This episode of My First Million features hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discussing the life and business strategies of Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH and one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. They explore Arnault’s unique approach to building a luxury empire, his “ruthless” yet stylish business tactics, and the lessons that can be learned from his success in the luxury goods market.
Topics: Bernard Arnault, LVMH, Luxury Goods, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Wealth Building, Brand Management
The Billionaire of the Week [00:00]
Sam Parr: All right, let’s do this. What uh what topics you got today?
Shaan Puri: I’ve got a billionaire of the week.
Sam Parr: A billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.
Shaan Puri: All right. So, I’m going to tell you some facts about this billionaire of the week, and I want you to see if you can guess who this person is. All right?
Sam Parr: Okay. I’m game.
Shaan Puri: So, Steve Jobs, so one one time Steve Jobs approached him uh on advice about designing the Apple stores. And when they discussed each of their products, Steve said to this guy, “I’m not sure if the iPhone is going to be very popular in 20 years, but I’m certain that your products are definitely going to be popular.” So that’s one interesting thing about him.
Sam Parr: Intriguing. Okay.
Shaan Puri: He’s had multiple tennis matches with with Roger Federer. He lives in a 150-year-old castle. And last year, his company did 84 billion in revenue and 22 billion in operating profits. And this might give it away. This year, his company was the fourth largest company in the world, and often times he’s number one on the richest person in the world.
Sam Parr: The Louis Vuitton guy.
Shaan Puri: The Louis Vuitton guy.
The “Wolf in Cashmere” [01:17]
Sam Parr: What’s the name? Rene?
Shaan Puri: I don’t know how how to say his name because it’s French. We’re going to call him Bernie, but uh it’s uh it’s Bernard Arnault. I don’t know if the T is silent. Sorry.
Sam Parr: It’s it’s usually not a hard T, but we’re going to go with that.
Shaan Puri: Yeah. Is that a hard T or is that a soft T? I don’t I don’t know. Bernie Arnie, you are the man. Uh so so Steve Jobs really went to this guy, huh?
Sam Parr: Dude, yeah. And a lot of people really respect this guy. So I’ll I’ll like give you a little bit about his background, but some facts about him. So he owns 46%. So the Louis Vuitton Empire, it’s called LVMH. So it’s a multinational luxury goods conglomerate deal, market cap of 430 billion. Often times him, Elon, and like Bezos go back and forth. Uh but he’s kind of the odd man out because he’s not like he like dresses really nice and he like looks as like a Right. someone who owns Louis Vuitton would look. He like has this black turtleneck and a nice sports jacket. But he’s been called the um uh well, I believe it’s like the the the uh the wolf in cashmere sweaters or something like that because he’s like he’s pretty ruthless, but he like dresses nice. But um uh yeah, I’ll tell you a little bit about him. So at 21, it’s kind of an interesting background too.
Bernie’s Rise to Power [02:44]
Sam Parr: They call you the denim fox, right?
Shaan Puri: The denim fox. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wish. The the Juggernaut is what they call me. The dog in the Canadian tux. That’s what I’m known for. The denim dog. Uh so listen, at 21, Bernie joined his father’s construction company after finishing his engineering degree, and by 25, he was the CEO of the company. The company wasn’t small at all. Uh at the time, it was doing uh something like 10 million in revenue, which is the equivalent to 40 million now, and had a thousand employees. But right when he joined, he like he said, “Let’s expand.” So he got into like some he started investing investing the profits in some finance businesses, into real estate, things like that. Then in 1981, he goes to the US and he starts expanding the business, and eventually he like specializes in specializes in town homes, sells a bunch of them, makes the equivalent of 75 million dollars now, uh which was 25 million back then, or that’s what he sold his company for. I don’t know what he made from it. But there’s an interesting thing that happens. So he’s in the cab, he’s in a taxi in New York, and he asks the taxi driver if he heard of the president of France. And the taxi driver was like, “No, never, but I know all about Christian Dior,” who uh you know, Dior is like a like a luxury uh a luxury brand. And he started thinking, he’s like, “Okay, so this guy who’s like just a normal guy in New York doesn’t know who the president of France is, but he knows all about Christian Dior.” Like, maybe I should explore uh like luxury brands. And so he he buys the holding company eventually of Dior, and it was like all like he got inspired by that first taxi cab meeting. He raises a bunch of money, buys it, fires a ton of people, turns it around, sells like the the other brands that Dior owns, and it’s a really good success. And that’s like his first big entry into luxury brands. Then in 1987, he gets the idea uh uh to buy Louis Vuitton, and he does the same thing where he raises a bunch of money and he buys it, and he fires a bunch of people and definitely turns it around.
