended up compounding into something significant but then i ended up continuing to take that money and just do the 80 20 90 10 strategy of always investing and i really started making a lot more money when i went from starting businesses to buying businesses and investing which i started about seven years ago hold on those numbers don’t make sense tell you sounds like 20 million 200 net income well no i mean no no no so so it’s like you know let’s say let’s say let’s say metal abs revenue is a million dollars we made 500k of profit so that’s what’s left over at the end after we pay taxes and stuff i’d take 80 of that 500k and i’d use it to start more businesses right i would just do this on a monthly basis whatever was left over in the bank account that i didn’t need to run the business i would go and i’d use it to start yet another business and i you know i’ve been doing that for 15 years now and we’re are i think you know all of our businesses together worth over a billion dollars did you do you know how much you were compounding so for example you took the money and you either started a business or bought like controlling share in an existing business versus just saying i’m gonna put this into real estate or the stock market or angel invest or whatever um how much additional lift do you think you got to meaning like at what percent were you compounding by doing the extra work of like identifying and buying businesses and owning them versus like if you had done a more kind of like hands-off strategy which maybe let’s say i think somebody like you could have got 10 to 15 consistently i think i could if i was passive i could have got eight to 12 percent right putting it in real estate stocks that kind of stuff by buying businesses um you know there’s a lot of advantage in that we could use a little bit of debt because we controlled the whole business right so you can get the bank to give you 20 or 30 percent of it which adds a lot of lift on your return and then we were buying these businesses anywhere from three to ten times earnings and then we would usually within the first two years we would find ways to double the business within one to two years so you start to think about it and you go okay well that’s a kind of two to five year payback depending on what’s happening that’s based on cash and then the actual value of the business as you grow their earnings increases over time right so the numbers start getting very big very quickly especially when you’ve done that you know 20 times so what do you think was the like what do you think was the compounded rate well i don’t know how long the last but it goes back to at the end of the day you know when i started i was making you know 200k 100k a year and today our businesses make you know over 50 million dollars of profit across everything so so what what uh what percent rate do you think you you were able to generate you think you were compounding at like uh i think probably in the end it’s it’s something or we did the math a couple years ago um because we raised a fund and i think it was like 40 40 some percent now keep in mind you know that was at a time where not that many people were doing what we were doing so you know it’s gotten more competitive over time and those are small deals it’s really easy to compound at high rates when you’re doing small deals as you do bigger ones i think we’ll probably slow down on that um but it’s not a number i think about i i you know i never was like i want to compound at 44 i was like i just want to make my money back in a reasonably safe way i want to buy great businesses and i want to feel good about what i do that’s crazy to me because you’re andy munger you uh you know the whole buffet monger like philosophy is based on compounding over a long period of time and the number one variable is time how long you’re going to do it for and what’s the rate right that’s like the two totally key things even if you generate you know okay let’s drop the rate down to 15 or 10 percent it’s still hundreds of millions of dollars right that’s what’s crazy about compounding is you don’t need to outperform massively you just need to do you know a little better than everybody else and if you do as well as everyone else you’re still good all right let me just ask this question which was two things of your businesses how many of them do you actually think can last 20 30 40 years and also if you can buy any company right now internet related business what are a handful that you like that you like you know just to give an example to me and sean the listener of like things that you would look for you know not actually something you can buy but something that like this is what i want and name a very specific one yeah so um you know think about accenture right so accenture i forget it was part of one of the big five consultancies and then it got spun out but basically they help people do like um consulting strategy digital transformation that kind of stuff that business will definitely exist for the next 30 years um you know i don’t know why it wouldn’t and in the same vein i think like meta lab and our agency services businesses you know we’re really early in every business turning into a tech company right over the next 20 years more and more companies will have to build software and go digital and i think there’s only so much talent so i think those are tremendous businesses for the next 20 years i don’t know how to predict over very long times aeropress is a business i think will exist in 50 years you know i don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t will it have the same competitive advantage as it does today will it get a bunch of copycats probably but you know kleenex still exists and it’s a hundred years later right so um i don’t know i mean we also own i own like a bunch of restaurants and a bakery and you know if people still like their food as they have for the last 30 years those will probably exist in 30 years but we do own businesses that they’re you know platform dependent or you know technology dependent where the seas can change and there’s no way to predict how long they can go but i’ve been surprised how long some of our businesses have persisted and grown um it just goes back to