Fitness Hotels, Steel-Manning, and Why the Creator Economy is Overhyped

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 solving for demand problems suck solving for technology problems rocks [Music] so we have two things going on the first is we have a new new intro philosophy have you ever have you ever watched a peloton um a peloton class yeah they’re always they always do this thing i don’t even do peloton but i’ve seen two or three so i’m gonna say always it’s always like all right everybody they like come in like they were just having the best inside joke with somebody they’re like okay we’re gonna start with the ghost star what’s up everybody jamal here and we are gonna rock it’s like they always start with this laughter to make you feel like we were having such a good time you’re in a good place right now okay well everyone we’ve got all right so here’s the deal we’ve got a uh two things happening the first is last month we did a contest where people reviewed us and we gave out a thousand dollars or did we get five thousand dollars pen six thousand thousand dollars to six different people oh wow so six people okay so six people won a thousand dollars we even gave it to like two or three people who gave us negative reviews um we’re gonna if you’re watching on youtube uh you can click the link and you’re gonna go to the end of this episode and that’s where you’ll see who the names are and you have to contact ben if you’re that person is that right by the way the people commenting on youtube get a bigger prize which is that me and you go and we reply to everybody who comments on the youtube channel personally they talk [  ] yeah especially if they talk [  ] but i like the people there’s really two that i like there’s a great when they say great episode i don’t know what the hell they say back so i just say like yeah thanks but if they talk [  ] or if they reference some inside joke or call us out on uh one of our like mannerisms or something we always say that’s stupid or whatever those are great it makes me uncomfortable when that happens um i get self-conscious uh i was just gonna say uh to summarize yes correct uh we announced them at the end of a different episode we announced the winners so we’re going to link to that clip at in the show notes of this episode so click there listen see if you were one of the winners if so email me and i will get you your thousand dollars and what’s your what’s your email ben b wilson hubspot.com is my email all right now the second thing this is actually significantly cooler so we are giving away five thousand dollars to two fans and here’s what you have to do you’ve got to take our content whether it’s like audio or video which they’re all on youtube and you have to remix it so basically chop it up into little viral clips and then use the hashtag mfmclips so mfm clips uh and use that hashtag on all the popular social media [  ] we’ll find you and the and we’re gonna do a combination of cool stuff uh like cool content as well as popular content and we’re gonna give away five thousand dollars to two different people who use that hashtag and use cool clips or who create cool clips i think that’s gonna be sick there’s somebody who did this for the all-in podcast there’s just a tick tock channel somebody created called all in talk uh like like tik tok and um they just chop up clips from from the pod and they just put it up there there’s no contest but this account is just getting like hundreds of thousands of views because it’s the content’s already good all you got to do is just grab the best okay we’re going to talk for an hour you grab the best kind of like 30 second back and forth and um and you turn that into a clip and they don’t all hit but definitely like one per week is hitting and this account is getting so big and it’s just some fan account and so that’s actually what i would do is you’re gonna if you just did that if you just made the tick tock account for this you just put the best best nuggets on there and just chopped it um your account’s gonna get popular which is more valuable than whatever five we’re gonna give you five grand great but like whoever does that like we’ll just employ you and also you’re gonna have an account that’s yeah we we’ve talked about doing this for like every month so if someone’s good at this we’ll just give you five thousand dollars a month maybe i don’t know maybe maybe that’s in the cards but uh so mfm clips that’s the hashtag just you know on instagram tic tac um twitter we’ll see we’re going to follow it all and so did i read what what then did you look at me did i do that correctly it’s good running the only thing you didn’t say is running through from now to the end of the year so you’ve got about a month to do it i have a question for you guys which is if you were betting what is the over under for how many views the top clip is gonna get i think on tick tock the top the top video will get over 50 000 views oh i was going to say like i think someone will get half a million on something the right thing will go by if you just take something from the rob dear deck podcast or you take something from the garyvee podcast the tai lopez podcast there’s a whole bunch of those andrew wilkinson there’s a whole bunch of those that are good or just one of our rants or something funny that we did you know back and forth we’re yelling at each other those will hit yeah i i agree um all right that’s that um sean i got a bunch of stuff you want to talk about you want to you listen to the noah caking pod i listened to it yeah so i listened to it in the car it’s great because i normally never listen to this pod because i was there we talked about it you know it’s awkward to listen back your own voice but this was