The “Distressed” Brand Strategy [04:25]
Sam Parr: Was Louis Vuitton a a big deal? Was it doing was it very successful at the time or was it like distressed?
Shaan Puri: It was Christian Dior was like distressed when he bought it. They both were distressed, but they were both brands. And so that kind of brings us to like the big point here, which is I mean, Louis Vuitton has been around for hundreds of years, um or at least a hundred years. Um I think from since the 1800s. But they they were kind of mismanaged. So have you seen that movie with I think it’s Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga, where she like is the Is that what they say, Lady Gaga? Where she Have you seen that movie where she plays like the wife of like the Gucci guy and like murders him?
Sam Parr: I saw a part of it, yeah.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, you saw the trailer. I saw the whole movie to be honest with you.
Sam Parr: Yeah, it was only D’s. But uh, you know, big Gaga fan. So uh they uh it’s like mismanaged. So like a lot of these family businesses, they like have great style, but it’s kind of like, you know, like a a a a singer managing their own career, like maybe like, you know, the left part of the brain doesn’t actually work well with business, but it works well with creating stuff. And so it was the same thing where it was definitely mismanaged. He raises all this money and he just turns them into an operation powerhouse, and then he just starts going on a on a on a spree where he starts buying all this stuff. So he owns all these brands. He owns uh, you know, I don’t know, freaking buy any of this shit. So I’m going to look like an idiot talking about it, but Sephora, which is like the big makeup thing, um Fendi, which is another popular thing, Bulgari, Mark Jacobs, like if everything that a woman aspires to own, he owns like a huge portion of of that market. But I want to tell you about a few of the things um that interest or that make me interested in this guy. And first, have you have you heard about him? Do you know anything about him?
The “Zero to One” Influence [05:58]
Sam Parr: Uh, I’d only seen him because he’s at the top of the rich list and he’s, you know, LVMH, but I didn’t know I didn’t know this backstory. So go on.
Shaan Puri: So, what interests me about him is I think Peter Thiel has this book. What’s that book called that Zero to One. Zero to One, and it’s awesome. Um I I really like reading that book and it it kind of had an impact on me where he talked about like extreme personalities and uh having extreme results and all about like an engineering culture, yada yada yada. But there’s one part of the book where he lists out all the moats. He’s like, you can have like you can like know like a secret that no one else knows. You can have like a patent, you can have technology that no one else has, whatever. But and then he mentions there’s just one moat called brand. That’s a huge moat. And I think he’s like, “I never understood brand, so I don’t know how to invest in this.” He goes, “There’s one sentence and he says, ‘This is definitely a moat, not for me. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it.’” And I always thought that was funny because when a lot of like tech people discuss moats, they talk about like technology, network effects, yada yada yada. Rarely do they discuss brand. Well, this guy Bernie, that’s truly what he understood where he was like, “No, they’re like that’s where all my margin is. It’s because I can create a brand, I’m going to create luxury goods, I’m going to get luxury margins, and not only that, it’s going to live for forever.” So uh Louis Vuitton, by the way, was founded in 1854. And he his whole thing was like, uh in 10 years, there’ll be far fewer luxury brands and the ones that survive will be more important because people are getting richer and richer and richer. And if a brand has been around for 50 years, he thinks it can be around for another 50 or 150 years. So that’s like his whole stick. And uh I thought that was interesting. And he um has this rare combo of operational excellence and also like good style and understanding brand. Cuz typically, this might be an overreaching statement, but a lot of times these really rich people are like maybe like uh what’s his name? Um uh Warren Buffett might be a little bit like that where he like sees like what a good business is and he’s like, “Well, I don’t care. This could probably last for a long time. Let’s just do it. I can look at the spreadsheets and I can understand it.” And then other times there’s people who are like, “This is a sick brand,” and they just totally but they totally mismanage it and they’re not numbers-oriented. But then you got a guy like this guy who like does a pretty good job of like being pretty ruthless that you like you need to be in order to make the business usually profitable and very successful, but also like understands like vision and some of these intangible things, basically like how to make shit cool, which is very, very, very challenging. It’s hard to have just that, let alone both of those features. So I thought that guy was interesting. Um and he has a few interesting quotes and I’ll wrap up. So luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins. For me, luxury is how do you create desire? And then he says, “I’m optimistic long-term, pessimistic short-term.” So interesting, interesting guy.
The “Rich Without Fame” Paradox [08:37]
Sam Parr: He is He has another one I think that’s like um something about being rich without uh being famous. He has some some quote like that.