like you know not not underestimating anything and andrew i’m gonna give you one of the the uh like the devil’s advocate to the don’t go for the big big home run uh strategy which is something else i believe is true i believe it’s true that uh kind of like lifestyle business and a big business a lifestyle business and a moonshot business will both basically take up all of your time so might as well go big that’s another way of looking at it right uh so for example i’ve i’ve run a restaurant i’ve started a tech company in both cases it was on my mind all the time i was working on it you know five six days a week you know at minimum as many hours as i could i was trying to do it to make it successful a restaurant was going to be able to spit off you know 150 200 000 of profit off that location and you know a tech company could be worth 100 million dollars in two years and so like those are just different sizes of the prize for the same level of effort probability of success i would say you know you can do better restaurants not a great example because they fail a lot but like let’s say dental clinic or something yeah a dental clinic you’d probably do great but you’d have an agency or whatever um so probably that’s different but also uh with a bigger more ambitious project you also every day you get to be more excited about it you get to recruit better people because their great talent is really excited about it versus like i know like for example my online course business i know i could do better for hire people but like not everybody wants to come work on that project for you know and then i’m going to get somebody who wants just that with is willing to accept a salary that i can afford and that’s usually not the a plus person i like to work with so you know you get stuck in that middle middle zone yeah i don’t i’m not advocating for some tim ferriss lifestyle work four hour work week kind of thing i think um you know warren buffett is not a lifestyle he doesn’t have a lifestyle business he has a business he loves to run and he does exactly what he wants to do but um personally you know i like incubating businesses starting new businesses getting excited about stuff i just go i do that off the side of my desk right so that’s 20 of my time 30 of my time um i also like buying great businesses and letting them run and choosing ceos and doing the buffett thing but i need excitement and you know all the other stuff but i’m in no way saying it’s any less challenging i’m just saying your odds of success are higher and let’s be real if you go to the gym and you try and lift um you know 800 pounds on your bench on day one probably will fail that doesn’t feel very good but if i give you an 80 pound bench and you lift it you’re going to feel really good about yourself right and so i just want to jump over the one-foot hurdles right i want to feel the sense of success and i think when people start out in tech and they do a startup and they fail and it’s brutal a lot of those people turn around and say well i’m never doing that again when they might have been great entrepreneurs in some other format right i just think it’s the hardest lift it’s the olympics as you said let’s do one of these other topics uh all right so i’m just gonna name it and you give us your riff on it so doing it wrong before you do it right what’s that yeah so i am i finally put my finger on this because people always criticize me because i will hire i’ll hire the wrong person right i will i’m a big advocate of if i have an idea and i just want to get moving i will just go and i’ll hire whoever’s in front of me and i’ll say hey let’s go do this and that does not work that well obviously but what it does do is it forces you to make it real right so um you know for example um when i know i want to go a direction i will do this so i’ve always loved food in restaurants i always dreamed of starting my own restaurant i did i started my own restaurant i went and i signed a lease i shouldn’t have i hired the wrong manager and i lost 800 grand right total learning experience here’s what it did though it forced me into that industry it made me learn it it made me make a lot of mistakes and then i found the good people through that so actually via because i was in that restaurant that failed i met the guy next door who ran a very successful restaurant and when he wanted when his partner wanted to sell this the steak i ended up buying it and now i own this wonderful restaurant and i know it’s good because i’ve owned a bad restaurant right so directionally moving into something and i think people are way too pressure precious with their hiring like they just need to do it and then let people go and it doesn’t work out so that’s kind of what i mean by that too many um think they’re measuring twice but cutting once and they just never cut they just measure forever so but do you just have to fire people all the time no not all the time i mean like i’ve gotten really lucky with lots of these it’s like 50 50. right um the pattern that i’ve seen the best thing to do when you’re going into a new industry is look for somebody who’s actually succeeded within it the problem is that when you’re when you’re the rube at the table when you’re the newbie to the industry uh even a [ ] looks like a genius so that’s that’s the hard part right and i’ve certainly i’ve certainly made that mistake before and you’ve got this new business called mailman right mailman the gmail plug-in i’ve had that i’ve actually had that for a couple years but yeah basically yeah it basically it makes it so that you only get email a couple times a day so you’re not putting your inbox all day it’s picking up steam it feels like right now and uh you met a guy on twitter who you got to run it right like yeah that’s an example if you’re just like yeah whatever you’re you’re an engineer you seem like you might be able to do this just do it 100 i’ll do this all the time so i literally um that same year i did it twice um i i tweeted out i said hey i’ve got this idea for a gmail plug-in i need someone to build it who wants to build it this guy mohit in india messaged me sent me a great email and he said tell me what you wanted to do and i’ll have it to you in 48 hours and he did