different i got to basically hear an episode of mfm but just with somebody else on the other side and uh what’d you think of it first before i give you my i didn’t think it was that good i thought it was good but here’s what i thought i thought the flow was awkward yeah and i don’t know if that’s just how the podcast sounds when we’re on it too but there was something very start-stoppy about it that was kind of like awkward to listen to but the topics were great like i liked the stuff you guys talked about the the content was great because i it hit the thing that i always want which is i feel like these were just two two cool people who i would be friends with hanging out and i just got to hang with them it didn’t feel like a show so like you would just be like do you have a will and he’s like yeah i got you know like i have one but i don’t have kids so i put in my brother’s kids and you’re like that’s so weird right like it’s not even your kid he’s like yeah it’s weird but like you know and you were just talking about [  ] that like just [  ] that i don’t know just dudes would talk about that that’s like oh what are you doing with your money yeah is that good yeah it’s good but you know blah blah blah it wasn’t like some it didn’t feel like every other podcast so i liked that but it was a little stoppy i think that there was either maybe a weird delay or something because it happened consistently where i would say something and then it was weird there was just like this weird delay i was like oh i’m sorry you go ahead yeah we have the opposite problem we’ll talk over each other but that actually makes it flow a little faster because it’s just like whatever i’m talking over you you’re talking over me let’s just keep it going back and forth rather than wait okay you go now i go right and that’s the problem with these zoom pods in general why in person podcast just like that extra 30 better is because in person you can start talking over each other but it’s no that’s a normal thing in a conversation you can kind of interrupt each other but if you interrupt someone on zoom it’s a very abrupt like um it like kind of like stops the flow of everything for some reason just the way that like kind of the conference call tech works and what did you think of as peter thiel thing that was cool i liked you know some of the nuggets i don’t know if they’re real like does he really have immersed black mercedes waiting outside the building running the car must be running and the jet must be fueled and on the runway at all times that’s what i was quoting the book so that that was cool but i didn’t know if it was real uh i liked the poker story where he was like he bought it at the pokemon then he had to go meet with zuck they came back and asked for his money back i thought that was hilarious that should be a clip by the way those are the nuggets that yeah that should be a clip those are the nuggets that make you like feel like you kind of get to know the psyche of somebody like we already know they have we already know the resume so you don’t need to talk about what peter thiel’s done you got to talk about what’s it like like i’ve told this story i think i’ve told the story of the pod maybe not i met a guy who in college was friends with a guy who worked under peter two at paypal so peter thiel was the ceo paper friend of a friend of a friend yeah a friend of a friend was was an intern there at the time he’s in college and the intern gets invited to um go to peter’s like tahoe he’s going like on to a vacation or you know he’s invited like 20 people or whatever to come to his cabin so the friend tags along and he gets there and he said by the way he listens to the pod so i think he’ll appreciate the story being told without giving away too much info he gets there and he goes the first question peter asked me he goes how much money do you have and peter asked that peter asked the kid the college kid the kid is like uh like you know none basically i have like a checking account at wells fargo like what um what what is this question he goes no i don’t care how much money you have but um you should whatever you have you should invest in a company called facebook and this is back in like 2005 or something like that 2006 maybe and he’s like you should invest every bit of it into a company called facebook and um at the time peter was the main investor facebook and the guy is like okay like the college thing like we do like that like the app we waste time on like the website we waste some time on like he was like okay like maybe but i’m not comfortable just investing all my money in it and i just met you so this is just like super direct and he’s like every question he asked me was a very like thought-provoking or reaction-provoking question and that’s something that i’ve heard from many people who have met him which is like he has pretty much zero interest in small talk um he will he’s looking for original thinkers so ask you a question and then he’ll hear you and it’s sort of like if you’re just saying the same [  ] that everybody says very hurd like thinking i think it’s the impression i get is he’s mentally bucketing you as like okay this person is not going to give me original thoughts and then if you do have original thoughts he doesn’t really care what your pedigree is what your accomplishments are it’s like okay you’re in you’re in the you’re in the circle of people i want to talk to because you have original opinions which goes back to this peter thiel question the famous interview question he has what’s something you believe that few others would agree with you on and he’s asking for this secret what’s a secret you know what’s something you think is true but others don’t think is true because any and