Shaan Puri: And he’s not quite a recluse, but he like owns this island in the Bahamas where he spends most of his time, obviously flies private, and is somewhat under the radar compared to Bezos, who’s in the news with his, you know, new girlfriend and things like that. This guy’s pretty low-key, and his business, he owns like all the voting shares and all that. And he when he dies, he already says he’s giving 20% to each of his five children, and it’s run like a family business. So in that regard, he’s pretty low-key and out of out of the out of media uh mostly.
Sam Parr: Right.
Shaan Puri: Uh yeah, okay. I can’t I can’t really fully find it, but uh he had said some there’s some French phrase which is like the only uh something about uh something about being, you know, being happy, uh you know, basically it was it was it was something around the idea of you want to be wealthy but not rich. And he had some cool French way of saying it, but I can’t find it off the top of my head here.
Sam Parr: Well, it would be like it’d be a lot cooler if you did.
Shaan Puri: Sure would.
Sam Parr: Well, that’s my that’s my billion of the week.
The “Internet Culture” Hiring Hack [09:51]
Shaan Puri: Dude, I have another like weird internet culture thing that I was uh kind of related to like your engineers. I was thinking about this and I think that what I’m about to say is incredibly not normal, but I think for you, it’s normal and it’s incredibly normal for me, and it’s probably normal for a bunch of our friends. So I was thinking about this. We got we I have this new researcher that you’re trying to steal from me a little bit. Um and he I met him through a friend of a friend, but it all started on Twitter, in the Twitter DMs. And without talking to this person, like uh uh whether a phone or or Zoom or whatever, meeting in person, we just like text and we hire them and we do a business exchange and like you put a lot of trust in one another. And I’ve realized I’ve done this like 20 times where some of like my best coworkers and best uh some of my best friends in fact, it just started like through internet culture and we very rarely exchange words and we’ve done like some relatively big business together where we’re like exchanging tens of thousands of dollars a month or we’ve invested in one another’s companies or whatever. So I’ve done it with the partner of my latest company, uh Joe, we basically were Facebook friends. I’ve done Yeah, maybe only like six times. Um but like we knew each other for like five years before we really uh like talked a lot in person. I’ve done it with this guy Diego who uh I’m helping him with his agency business.
Sam Parr: I by the way, I heard a funny story from about you on this. So uh somebody who’s worked with you goes, “Yeah, Sam gave me the login to his Instagram or something like that or to LinkedIn. I don’t know what it was. And what is it that you requested back from this internet stranger, Sam?”
Shaan Puri: I asked for his social security number. I asked for his girlfriend’s social security number. I asked for uh a picture ID of both him and his girlfriend and a utility bill so I knew exactly where he lived.
The “Background Check” Protocol [11:49]
Sam Parr: The Sam Parr school of background checks. Like dude, what what is your plan? Okay, let’s say what is he going to do? All right, let’s say he he posts something or changes the password. What are you going to do with this utility bill and his social security number? What is your what is your revenge?
Shaan Puri: Well, I don’t know, but I know it’s scary enough that if someone has that, I I don’t know, sign them up for a credit card. I would I would show up to his house for sure. I would show up to his house. How many commit a crime? Yeah, I don’t know, but uh I don’t know. Maybe it’s like scary enough that it worked. But have you done this? Have you like done business with a bunch of it’s not anonymous people because you actually get to know them, but internet, it’s like a weird internet thing.
Sam Parr: Totally, totally. That’s like very normal now at this point, which is strange. It shouldn’t almost feels like it shouldn’t be normal, but it is.
Shaan Puri: I don’t think it’s normal for most people. I mean, it just seems natural. I feel like I know these people. I see their writing or I hear their podcasts or they they email me a bunch of times and we go back and forth and then they’re in my Slack and then sure enough, it’s like, “Hey, you know, here’s everything. Here’s the keys to the castle.” And once you get that, then once you’re working together or you’re doing things together, that builds even more trust and it just layers on and then you meet them four years later and you’re like, you see them in person and they’re like, “Nice to meet you.” Uh you know, you don’t know what to say. It’s like, “Nice to see your nice to see your body.” That’s really the accurate way to say it. Nice to see your face finally.
Sam Parr: Yeah, like sick legs. Dude, I’m I’m okay not meeting these people. I I like it how it is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Like I I enjoy these types of relationships. We have this Yeah, it’s a feature not a bug, right?