and over and over again he just kept delivering there was another business idea i had where i went to the guy i did the exact same thing and he just didn’t make any progress and so i said hey after three months it’s not working out and went a different direction but you know fifty percent of the time it works really well and now we not only have mailman but we actually started a company a holding company in india and we’re looking at acquisitions and we’ve got him managing some of our businesses so it’s been it’s been awesome that’s crazy and this kind of like it feeds into this idea like i wrote it down here but taking chances on people which is the most satisfying thing like i don’t know for you guys like when i was like 15 i always had this feeling of like someone just needs to give me a chance like i’m a dog to a bone i just need the opportunity and no one ever gave me that chance no one ever saw that in me so i had to start my own business and um i had i’ve had this experience a few times where i’ve taken a crazy chance on someone like have i told you guys about how i met my business partner chris no so uh maybe like two years into business am a bank balance accountant so like you sean i don’t do bookkeeping i don’t understand what’s going on i don’t know how to pay taxes i would just look at the bank account and if the bank camp was bigger on day 30 than it was on day one i thought i was winning and one day i go into the bank and i’m trying to get a corporate credit card and the teller says oh you need to go talk to mr sparling he’ll fill out all the forms for you and so i go into the back of the bank and i get welcomed into this nice office and mr sparling looks like the son of mr sparling he’s like this little skinny 23 year old and we start chatting and immediately just hit it off with this guy we’re joking around and talking about our days and our lives and stuff and after i was done doing this i go like hey what’s your deal like what you know do you want to stay at the bank like what are you doing and he goes well i’m thinking about getting my accounting designation or something like that i don’t really know and i just blurt out do you want to be my cfo and he’s kind of taken aback and he’s like hey like let’s you know let’s go get a coffee tomorrow we’ll talk about it and i convince him to come and be my cfo he has almost no accounting experience uh he worked at a bank on paper he’s like the wrong guy to be a cfo of a business at the time we’re doing over a million dollars i think he just shows up on day one and i trust him i give him my social security number all my information banking wires everything and chris is now my business partner of 12 years he’s responsible for a significant amount of everything good that’s happened in my career and he’s an incredible person now for every story like that i have you know someone who is terrible and incompetent ranging from that to fraudulent but when you do take a chance on someone one in 10 times it pays off big and so what i’ve struggled with is not knowing you know obviously i don’t want to take that level of risk still but i got to figure out a way to give people chances i have do you think that a large great story on that uh okay i can tell the story of same thing same thing they just have i’ll give you a good and a bad because they both hit yesterday and um so i’ll give you the bad one first so the bad one took a chance on a person who honestly i still think this guy’s a good guy i like this guy he was a i met him uh working out so he was a he trained with my trainer he’s like a workout partner basically he came over to our house and worked out with us one day randomly um nice guy young guy he was like an apprentice plumber at the time so he’s a plumber in training and with um and like we had a issue with our 3pl for our e-commerce business which was like we had a theft issue at our at the warehouse that we were working with and then the owner was kind of like uh yeah i don’t know you can’t prove that we stole it i’m like dude you have the goods and now they’re gone like who else who else stole it except for someone at the warehouse he’s like ah let’s check the cameras oh don’t keep the footage sorry so i just got so pissed i was like we’re leaving like [ ] tomorrow and so i was like all right we’re not using this 3p anymore we’re going to just do our own warehousing i didn’t know the first thing about warehousing but i was like okay whatever i don’t know we’ll figure it out so we i hastily signed a lease of this like 8 000 square foot warehouse near us and i was like all right i definitely don’t want to run this warehouse but it’s like the stuff is coming tomorrow so we need to uh find somebody so i i’m working out that day and i’m like hey you wanna you wanna run a warehouse you say what and i was like you know you’re kind of like a hard-working blue-collar guy like you want to try this well i’ve never really done anything like this i was like don’t worry like i’ll take a shot on you and like you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes that’s okay i understand because you’ve never done this before i’ve also never done it before let’s figure it out together and like you know you’ll learn from this and who knows like this might lead to a future you want we had talked about what he might want in the future like he wanted to one day own real estate own his own business i go you know this could become that like if we open up a second warehouse like we’ll buy that one and you know you could be a part owner in it you could run a basically our own in-house 3pl like you could fulfill not just our brand but other brands too so i kind of laid out this vision he was super excited about it and in my head i’m already i do this thing all the time samuel appreciate this i always imagine the hustle con talk this is like a phrase i use all the time i go all right imagine two years from now you’re on stage talking about how we growth hacked our way to success what are the stories we’re gonna tell or like how we survived chaos and like absolute like you know disasters but still made it so i always work backwards from like i imagine telling the story on stage and it just gets me more excited about the current moment and like