that being one of your kind of main questions will filter for people who have these unique insights i’ve also noticed that he does another thing that’s actually pretty interesting and i think this is one of the reasons why he’s hated by a lot of people uh so he’s shockingly open-minded almost to the point of like seeming stupid and like so like for example when he supported trump people were like what are you doing like that’s the worst thing right and um i like heard his explanation and i actually don’t remember what it was but the feeling that i had was like that’s logical but like my i don’t like trump and my emotions feel this way so i just can’t go along with it but he was very logical and he does this thing where he says if someone says like do you think drinking eight glasses of water is good for you he would say like well you know a lot of people think that it is great for you because the doctors in research have proven that x y and z on the other hand dehydration plays a role in health yes but on the other hand um it’s actually overrated and you should consider doing this and a lot of people think that that’s true and so he actually says both sides of everything like when he answers a question he goes well a lot of people believe this and then other people believe this and then some people believe that and it’s kind of intriguing so i heard you say that on the pod and in my head i was doing the thing listeners do and they’re like oh i have something i would add to this conversation so i’m glad you brought it up because that’s a technique have you ever heard of this technique called steel manning no do you know what straw manning is yeah it’s an example like um um well i can’t even think of an example okay straw manning is basically when you let’s say you are debating somebody something about something you’re arguing about something or debating or um having a conversation and you kind of pigeonhole somebody’s view into like you kind of create this really weak version of their argument so that you can knock it over really easily right like imagine a man made of straw you could just blow it you could just blow a gust of air and it would just fall over right away so it’s like saying well sam i know that you you think that everybody just needs to shut their eyes and put their money into the vanguard etf no matter no matter what it’s like well no that’s not actually my argument but if you make it sound so if you make if you make a weak version of my argument then yeah it’s gonna be really easy to contradict it um and that’s what most people do so that’s the like what i would say the common person habit is when there’s something you disagree with you sort of if to present their side you present the straw man which is the absolute weakest version of that argument so you can knock it over and put your your view in place and what the smartest people do is the opposite they do something called steel manning which is even if they disagree with something they’ll they’ll go into it and they’ll say you know people who believe that you should do x would say and they will they’ll make the strongest possible argument for that thing right they’ll it’s almost like an in good faith way of figuring something out so the straw man is like a bad faith way of doing it’s like i’m gonna i’m gonna kind of like cherry pick the weakest parts of your argument present that as your full argument and i’m gonna get rid of the the the nuance or the context or whatever else and the steel man would say you know trump supporters uh people who who who support donald trump you know the straw man is uh they’re just racist people who you know hate mexicans or whatever right like they’re just you know whatever and the steel man version of it is you know some people are um the top priorities for them are their economy especially if they live in states like ohio and you know michigan or whatever and um they’ve been decimated for their jobs and they actually see that trump is willing to invest in their jobs and so it could actually be really great for this this and this reason although he says some things that are very like uh uncharacteristic and offensive to certain groups um he really you know he doesn’t do a good job of that but the pros outweigh the cons and that would be the reason you would support donald trump and so steel manning is this tactic that i think if you want to be if you want to like build yourself into a learning machine who gets smarter over time you want to learn steel manning which is how do you understand the other person’s viewpoint and actually build their argument stronger than they could build it themselves so that it doesn’t mean you have to agree with it it means you have presented the strongest case on both sides and then you decide which one resonates with you which one is the the more true version or the more correct version that you should go with rather than making an unfair fight i think that’s a like a legitimately life-changing skill i’ve just learned not skill but like lesson right that’s one and i think peter thiel does that so it’s not that he says oh some people would say this and some people say that so i don’t know it’s he still man’s both sides of the argument and then he decides which one he believes is the correct one um and i think that’s like a really powerful thing to do that’s a good one that him and other smart people i know do that’s great i’m gonna start doing that i i and i i wasn’t i didn’t know what that was and i don’t actually know too much about uh logic and arguments and things like that i don’t i don’t understand it entirely right i haven’t studied them give me one other thing i’ve been observing which is people who grow up and in high school do speech and debate