Shaan Puri: For sure. And we have this one dev. I have this dev working on a project uh that I have and he’s in Hong Kong and he’s in high school. And he built this amazing thing. And I don’t really know anything about him other than I want to work with you for a very long time. And like I was just the he sent me some of his work and it was so awesome. And I just realized this is super odd and also amazing. And I don’t think a lot of people realize that you could like do business like this. Cuz I’ll tell my family and they’ll think I’m crazy. But it’s become so normal at this point that I don’t even I I forget that it’s not normal amongst others.
Sam Parr: Right.
Shaan Puri: Right. Yeah, totally. I’ve also a lot of my real life friends, I just sort of like shifted more to online. I’m like, “Hey, let’s we can hang out 10 times more through the group chat and through a bunch of a bunch of these little like like, you know, apps or things like that. I feel like I get to know them better that way almost and you know, ain’t nobody got time to hang out in person anymore.
The “Birth Rate” Theory [14:13]
Shaan Puri: And now we know why the birth rate in America is declining rapidly. But yeah, this basically like is uh a thing that I do and I thought I should bring that up because I don’t think most people realize like how some of that stuff happens. And it’s actually quite random how it happens. But if I see like a 19-year-old who’s like impressive or like a 21 who’s impressive and like writes well and is like clever in my DMs, some this sounds like creepy, but I’m like I’m I’m I’m I’m interested in giving them a shot on something. And so it’s really cool how these like little projects actually turn into like pretty meaningful things after a while.
Sam Parr: Right. Yeah, they’re IYBs, interesting young boys, and Sam’s got a list. Isn’t that a Michael Jackson song? Pretty I Pretty IOB? Yeah, pretty little things or whatever. RIP, no disrespect.
The “Chris Sparling” Connection [15:04]
Sam Parr: All right, I want to tell you about somebody interesting I met recently, too. So, did we talk about Chris uh Sparling on the podcast yet?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, so uh we have this great friend named Andrew Wilkinson who has maybe close to a billion dollar empire and Chris is his partner in crime.
Sam Parr: And I had never met him until we went to that event in Vancouver for the show. And uh You guys are really similar. You guys are very similar.
Shaan Puri: Me and him? You have similar some some similar uh parts of you.
Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um a couple of a couple of observations I would say about him. Um I want I want you to tell me if you because you’ve interacted with him, right? You’ve you’ve met him?
Shaan Puri: Only a couple times, but yeah. And we’re both very interested in these kind of like high performers, especially in this case, it’s a high performer who went and built their own island and did they won in their signature way. I think that that’s particularly what’s interesting to us. Like if somebody’s just like I don’t know, some VP at Google, I’m a lot less interested than somebody like Chris who basically made their own path. I think I think he you know, Andrew met him when he was working at a bank. He was like a banker, uh not like a cool investment banker, but like a go to the bank, I need to write a check banker. And they started talking about cars because Andrew drove up in a cool car and uh they both nerd out about cars and then they were like, “Okay, what’s going on, you know, what what do you need for you’re getting like a line of credit or whatever for your business? What’s your business?” Uh Chris was like, “Yeah, I’m like studying to be like a CPA or like I’m about to get my my license to be an accountant or something like that.” And um Andrew was like, “Hey, you want to just leave here with me and like, you know, work with me?” And you know, Chris tells us That actually happened at the bank? He didn’t say it like that, but he, you know, he offered him a job. He’s like, “You should come work with me. Uh like I need help.” He at the time, Andrew just had Metalab, his design agency. It was doing well and um had gotten to maybe a couple million dollars a year of profit. Um you know, let’s call it I don’t know, four or five years in, something like that. Uh but so so he hadn’t started what became Tiny, which was acquiring a bunch of other internet companies. And so Chris tells the story. Here’s some of the things that I took away from this uh this this meeting. So one interesting part of the story, he goes, “So my first day at work, I show up, uh Andrew’s not there. I’m just like waiting at the door and um 30 minutes go by, Andrew’s not there. Andrew rolls up in an Uber with like, you know, one AirPod hanging out of his ear or whatever, and he’s got he opens up the trunk, he takes out this giant box full of papers.” Oh no. And he’s like, he’s like, “You’re here. Okay, fantastic. Here’s uh all of our papers for like, you know, here’s the business finances.” Um I got to go to a meeting and there’s no office space for you. So I talked to my neighbor, they have room in their basement. So just go knock on the door, tell them you’re with Andrew and like there’s a desk in their basement and like here’s this box of papers. And he’s like, Andrew left. And Chris was like, “Man, I made a huge mistake. Uh who is this guy? What what is happening here?” He