so i was already imagining like this plumber this like apprentice plumber that we hired that now is this amazing guy and i’m like imagining all these great and it started off good it was going good but then like you know here we are and you know a year later nine months later something like that and you know all of a sudden balls being dropped on a couple things and not really growing at the rate we want to grow uh in terms of his growth as a leader of that part of the business but i’m still holding out hope and then i find out he’s kind of like scamming us like trying to like start his own thing he like sees us growing and like trying to start his own version of it and like you know what like it’s okay to be want to be an entrepreneur and start your own thing but like if you do it above board i’m cool with it if you’re kind of on company time company dime like trying to steal your idea like that’s not cool to me so so anyways i had this like kind of that all came to a head yesterday and i was like look this is not working i guess you know like my bet was wrong here this like my hope that we could help this plumber guy become like this like star like throw that hustle contact away that’s not happening and i’m feeling kind of bad and then the afternoon i get a call from this guy johnny and johnny’s a kid who i hired at i think age 13 or 14 he called me one day at the office and he goes hey is this shawn i was like yeah how’d you get this number who’s this he goes my name is johnny i met pete who works at your office at the dog park i go okay and he is everything okay with pete he’s like yeah yeah he said that you know i’m in eighth grade and i’m a programmer and he goes and i don’t know any other programmers um it’s something it’s about to be summer and like i just want to hang out around other programmers i’ve never met one can i come hang out at your office this summer and i was like how can i say i’ll be a winner so i’m like it’s not me i’m like okay this cold call is a yes so he shows up and like the idea was he’ll just like he’s going to be over there in the corner he just wanted to like shadow the environment or like whatever first day i was like uh we’re in a meeting i was like oh you know what we should do we should do this like viral little quiz we don’t have enough people to do it i was like hey johnny get in here johnny can you build a website he’s like uh yeah like he didn’t know how to but he’s just like yeah i think i could and i was like all right build this today and he like literally stayed there until midnight that day and like had a version of it working by that night probably was under like such an immense amount of pressure now that i look back at it probably poor guy like you know aged the guy probably five years so anyways he he just joins us full time as an eighth grader by 10th grade it’s like johnny needs to be here full time johnny’s the man johnny’s the [ ] man he’s like hanging out with a bunch of like old neckbeards like us and uh and and he’s like and i want to drop out of high school and i just want to do this and his mom is so worried about him dropping out and i like go and i meet with his mom and i’m like man he’s not dropping out he’s going pro it’s like when lebron james he skipped college because he was going pro he was just that advanced and like she was like okay if you put it that way that sounds good like i don’t feel bad about my kid anymore you know like okay if you say so and so and then he became when we got acquired he became the youngest amazon employee i think in all of amazon at that during the acquisition and now he’s like starting his own he’s now he’s i don’t know 19 or something like that and he’s the kid’s name give johnny dallas johnny dallas i don’t know i’ll pull up his twitter awesome so he has his own startup now and it’s like he just called me yesterday he’s like yeah um it’s going pretty good like we just got a term sheet from you know i guess i probably shouldn’t say the firm but it’s like the best vc firm so he’s like the best vc firm just gave us a term sheet you 38 million post valuation i was like you know have you had puberty yet what’s going on dude like this is crazy to me but that was and i told him i go dude he goes thanks for just making the time i go bro you don’t understand this is the best feeling i can get it’s like i feel like i bet on you you were my personal angel investment and like we became friends and then you’re actually doing the thing you like actually did the thing that i always hope somebody does which is like take the opportunity and just [ ] run with it and become a superstar and like when it happens it’s so worth it and you’re like all right i’ll do this 10 more times even if i whiff nine more times if there’s another johnny in there like this is this is gold for me totally there’s nothing better than when it does work but it’s so painful when it doesn’t because you’re just going like dude don’t you see this right like that guy you gave the opportunity to you know he could have owned the business with you and done the real estate and all the other stuff one question what was what were the warning signs that that guy wasn’t going to be the guy because chris has this thing about he calls it gumption it’s like if you say to them um hey balls in your court do they follow up within 24 hours do they move the ball forward are they do they have cases before you even gave me that example you go what were the red flags or the bad signs it was exactly this during one of the workouts after we brought them on board we’re still working out together and i go i go dude here’s my vision for you like what’s the dream he gave me this idea like i want to own real estate it’s like dude at the moment you have no pathway to real estate you have like you’re just making enough to live let alone and you don’t know anything about real estate so like you know he didn’t really know his path and i told him i said here’s the plan we’re going to open up another warehouse i want to own real estate let’s buy it i’ll give you a piece and you run it you you and we turn this into a business where you actually are running your own business inside that real estate as our own 3pl because i know this that e-commerce is booming