are in college do speech and debate i’m just noting noticing that that is a common thing amongst among successful people i know and um there’s really like i would say like three or four really common uh success paths that i like if i look at a whole bunch of successful people that i’ve met and i trace back down i’m like okay here’s four pats that like like wow they all like this cluster of people all had that same experience growing up that’s weird like this this group had this so i’ll give you a couple of them one is speech and debate this comes this is sort of best done with like um either entrepreneurs investors or sales people so they’re able to just really effectively tell their argument actually when i did the episode with hussein minaj uh the the comedian i was like you know you’re like you’re like me you’re an indian kid growing up stand-up comedian’s not usually like a career choice so like when did you figure out you wanted to do that he’s like oh he’s like i went to a chris rock show or i saw chris rock uh stand up he’s like as soon as i saw it he’s like i was a speech and debate kid in high school and i just saw this as humorous speech and debate i was like oh he has a he has a stance that he has to take which is like you know um you know women love behind things right and then it’s like and then all it is is supporting arguments that ladder up to to like re-support that argument at the end but the supporting arguments don’t have to be like super literal they could be like humorous i said it on this podcast i think that my speech and debate class in college was the only effective class i ever took oh you were one too i didn’t even know that you were sweeping the vacation oh my god that makes perfect sense and i could and i i remember all the ones that i gave and and the really good part is when they make you argue about stuff that you don’t actually like right yeah so totally because that’s the thing in debate you don’t get to choose the thing you already believe in you’re assigned it’s like you’re going to argue for this thing whether you actually believe it or not so you have to get good at like steel manning that argument basically um so okay speech and debate is one i’ve traced another one is um hardcore gamers so people who get really freaking good at video games like i’m talking about like competitive or like complete obsession if channeled properly that same type of person can um can use the same kind of like strategy cooperation grinding mindset um like ability to like understand the rules of the game and then find the shortcuts find the hacks in the game find the glitches of the game to get in you know the infinite money hack basically so i know a whole bunch of people that got super successful in crypto they all came from like this runescape mafia it’s basically a bunch of dudes who used to go in this game called runescape and they were trading in the arena basically they were like buy sell they would they’d go farm and get some virtual goods and they’d go flip them and they were basically digital flippers and like guess what that same group of people is really [  ] good at crypto it was early on it figured it out early they were good at poker they’re like that same skill set applies to a whole bunch of things that can be successful so hardcore gaming is another one um there’s an obsession and a strategy component to it that i think plays well later um and these are ironic because that’s one thing your parents if they saw you doing they’d be like what a waste of time why are you just why are you wasting your time playing video games go learn something useful when in actuality the skills you build gaming are so applicable later i think that there was a time recently where i forget exactly what it was but someone was trying to solve a a a not a math problem but some type of like code where you had to like sequence dna something i forget get exactly what it was where you had to do like a series of incredibly hard problems in order to solve something very important and no one could figure it out and then this like medical board put it out for gamers and turned it into a game and they solved it in like a month or something like that no way yeah that’s amazing yeah like we both invested in synthesis school which is basically teaching kids through games it’s the it’s a riff off of when elon musk was at spacex he designed a school for his own kids to go to and they called it astro which is like to the stars and it was a school insides of spacex that only the rocket scientist kids basically could go to and elon’s kids would go to it and then they basically spun that out and sorry the the premise of the school was kids will learn more when they’re having fun and they’re engaged nothing is more fun and more engaging to a kid than a game and um when they start to play the game they will start to learn all the necessary skills strategies and tactics to win that game and so like so they they spun that out at synthesis school now it’s available to anybody and so people are you know doing it makes a few million dollars a year of recurring revenue of tuition base of people sending their kids there and the entrance the application to apply to the school is this game and i played it i couldn’t even beat the game i couldn’t even beat the game that basically an eight-year-old is supposed to beat in order to get into the like candidate pool for synthesis it’s like all it does there’s no instructions it’s you versus a computer there’s dots on a screen and you make a move and the computer makes a move you make a move computer makes a move and then eventually the computer wins and you’re like oh okay so you’re supposed to get to the green dot okay that’s how the computer went all right