goes, he knocks on the door. He’s like, “Hey, um do you have like a basement desk for me?” They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, come on in.” And they It’s like when you see the guy with the hole in his boot, you know you’re there. Make a right. The hole in his boot, exactly. He’s like, “So that’s how I started.” And then I go, “Okay, so then that time he’s just doing Metalab. So what how did this become tiny?” And he goes, uh, “Well, we looked at the business and the business was good. Business was generating revenues, generating profit.” I was like, “Okay, well, like what do we do with this profit? Um what are we supposed to, you know, should we reinvest this in some way into the business? Like can we grow? Could we should we hire people?” He goes, “Oh, I don’t know. What do all agencies do?” He goes, “Agencies hire a bunch of people, uh and then buy fancy offices, and they put a basketball hoop in the office. Like, you know, they put a a play pit in the office.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a good idea. We should not do that.” That’s kind of the only thing they agreed on. Let’s not do that. They go, “Well, okay, we can’t follow agencies to figure out what we should do. Like, you know, how should we think about this?” And they go, “Well, look, we’re a business that has clients and we have, you know, like a service team and then we have some profits. Like we are a boring law firm. Let’s just pretend we’re a boring law firm. Uh let’s not try to be a cool agency. Let’s be a boring law firm and not get too high on our own supply.” Okay, so what what could we do with these profits if we weren’t going to like try to just get flashier and flashier with the design agency? Um and that’s when they decided, let’s buy a better business than our current business. So like let’s buy a business that has recurring revenues, maybe that has less service-oriented, more product, and let’s use the profits from the service business to buy increasingly better businesses. So I thought I like that story, that frame. I enjoyed that. And what was the first thing that they bought? Was it Dribbble? No, that wasn’t the first thing. I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what the first thing they bought is, but honestly, it was probably another agency is my guess, but you know, regardless, that that’s kind of the start of their journey. So, I had never met Chris. Andrew uh talks a little bit about him, but you know, you never really know uh what people are like. Here’s my observations. Chris had the juice. And it was very surprising to me that Chris had the juice because normally in these partnerships, there’s like the outgoing uh face of the brand that everybody knows, and then there’s like the quiet, silent but deadly operational partner, finance partner, whoever partner that’s like doesn’t really care about the spotlight, um and usually is more reserved. I would say most of that is true, but at this dinner, I thought it was remarkable that he was kind of like this like it was shy, but he still had the juice. And I’ve never really seen that combo before. Like I think he would have rather just been at home reading a book, but he had this thing which was like, “I’m at this dinner, so the flip is the switch is flipped.” And he was like super talkative and not with not because he’s Mr. Charisma or he’s not like dripping with like, you know, He’s like wise. This smooth charm. He has wisdom, it feels like. He was he was just like, I would call it honest. He was just like, he would ask a question, and then if you said something, he’d be like, “But hold on, hold on. So is it like this?” Or he’d be like, “But you’re saying this, is that because you think that, or is that because your parents taught you that? Why did you say that?” And he would ask these questions that were very pointed. That’s one of the That’s what reminds That’s one of the ways in which you guys are similar, is you ask those same questions. I do. And I so I was eating it up. I was loving it. I was like, “Oh, this guy’s right up my alley.” The other thing he did that was like me, but times 10, is he was like Mr. Framework. Exactly. You guys are the exact same way for that reason. I called him out. I I don’t like that guy. Well, you don’t like him because he’s a heel. Which is funny. Right. Uh you know, he basically has this aura of I’m better than you, like like many great wrestling villains. And um and he’ll tell you how much you suck. And so people, some people hate that. I’d say majority of people hate that, and then there’s a minority of people that love that and find him like interesting. And either way, you can’t ignore him. He’s like a you have to take a position because it’s so um polarizing. It’s not just like, you know, vanilla. And I would say you actually do a lot of what he does where uh I don’t think you think you’re doing it. Uh because you’re like, “I didn’t say anything bad.” It’s like, “Bro, you put a period at the end of that line.” That just You know when you put the period there, you’re saying like that’s a middle finger. You know, that that’s not a period. Um Do you know you’re doing it when you’re doing it or Not all the time. Maybe some of the time, but I think I don’t like um like I’m kind of a stickler with language. Like I like using certain words. So if someone like says something and they end it in a question mark, my reply will be like, “I don’t know if you’re asking a question or if you’re