is a good idea and i didn’t hear from him like he was in the moment he was like oh wow that’s awesome yeah that’s great and then there was no follow-up for three months and then i met up with him and he was and he was in the other boat he goes yeah like i wanted to like talk more about that but i didn’t hear from you you know i thought maybe maybe you would like you know i’ve really been excited about that i’ve been thinking about it i’ve been i was research i was googling some places i go bro if that was me and somebody’s late if somebody gives me a window into a life i want i’m like knock knock knock hey about that thing you said but you know here’s exactly what i’m planning to do to move the ball forward hey here’s a couple links hey i put together a spreadsheet hey i’m making a checklist of like we can do this if i hit these goals and like you gotta do the work at that point and so the biggest red flag was that he didn’t follow up on that opportunity it’s not that he didn’t want to he just didn’t know that that’s what you’re supposed to do and it wasn’t his natural inclination to like to do that and i noticed that with johnny it’s the opposite it’s like tell johnny something he’ll if you give him an inch he’ll take a mile type of guy they’ll tell he’ll text you at nine o’clock at night and say hey check this out check out the website i’m working on this guy that i i gave the other opportunity to obviously i won’t share any details about it but he i emailed him and i said dude i haven’t heard from you in two months what’s going on and he goes yeah i’ve i redesigned the website take a look and i was like you should have sent me this on day one when you had a design show me there’s momentum instead we’ve lost all this momentum and yeah it’s it’s crazy but there’s no better high by the way i just found another guy like this and i’ll tell you the signs that i know i’ll bet right now this guy’s gonna be a winner so this guy’s i didn’t know this until i hired him he’s just graduated from college he’s got like a dot edu email address but he had emailed me being like hey heard you on the pod talk about something like you know you want to give you want to do some philanthropy he goes here’s a better idea let’s create a micro grant where you give out like whatever it is some amount of money that that’s you’re cool with and like write a grant for people who who do something i know you’re all about action and making [ ] happen so like give it away to people who are going to make [ ] happen that’s better than charity it’ll feel better for you so the guy like knows me he reached out intelligently he says he’s doing the same thing he doesn’t pitch his company which by the way is meant to be he was trying to start like a microgrid like angelus for grants instead of like startups it’s like a way to quickly spin up like a grant program and i was like you got my attention but you know i was like yeah i’m interested that sounds like a great idea let’s uh whatever and then he followed up like 10 times in the next like 12 days he was like hey here’s three ideas for what your grant could be tell me which of those three you like just send back the number one two or three then he’s like hey i saw your tweet about this other thing remember the grant thing you should do this instead of that right and he just kept following up intelligently each time so i was like already like this guy’s a winner and i told him i go hey dude i don’t have a ton of time for this grant thing but like you’re awesome if you ever want to like do something like and he was like no no i want to try this grant thing anyways long story short like six months goes by he ends up graduating he takes a job at like a i don’t want to say which place but like takes a job at like kind of like a hot startup that we know of and then i get an email out of the blue three days ago subject line i’ve made an irreversible decision so another great sign is like his copywriting is good for like a 21 year old he knows how to like frame it he goes i made it a real decision i quit my job yesterday even though it was a great job and they they offered me whatever um because i’ve decided that i want to come work for you and make xyz happen he goes wow he goes you know i have a couple other ideas of what i might do but you’re the top of the list anyways he makes you feel good does the flattery thing says exactly what he would do he goes i have two ideas for how i would uh make the milk road better um let me know if you’re down to hear them and i’ll send them over all right so he baits me i’m like yeah of course something ideas send you ideas and i just reply i go i didn’t honestly i didn’t care about your ideas i just want to hire you and now he’s working with me and he’s already awesome and we’re on day three so i can tell you this guy his name is safwan safwan is gonna be a winner and i bet you like six months from now i’m gonna be talking about how amazing this guy is dude the problem that’s my problem with with all this though is all three of us i get so much inbound and i’m like i don’t wanna i’m not in the mood to figure out who’s legit and who’s not and also i don’t wanna have to train someone i don’t want to have to manage someone at the moment so are you guys getting exhausted managing people are you getting worn out like having to talk to people all the time and tell them what to do or to give you feedback sean sean i would love to know how you do this you’ve kind of alluded to it a few times that you have a team helping you kind of manage channels or at least looking at opportunities and stuff how does that work because i have that same problem where people email me ideas all the time and there’s nowhere for it to go there’s no one to help yeah that’s okay that’s by design it’s like it’s meant to be a bottomless pit of like no reply but then we like cherry pick interesting things and just like pull it out of that that that well dripping wet we’re like oh you know maybe we should reply to this but basically my version of of chris right your business chris mine is ben and basically ben has the keys he has my email and he has my twitter and that’s the two biggest forms of inbound and basically he’s the wall and it’s like if you can climb the ben wall