now i’m going to try to get to the green dot how do i be oh i see the computer can move diagonal let me try doing that and it’s this trial and error figuring out process that like your brain is just fully locked in by the way it’s called um there’s basically like an aids-like virus and scientists for a decade or two couldn’t figure out the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme and they set it out to gamers and they figured it out in three weeks yeah all of world’s problems like you know peace in the middle east all it requires is a video game uh if we want to pull it off just give it to the gamers um even even ethereum by the way i don’t know if you know the founding story of ethereum but the guy who made it this guy vitalik um who’s this like you know ultra nerd looking guy super nerd alien looking guy brilliant guy like if you read his blog posts so thoughtful so brilliant like next zuckerberg next bill gates type vibes for sure he actually credits that he was a he was a hardcore world of warcraft player he was grinding like crazy he got to level 60 which is the max at the time and he had like leveled up his character and earned all this stuff and then the game maker changed the rules of the game they like changed the way the items worked and like some of his character items like that he had worked so hard for got taken away and he was like so he was just like for three weeks he was like inconsolable he was like just so upset he couldn’t believe it and he found it so unjust that the game maker could just like he didn’t own his items that the game maker owned the items it could just change the rules on her and rug pull them at the last second and ethereum is basically this global computer where the users own their own you own your own tokens you own your own items you have your own private keys then there’s no company there’s no the the whole platform is designed so that the the app makers could never do that to you and he credits that as like a pretty major influence in his thinking and like sent him down a rabbit hole of like why is the world the way it is and how can i change it i never heard that story so what what’s the uh what’s the last one or two last one or two so arbitragers so these are people you’ve probably met a bunch of people who are like yeah like gamblers or they’re successful now but they’re like yeah i got my start doing like um you know kind of like an affiliate ad network online sending traffic to porn sites or like uh you know like yeah i realized you could just buy this t-shirt you could drop ship this t-shirt and i could get this 10 vig just in the arbitrage between this ad network and this place this click and that click they just love the action they love the action they learn how to do internet marketing at a like very fundamental level and um and at some point they get sort of disillusioned like okay what am i doing here i’m just sending clicks to plenty of fish and i make you know seven dollars per click margin and i’m just like i doesn’t what am i doing here could i apply the same skill to a brand that i create to a product i genuinely believe in to a an education app that i make whatever and they they go on to do some pretty great things so i’ve noticed that that’s one more um and there’s there’s there’s actually a few other archetypes that i i don’t want to spend the whole episode doing it like teachers is another one i met the founder of alibaba jack ma he was a former teacher and um when did you meet him i met him in college there was this uh trip organized if there was this thing called kairos which they named yeah i did 100 top 100 college entrepreneurs and it was a total horse [  ] like we applied the night before we had we were they didn’t know anything about us and we got in because like they i went to duke and they needed a quota of a kid from duke and so they got we got into it even though we had done nothing and um and just to show you how like fake the world is we got into that hundred entrepreneurs thing uh the event took place at the new york stock exchange they had it like shut down because the the guy who started it his dad’s like mega loaded and super powerful bill clinton came to speak so it seemed like this ultra legit event it was not legit at all like it was like just a total party and meet up for like random college kids like the forbes 30 then cnn shows up and i get on cnn and i have this clip of me pitching my sushi restaurant on cnn as like the next big thing and cnn runs it as like oh college breakout success here this business is one of the best businesses in college right now so it’s like oh if you believe cnn you would think oh this is like a great business idea that they’re featuring on cnn no it just happened to be that i was in front of the camera and cnn didn’t give a [  ] they’re just recording stuff and putting it on putting another filling air time you know they didn’t care there’s no filter uh there’s a quality filter and then at the end of that they were like hey you know through our connections we got the sea of alibaba to pay for all of us to go all expenses paid here to china for a week to hang out with him and see their headquarters and all that so i got to go on that with jack ma with jack ma and we talked to jack ma and jack ma tells the story and he goes people were asking what are the keys to success and he goes in china there’s two successful ceo types can i guess yeah go teachers teachers one he was a teacher yeah military correct okay i don’t know how you knew that that was amazing have i told that story before you just knew that it’s a guess yeah he was like military um you know the rigor of operations uh that you need in business like there’s no better training for that than the rigors