getting me to agree with you.” Like Or if you’re just stupid. Or yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like I just it it it like I just like or when people like sensationalize things, like we’ll just say like, “Well, this happens all the time.” Like for example, someone replied to you and they go, “I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately.” My example what I want to reply with is like, “Oh, okay, well, what are some other examples?” Right. Uh do you like I I it’s like I just don’t like when you say I think I did. I was like, “Like what?” Uh yeah, just curious. Like like what? What are you talking about? I’m a I’m a stickler with language. I don’t like when people say this always happens or this never happens or these people are everywhere. Like things like that. I don’t like that phrase or this is so common uh that is becoming an issue. I’m like, “Well, I actually don’t think that it’s any more common than it has ever been.” Uh anyway, so I’m an asshole about that. Um you want to do one more topic? Yeah. Uh let’s do uh do you have one? No. I blew my load early. Oh, wow. Uh just all in on Bernie, huh? Uh and the internet thing. But yeah. Why do you think it is that I generate so many more ideas than you? Let’s go let’s did your mommy not love you or your daddy not love you? If we look at the three years that we’ve done this, I think it ebbs and flows. I think that each person goes on a No, it’s sheds, dude. Dude, each person goes on a three-month like run. Dude, 100%. I think you talk more, but I don’t think that I don’t think that you necessarily bring more topics. Right, right. I think that when I was talking I let you believe that. But Thanks for your permission. When I was selling the hustle, you carried me. When you were selling Milk Road, my shoulders got tired. That’s all I’m going to say. These delts weren’t weren’t getting from nothing. These are Milk Road delts. Yeah. That’s all I’m going to say. So I think it ebbs and flows. There was a there’s a guy who basically took every idea from the podcast and put it in a database. This is how I know I win, because he took every idea from the podcast and put it in a database and he said it was 75% me, 25% you. But that’s specifically on ideas, not topics. That’s maybe ideas. Yes. Like this Bernie guy, that’s not an idea. But come on, that’s that that’s that’s You’re definitely you’re definitely the king of the billion of the week. I think uh you somehow know a bunch of these old ass motherfuckers in different spaces and uh and you you you find these guys. I don’t know how you find these guys or how you think of it. Just Wikipedia, bro. Yeah, but like why do they even get on your radar? You’ll be like, “This guy used to own this coal mine and then he bought this shoe factory and then he owns like, you know, you ever read the St. Louis Post?” And I’m like, “No.” You’re like, “He owns that.” So I’m like, I don’t know how you found this guy, but you know, more power to you. I just fucking books. Can I give you Okay, let me give you a couple uh let me do an idea. I’m going to go rapid fire. I’m going to I’m going to just empty the chamber here on some some things that have been on my list. Um I have a D2C idea that I’d like to do. Pass. Uh and by I’d like to do, it means I’m not going to do it, but I want to invest and advise somebody who does it who’s really good. Wait, do you still ever want to launch an e-com store? Uh I don’t know. I’m torn. I don’t want to operate it myself, but I do want to like incubate them. I I do want to like incubate them and hire a CEO that that will run them in theory, but uh that might also be difficult. Um so I have a a gut health one. So gut health is uh this is nothing new. So let me just start this by saying, “Oh bro, this that exists.” Yeah, I know it exists. Um almost every D2C idea you’ve had exists. Um gut health is a uh a trend that is going up, up, and up and it fits a sales model that really works with D2C. What do I mean by that? You mean you can just buy it over and over again and you never know if it actually works? So what works in D2C? Uh a D2C product, a great D2C product is one that is going to be high margin. So maybe uh can you get to a 75, 80% gross margins? Well, with supplements, you can get to 80, 85% gross margins. So that’s fantastic on the product itself. The next thing that works in D2C is that it’s a repeat purchase or it’s a consumable. So something that somebody’s going to buy many times, they’ll shop from you again and again because either they ran out, they ate it, they drank it, or they, you know, the deodorant stick ran out, whatever it is. Unlike a mattress. Unlike a mattress. Um so so you want something that people grow out of or run out of. And um so so high repeat purchase rate. Well, supplements have that as well. Health and wellness has that um as well. You want something that is a uh is a problem solution fit. So basically, you want something that is not just like a kind of nice to have fashion item. Um what works better uh in what what sells better is something that you can just say, “Do you have this problem? We have this solution.” And this is why you see if you go scroll down to the bottom of a New York Post article, you’re going to see a toe fungus ad. Why is a toe fungus ad always there? Cuz guess what, people have toe fungus. It’s a very easy problem to point out and people are looking for a solution and willing to buy something that tells that that