then like you’ve made it and like ben knows what’s interesting and what’s not and so like and that’s like one of his main things is like he likes he gets energy from that whereas i kind of like i lose energy doing it like you say i’m like i kind of i don’t enjoy doing it whereas he’s like oh yeah this guy sent me this thing so i checked it out and then i chatted with him i’m like dude i would never check it out or chat with him he’s like yeah that’s what i like checking things out and then if it’s cool then i like to chat with them and i’m like yeah you make it sound normal but like dude i [ ] hate doing that and so and then he just replies basically as me to them and they he sets up the call and then half the time i don’t show up on the call it’s just like they’re like is sean coming and it’s like ben’s like nah it’s just me uh go and like it’s a good counter too because like if they’re like you know offended by that or whatever it’s probably not gonna work because i don’t have enough time to dedicate to each individual person if you’re if you’re just trying to meet me that’s one thing versus if you’re trying to like advance your cause your mission your project or whatever then like you’ll take help from ben or anybody right like you shouldn’t be like on your high horse about it so to me the answer the secret answer is like it’s basically ben and ben knows the tight filter of like what’s interesting and what’s not because we are like so in sync with each other right we talk all the time about about little nuggets or hooks that are interesting and if he finds something he’ll hang it on that hook sam have you ever explored delegating your email yeah yeah i’ve explored it for some reason i not pounced on it like i should but i probably should do that shouldn’t i i mean i miss so many emails that i just don’t read chris and i did it about six months ago we we started using front and so our our assistant actually reads all the emails and it goes into her inbox first and then she chooses what we need to respond to so it’s like oh here’s a docusign that goes to the general counsel here’s a venture deal it goes to the rolling fund so i don’t actually see any of it and it’s really reduced my email by you know even though the volume is the same but for me it’s reduced it by 70 percent because in the end the yeah every single email you have to even archive is like mentally taxing my thing is that once after i sold the business i didn’t have um a business i didn’t have a business so i was like i’m not i don’t want to justify i couldn’t justify having uh someone you know doing stuff i didn’t want to have like a higher burn just for personal reasons now that i do have some things brilliant maybe um maybe i can actually have cash flow coming in from a business then i think yeah it’s worth justifying it which is crazy because i don’t understand sean how you set all your stuff up because you got like it seems like a lot of different things coming in so your accounting must be horrendous i mean it must be a huge headache huge mess yeah you gotta go to the bank and find your cfo yeah but by the way that little thing you said that’s so true i i always say this hire your favorite vendors and your favorite sales people so like anytime you have an amazing account like experienced account manager or a banker like i had this one woman who helped me with my mortgage and i was like hey if you ever want to like switch careers like you’re amazing and like same thing with like you know my trainer different people i’m like yo you have this like great way with people or like the guy who manages our rolling fund uh he’s like he works at angellist but this [ ] handles like such a [ ] so we’ll send it we’ll be like hey we’re doing this deal we don’t know like half the terms and it’s gonna uh we have to sign now and why are the money in three months is it connor yeah connor he’s amazing i don’t know how he tracks all this yeah we the same thing will be like 100k into this and then like he handles everything and i’m just like this is insane connor’s a absolute magician and it’s so funny that you have the same guy because he’s he is so on top of it and i’m just conor you are like like i need to basically like as soon as i have enough operational [ ] to deal with i’m like conor’s the first call because this guy handles the messiest most disorganized thing and he’s just like yep got it never makes me feel bad about it he just like solves the problem and if he needs something he tells me and then i give it to him like it’s so nice when you find somebody like ultra competent like that it’s four seasons service right i don’t know if you guys are gonna you go to four seasons and you you know you say oh like i really you say something fussy like oh i want you know a thinner blanket and at some hotels they grumble and there they just say oh yes we would we would love to sir and i feel like and then they’ll never complain or anything and i feel like um conor is one of those people uh and my assistant is one of those people those people are just they’re they’re amazing when you find one you just gotta i’ll tell you one more signal somebody who thinks bigger than you um especially if they aren’t the one in charge of the company this is super rare it just happened safwan did this so i brought him in to work on the milk road nft projects like we’re going to launch an nfd as part of milk road we’re brainstorming what it could be and we don’t want to just do some [ ] thing we want it to be like really great and he was like it’s like his first or second day he just goes you know just a thought like right now we kind of think of this as like some sub little project like a like a cool add-on to the milk road he’s like but there’s no reason this shouldn’t be like as big as board ape yacht club or anything else like this could be one of the biggest best nft projects around i just want to say that out loud because like i don’t want to limit that and i was just like you know if you can make me feel like a little [ ] then like you are my favorite employee right because i’m like oh yeah i if i’m not thinking sufficiently large enough or aggressive enough about either a timeline or a size of the prize that’s the you know that’s my favorite