of military and the systems and the timing the production the detail-oriented nature he’s like so any manufacturing business in china the best leaders the best ceos are ex-military and then he goes for the non-factory type businesses like in alibaba teachers tend to do pretty well he goes and we said why you know that doesn’t make any sense to me and he goes a teacher is one of the only professions the success of the student matters more than the success of the teacher like they care more that they’re the people under them succeed he goes in management that is you know the best principle for breeding great managers is if you’re like a teacher and your success was not in how high you climbed but how great your managers became and um so that was his his reasoning i don’t know if that was correct that’d be sick uh but i thought that was tight i can’t believe i’ve never heard that you tell me that story that you got to go to meet jack ma that’s actually bad ass yeah there was some crazy stories there but we have some other stuff we should talk about let me tell you about something um go to rockautorockauto.com all right i’m going rock auto like auto like car okay yeah all right i’m on a craigslist looking ass site what uh what is the traffic this is a sampler classic here so this company is called the rock auto rock auto i don’t know oh my god 20 million monthly yes okay so i was listening to an mma podcast michael bisping’s podcast and he does this ad read he goes if you’re buying car parts go to rock rockauto.com they’ve got every car part you could ever want and i had never really heard of a uh i know toyo or something like that tire sponsors a lot of like sporting events so i understand you know like it’s a lot of like meathead car people but i’ve never heard of an auto parts other than like napa and the famous one and i went to this website rockauto.com because they were sponsoring a bunch of podcasters and it’s the most bare-bones site i’ve ever seen and i was trying to do research on it and there’s close to nothing out there there’s a few articles from like five six seven years ago but basically started by two brothers i think in michigan they’ve got over a million parts and uh the traffic is nuts so according to similar web it’s like north of 20 million and look at the source mostly all direct and so these guys this so this must be something that um car uh whatever repair shops go to order or just customers are going no it’s meant for um um just individuals just nerds just guys who are tinkering or if you just like wow for example something broke on my car and i just like i just need this little part i could replace it on my on my own just like a little like door handle thing and so i was like trying to figure out where to get it and they had it no way so do they own the do they like inventory parts themselves so they don’t so what they do is they connect with dozens of or hundreds of suppliers and they just have this like intricate system of distributors uh all over the the country and they send you the part they need and their goal is to have uh the like one part for every car that you need so if you ever need anything for a car they can get their hands on it you know kind of like how bezos said if there’s a book in existence we should sell it and that’s kind of auto part and i was thinking about this for a few different reasons the first is with ecom i was like what doesn’t amazon crush it in and they don’t crush it in hardware so like home depot style stuff right uh homedepot.com is like the fourth or fifth or sixth something like that largest uh retailer in the world still and they’ve not gotten hurt at all with amazon really or a little bit they have but not in terms of like buying screws online and another thing is auto parts whether for cars or motorcycles and so there’s this company called revzilla um who was recently acquired for like 500 million dollars and they sold motorcycle gear motorcycle parts and then i was looking at rock auto and then i was looking at a bunch more and it’s incredibly fascinating because there’s not that many new people in this space but it seems like a pretty huge space you know morgan stanley had this report and they said like it’s a 70 billion a year industry but i just looked up the ceo of rock otto he looks like jeff bezos before basis got ripped yeah it’s like he looks like hch yeah he looks like the before photo of jeff bezos yeah and uh it’s amazing i think it’s interesting i’ve always thought the space because i i something broke in my car like i said and i tried to like figure out how to buy the part and it it’s a pain it’s a it’s it’s a pain but the problem with this is is that you’d have to have so many skus um i mean yeah like i’m looking at like bmw like i have a bmw x5 bmw x5 or not even not even that if you just go to bmw it’s like you can look at a car from 1939. it’s like okay here’s the model so here’s the makes in 1939 and then you could find a part for the cooling system of the 1939 bmw blah blah blah like it’s amazing right it’s so hard it’s a real it’s a really hard problem to solve for but what’s interesting is i don’t think this is a demand problem which is cool solving for demand problems suck solving for technology problems rocks if you could figure out how to build a mouse trap that’s far better than figuring out like are mice even going to go into this thing right um you know what i mean absolutely so that’s why you want to be supply constrained not demand constrained when you use yes when you do something and this it’s just incredibly interesting to me and i think in order to get popular on this you just would crush uh seo you and and and that’s how you’d have to do it and i think that you could do it by sponsoring