promises them that it’s going to go away. So, uh problem solution. Do you remember um the the best promise solution ever is uh Claude Hopkins, he invented the advertising for toothpaste in the 1920s and he said, “Rub your tongue over the your teeth. You feel that film? Now, brush with our toothpaste, Crest. Now rub your tongue over your front teeth.” Right. That was the best problem That’s like an easy to understand like, “Oh, I see exactly what you mean.” And this this solves it. Why that one’s even better is when you get to be the one diagnosing the problem, you have way more authority and you’re basically creating a new problem category for people that they weren’t fully aware of. And so this happened, this is why I like gut health a lot. 5 years ago, I didn’t hear anybody talking about gut microbiome, leaky gut. I personally Leaky gut. I’m sure there was some people. I love that. I love that phrase. It’s beautiful branding. I hear leaky gut. I have a I have a family member who’s just like, “Oh, I’m super worried about leaky gut.” And I’m like, “What?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I bought every book, I watch these YouTube videos and dude, it scares the shit out of me and like now I drink apple cider vinegar, I do this, I do that.” I’m like, “Hmm, interesting. Somebody just like created a problem, taught you about it. You might or may not have it, no way to know, and you bought a bunch of solutions and it was branded in this way that sounded horrible. I don’t want a leaky gut.” It’s a it’s a it’s a speed it’s it’s spooky is what it is. It’s a spooky phrase. Just like cleansing. It’s like, “I’m going to do on a juice cleanse.” It’s like, “Bro, I don’t think like this juice is like a pipe cleaner and like it’s going through pipes. I don’t know if that’s how it works.” So, I um so I bought this domain, drinkguts.com, and I have this idea for this brand called Guts. And Guts is basically a drink that uh that you drink for it’s like it’s like a protein powder and you drink it for gut health. And um it helps with digestion. So a lot of people who are either constipated or going to the bathroom all the time, uh it helps with weight loss, it helps with uh sugar control, it helps with those those sorts of things. Um so yeah, so I think I can incubate this brand and I just need an amazing marketing CEO and so I’m looking for that. Um Have you um have you heard of Olipop? Uh I’ve heard of Olipop. I’ve drank an Olipop before, yeah. So, Olipop is basically, it looks like a soda or a seltzer. It looks exactly like this. I’m drinking spin spin thrift right now. It’s just like water with a little bit of fruit in it. It looks just like that. Except it says like probiotic on the can. Yes. Which always turns me off, by the way. I’m like, “Nah, I don’t want that weird stuff.” Oh, dude, turns me on. Probiotic? Dude, yeah. No. Who’s antibiotic? You? Dude, I’m antibiotic. I’m not probiotic. I’m neutral on the biotics at least, but I’m definitely not pro. But uh you know how people How do you feel about oxidants? Yeah, anti? Are you pro-oxidants? Dude, I’m what was it Michael Scott say? He goes, “I wouldn’t say I’m superstitious, but I am a little stitious.” Uh Uh Olipop, do you know how big they are? I think they’re huge, dude. I see them in every grocery store. 100 million plus. And they’re doing a very small thing. There’s a new one by the way called Poopy or Poppy. You seen this one? No, what’s Poppy? It’s like an even more uh it’s like a gut health soda or like a um probiotic like Lacroy. And uh I see that one popping up at whole foods now. Dude, when I think probiotics, I think diarrhea. Like you’re going to do something to my poop. Like Yeah, so that I think that’s where the branding opportunities come in uh to to to to fix that. Guts doesn’t exactly help your cause here. I know, but I think it’s a loud um splashy name that can be almost like so bad it’s good. And uh I don’t think it’s very trademarkable. I think that’s the the the problem with it, but I kind of want to work with a designer just to make a fake D2C like packaging of this. I kind of want to crowd source this idea through MFM. So basically, I’m like, let’s find a marketing CEO through this. I have I have a guy in mind. Um let’s get somebody who’s a design agency, like let’s make the packaging for fun and uh and see what we can do. Somebody who’s like a supply chain guy, let’s go find the formulation lab. Like let’s just like crowd source this idea. I think that would be a lot of fun. Dude, I what here’s something I want to test. So this what you’re saying reminds me So we’re in the 55th minute or something like that of this pod and you’re saying like something where you want to you’re saying a call to action. I’m curious how many people you’re going to get. Last episode or two episodes ago, I we were talking about my Airbnb and I said marathonranch.com. I go, “Yeah, I have it’s Airbnb, you can see it at marathonranch.com.” and I just kept talking. Uh I was curious how many people went to the site. Um do you have a guess? Oh, I mean, I would guess it’s low. I’m going to give you the homie guess. I don’t know. 100 visits. So, we set it at minute 38 or something like that, like not in the beginning. It got like three or 4,000 views. And uh not one not one booking by the way. Not one booking. Uh not one. To be clear. Yeah. One time I shared it on Twitter and it got 2 million impressions, not one booking. So not one booking, so it didn’t