type of person to work with is somebody who pushes my thinking on like couldn’t we do this faster or couldn’t we do this bigger because that’s normally like normally people will just accept whatever the leader sets as the frame they’ll just set that as this invisible walls around how good or how big or how fast something can be and somebody who breaks those walls is like a winner dude sean how much more hyped are you around milk road than some of your other things it seems like this is the most hyped like it’s it feels good so you’re 33 it’s taken you of 33 years to finally find the thing where it it’s like this is this is what i should be doing like the it’s you know ikigai it’s like what you’re good at what the world wants what the world’s willing to pay for and like what you’re passionate about right in the middle you’ve you’ve seen like you’ve found that whereas before you found things that made money but it was like it’s kind of interesting then you found things that you’re passionate didn’t really make money now you’ve got you’re in the center yeah i think that’s true maybe the podcast is also a good example of that but um on that note you have this thing called five pillars of happiness what are the things oh yeah what are the five pillars so chris has all these uh all these sticks and stuff but one of them one of them is sparling’s five pillars of happiness and i it’s very simple but i think it’s really it’s really absolutely and he counts them out for you so he’ll say um see family every day right obviously um see friends and loved ones multiple times a week be in nature once a week new and novel experiences once a month and then feel like a man or a woman go with your buddies go hunting sports whatever makes you feel tough and gritty and ticks that box for your caveman brain once a quarter right and it’s like kind of this very simple model we we built this little circle of it where you can rank yourself on it but i was like this is actually like kind of a thing i i feel like more people should uh should use this system sam does it in the reverse he sees his family once a quarter and every day he does his caveman [ ] he’s doing everything i do think that that that it’s kind of interesting sean do you do any caveman stuff yeah for sure the workout is that i play sports i play basketball i compete i think that’s kind of like the version of that uh and then sometimes i’ll just do like uh manual labor i’ll just like be like okay i’m gonna [ ] assemble this thing that’s been sitting here like it’s not the most manly thing but it’s like right you know something i don’t really need to do and i’m just going to like just put my full focus into using my hands and like trying to like make something or build something or do something that’s more rare it’s so weird like i have a trainer i do power lifting as well and it’s so funny like you’re basically paying someone to come to your house to have you simulate doing labor during right yeah and it’s amazing like i always feel you know my happiest in the hour after my workout or whatever and you just go oh even that that’s caveman brain right you would have been building a log cabin or doing something manly and now we’re so pathetic that we have to pay other men to have a simulate data for us in our houses right but yeah it’s kind of green stuff too so you do boxing sam right i got it he does that for me bjj if you’ve ever done jiu jitsu it’s like yeah wrestling they’re like so primal and like such a good feeling when you’re done boxing has been awesome i love like fighting i think it’s it’s awesome it’s in a controlled environment it’s badass and that’s awesome and then i’m at this ranch now and i i have been so happy like i’m trying to figure out how to build a fence and i’m not literally going to build the fence but like i’m you having to like move stuff to you know you’re doing a little bit of work to like figure out how is this going to work or you know where we’re going to put a pool just like [ ] like that i have found to be so much more rewarding than internet stuff the problem is is that internet stuff is still also awesome and makes so much more money with so little effort compared to like having to construct a pool uh but so i think sean i feel like you’re similar to me in that you’re looking for shortcuts you want to delegate everything you know everything’s doordashed assistance chef you know all that stuff right i’m the exact same way and i did this thing where i did a um i had a psychologist do a 360 on me i heard about this one of my favorite investors this guy um manish pabrai did this thing where he hired a psychologist to basically write an operating manual and say here’s what you’re missing in your life uh here’s the brutal feedback your friends and family have about you here’s how you need to improve and so i heard this on the past i was driving i i i think it was 10 grand and so he spent like four hours interviewing me we did a whole bunch of testing and then he talked to like my six six i think it was three friends and family members and three um three people i work with and i got it back and it was absolutely one of the most brutal experiences of my entire life like our brains are not or we’re not designed to know what our friends say about us and stuff but one of the key key things he said to me is he goes you’re it’s almost like all of your friends have come to you and said andrew on saturday let’s mow the lawn together and then afterwards we’re going to celebrate and we’re going to have a cold beer so we’re all going to sit in a circle and you know be all sweaty and papa papa corona or whatever and i just say nah it’s cool i just got a guy on taskrabbit and he’s going to do that so i never get the sense of satisfaction of doing the work and i never get the camaraderie of doing it with anyone and you’re right you’re right it is doing real labor doing no i know but it that was the feedback and i was like holy [ ] that’s so true and sean i feel like you’re probably similar yeah except it’s my wife telling me at all times to go [ ] do the work instead of like hiring a man to come hang you know to like literally like hang a poster on my wall which by the way me and my wife one of our biggest fights over the last