help me at all. But I’m curious, I bet you you’ll get maybe 15 qualified people messaging you. One time you talked about this thing you wanted a woman to holler at you for this woman brand that you were working on and people started hollering at me to get to you. And like four of them were like Instagram women like models like wearing thong bikinis and shit like trying to reach me to to talk to you and my Sarah was like, oh saw my phone. I’m like, dude, this this lady like she’s like, “What are you looking at?” I’m like, “Check this out. This lady just DM me trying to talk to Sean.” It was it was a pretty funny. Yeah, I also like that you say holler at still. Uh it’s like I still say tight when I think something’s cool. How about dank? I’m trying to bring dank back. Do you remember dank? I’m still watching TRL when I get home from school. So, um you can just email me sean@seanperry.com. I’ll put it in the show notes of this like in the description of the podcast too. Um I hired an assistant that just reads all my email and triages it into buckets that’s like uh action item, needs a reply, read this, and in case you’re interested. And then um she filters out a bunch of the crap. It’s amazing. I went from being horrible at email. Like I I don’t see stuff I should. I see a bunch of stuff that’s trash. I forget to reply to things. I’ll read it on my phone, think to reply later, never never remember to come back and reply later. I had a horrible system and now um shout out to my assistant Andrea who’s uh helping me so much with that. It’s it’s like literally overnight game changer. Well, I got an email from her saying, “Sean would like to schedule time to speak with you in Vancouver.” And at first I was like, “What the fuck? Sean, are you kidding me?” There’s some great. Yeah. Like, really? Uh and then I was like, “Okay, this is awesome.” And I messaged you, I go, “Who where’d you get this person from?” Very interesting. She did a good job. Also, um by the way, your call to action thing just reminded me. I think we should do two things. Uh uh two upcoming shows. I’m going to put it out there now. It’s time for another drunk ideas episode, uh which is where we come up with ideas that only sound good if you’re drunk. So half-baked, kind of bad, but maybe good startup ideas. So we should do another one. Like the very long-distance girlfriend, the best one ever. Yeah, exactly. Very long-distance girlfriend was was an all-timer. Um the second one is uh I think we should do our version of the Bachelor. So I think we should get MFM’s most eligible uh guys and gals, basically, submit your application. We need a photo, we need we’ll we’ll put up we should put up like a dating site, which is basically like um uh we we ask a couple questions and then we take the best and we present them on uh on the show and then people can reach out to them and they will get like a bunch of inbound of people who want to actually date them. And let’s see if we can get somebody married out here. Let’s see if we can get somebody to fall in love. The second time we’ve done that by the way. We’ve had one MFM marriage. But did you um did you see my And more than one MFM divorce. Yes, more than one. And that’s not a joke, for real. We give it and we take it away. Did you see when I did that on Twitter where I like tweeted out like 10 of my friends who were single and Yeah, that’s a great idea. We should just do that as a pod. It crushed. It crushed. All right, I’ll tweet that out after this. Uh Well, let’s let’s do this. By the time this comes out, let’s let’s make a landing page. Well, Ben text me. He wants to do he wants to call it hot millionaires in your area. Hot MFers. MFers. Um What can we call it? So, what what should we call it? It could be uh maybe something with singles, maybe something with uh uh let’s see, what else? We need a name. I don’t know. We we got to get creative eventually. You’re a good name. No, no, no. Don’t give up. You can do this. I don’t know. We could change the word singles with shingles. Is there anything there? That’s the thing that’s always at the bottom of the website. It’s like hot singles in your area. So just call it that. Like it’s hot singles in your area. Too much competition on that name, dude. That’s that’s the most competitive term on the internet. It’s got to be like uh um MFM most wanted. And but it’s most wanted because you, you know, they’re wanted in in a dating sense. Yeah, we get it. We get it. MFM’s most wanted. That’s fine. That’s actually great. That’s actually great. We’re going to do that and then Yeah, better than shingles. I don’t know. I I like I like changing words, you know, called Twitter shitter. Uh it’s classic. And then this month, Sean, we probably should do like a merch thing. Yeah, I’m working on it. I’m I’m going all in on uh on uh just creating great content. I don’t understand what content has to do with merch. Uh it’s like merch is content to be. Okay. Like we’re not going to get rich selling t-shirts, but we can make awesome t-shirts that are like as good as great content. Like it makes you laugh, it’s interesting, it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s, you know, it’s it’s meant for fun, not meant to be like uh you know, our Patreon. All right, I’m down. No offense to people on Patreon. Put y’all are little bitches. Patreon is like certified small boy stuff. Yeah, dude. I don’t want to be like I don’t want to have a patron. Um All right, that’s the pod.