couple years was i didn’t like wheeling the garbage out to the street because it would always be like 10 o’clock at night i’d be in my boxers you know and i finally i was like oh there’s a private garbage service they’ll take all of our recycling this is awesome my wife looked at me like i just like you know she i didn’t defend her in a physical fight or something it was like i lost all respect my wife like wouldn’t have sex with me for weeks it’s not good she gave me that jada that jada smith look um exactly yeah except i didn’t slap anyone i just cowered yeah that’s why will did it was like oh [ ] this is the moment this is i can get out of the doghouse about the trash right now but the worst pain is when you like hire a cleaning lady or something and i see her like try to like move the trash can down the thing and it’s like heavy i’m like oh [ ] i can’t come on come on just move i got it it’s all good like uh you gotta feel that deal so fascinating it’s so fascinating though to think about like we do so little labor compared to someone 75 years ago and there’s a value if you grew up in a farming family your parents would think you’re pathetic if you don’t grow your own vegetables right so it’s like where do you end where you know what’s what’s the right amount of labor and what’s the wrong amount because i also know people who they’re wealthy and yet they spend all their time doing miserable tasks they hate you know cleaning the cat’s litter box taking out the garbage and i’m like hey just delegate this hire someone and they hate it you know they’re fighting with their wife over it you know it’s miserable so i think there’s a balance uh dude you didn’t need to spend the 10k you could have just asked your cleaning lady nobody knows you better than your cleaning lady and or you’re you’re a nanny or somebody like that like they my cleaning lady doesn’t speak english i actually have to i text her in spanish uh so she doesn’t know anything at least that’s when i think maybe she’s actually she knows where you leave your underwear on the floor and [ __ ] like that she knows how long that couple sit on your desk before you just finally take it to the sink she knows everything all right bros i gotta bounce i have someone here but you guys gonna keep talking uh no we can wrap it it’s cool yeah that’s fine it won’t be the same without you all right uh let’s let’s wrap it up ben uh ben what’d you think uh making me come on camera here on on my sick day but uh great stuff of always a great absolute episode from andrew i anticipate this is gonna be one of our top download ones it usually is did we uh awesome ben i said that we crossed 100k per episode that was like only for a handful or what what do you know what the numbers are they just like what’s your actual average like what’s our actual average i don’t know the actual but it depends what window you’re looking at if it’s i think most people measure it by a 60-day window yeah whatever 30-60 is fine all right let me just let me just pull up the stats have you guys considered like building in public and having a graph or something or with that dude i tweeted out it starts going down i know you talk about it a lot our march numbers i tweeted out it was 1.5 1.6 million whatever the number it was something like that that includes youtube though that includes only people who watch full youtube videos as opposed to just the clips if you add in the clips yesterday sean your video about lamar ball or lavar ball i don’t even know anything they made fun of me all in the comments because i don’t know who these people are it got 400 000 views in like 24 hours or something like that 400 on what you dude you realize what are your videos right now on youtube youtube shorts has like millions and millions of views dude it’s got like thousands of comments and people just roasting uh me and a little bit of you it literally probably has tens of millions of views getting fancy youtube sucks does it really have tens of millions of yeah you just get bullied by like 14 year olds if you yeah and they’re all way better looking they all wear vans like i got super excited about our tic tac tic tac videos i was like oh sick a million views they’re probably saying how useful and helpful this content was can you open up the comments it’s just like there’s nothing good in the comments for us right like you know i’m hairy ugly and dumb and you’re like you know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know what they say about you i was just too focused on me what all right you won’t know the numbers so so i think what you were talking about was the other day it’s for the first time we have youtube videos with we have multiple youtube videos with over 200 000 views which is good and uh these are not like the short tick tock style videos like actual videos with uh with a couple hundred thousand uh in terms of just podcast our top downloaded episode is at seventy thousand all time just all time uh but if you throw on youtube it crosses a hundred thousand um so how much how much of your growth has come from doing all that tick tock stuff where you’re like oh we’ll give out i forget you’re giving up money or something like that for the person who takes stuff viral it’s hard to say yeah yeah it’s like i mean that definitely worked um but we were doing other stuff at the same time so it’s hard to say how much of that came from that oh hey when are you guys doing this summit what’s the deal with that i don’t know can i read you the top three top five comments on that video that has three million views on youtube this is exactly what i’m talking about right here’s comment number one this is what people say when they just read the headlines that comment has six thousand likes number two there’s a guy in the nba that alone told us everything he has no clue what he’s talking about okay fair enough i know a lot about the mba um this guy reminds me of myself in college when i was giving a talk about a pro about a topic the professor taught and i’d only skim reading 10 minutes before the class that has 2000 likes um please stop covering sports all of this information is either the wrong or in the wrong series of events damn all right all right i gotta go talk to y’all soon