a lot of youtubers and things like that and uh it’s just an interesting business that i don’t think has has has taken off like a or an interesting industry i know amazon’s thought about going into that space but it’s pretty fast but this is worth i bet you rock auto i was looking online trying to like triangulate some of their stuff and i found some old interviews but if they i i would think they have to do at least 100 million in sales and i don’t think they other than the recent podcast stuff if i if i bet you they don’t spend any money on marketing other than like sponsoring like maybe like some car shows wow unbelievable uh that’s crazy right that’s a good find great fine great find got to give you props on that one that’s it go to their similar web and look at if you look at where their traffic is coming from virtually 100 percent practically all of it is coming from search and direct so people typing in rockauto.com amazing uh what else you got what’s this hotel thing you got okay i’m gonna start a hotel i don’t know if i’m going to do it today i’m definitely not going to do it today but i’m going to do it soon can let me explain what i’m going to do okay so there are i went and met with some like olympians the other day this guy who is this olympian dmv he’s a runner he heard that i liked running and uh he asked if i wanted to get dinner i went and got dinner with him and like eight of his athletes so he like was an olympian and then now has an agency and he has like 41 track and field athletes not really popular for most people for me it was cool and i could like i knew who they were like a triple jumper a miler whatever and i was talking to them about money and they don’t make anything like like some of them like have little airbnbs on the side or they bought a car to put on toro and one of them got a is an american record holder in her event another one um won a gold medal and so anyway i was interested in that because i was like man if i wanted to like pay you to be my coach i bet you i could get you to do that like you can’t be that expensive and i started thinking that uh have you heard of ufc how they have this thing called the performance institute yeah yeah they built these uh like kind of state-of-the-art ufc gyms where the athletes can go train but i think it’s also kind of a tourist not tourist destination but it’s like uh there’s a public-facing component to it right like you can i don’t think there is because when i’ve only heard about this when i’ve heard about this i’m like i want to go there i want to work out there i would do they have a hotel i would love to stay there i think so i think i could create a hotel or a piece of like a large piece of property and here’s how i’m going to test it so in this order here’s what i’m gonna do i think i could figure out is is there demand for this and the way that i could do it is i could get a bunch of these olympians the idea first is is it a demand for this this being what it just i think i can create like a resort like uh where you go to just to train and work out with competitive athletes okay so and i think i can convince the competitive athletes to live there for most of the year as like a training place and they do a camp in the morning and train for the rest of the day and get paid to do that gotcha okay i think i could solve that and the way that i would try and solve for that is i’m gonna contact like a really nice hotel i’m gonna explain to them what i’m doing then i’m gonna contact some of these athletes and be like hey i’m going to pay you this much money i’m going to charge these people a hotel fee plus a fee on top of that and i’m going to give you a cut of the money and i think i can host an event at some of these places and and make it work so my brother-in-law who’s been on the pod before brother aaron for the og listeners that remember him he loves jiu-jitsu and he loves any combat sports he loves training boxing he loves training muay thai he loves training jiu jitsu and he wanted to create this thing so he’s created this thing called bali fight club and what he’s doing is almost exactly what you’re talking about so he’s like all right i need to create like an mma style vacation so he’s like basically a lot of people are interested in like going to bali being on a beach and going to like a resort he’s like so he used to live uh near bali so he’s like oh i know like i know the perfect spot for this where there’s a bunch of little villas and the villas are like just dope like you’re you’re on the most beautiful beach you’re in a private villa there’s like a chef that’s like cooking for everybody and all that stuff and each family gets their own villa or each like kind of like resident would get their own or you can buddy up or whatever and um so there’s all these little little huts little villas and it’s right on the beach and then he’s like dude the best kind of like trainers in the world for for combat sports or often in thailand he’s like i’m gonna get so he met a pro boxer when he was on vacation in mexico and the guy’s like okay i’m in and so he has like a pro boxer a project guy and a pro muay thai guy and they’re gonna come on the trip too and they want a vacation also and they’re basically like yeah we’ll train the the people and they’re like you get to train like an athlete trains we’re gonna do two a days you’re gonna have a massage in between to like kind of recover the body so we’re gonna treat you like you’re gonna get to train like a pro athlete trains while also being on vacation and the whole thing is like whatever like five grand or something like that five six man and this is live this is what he’s creating right now so he’s basically he’s got like two people he’s just waiting till he gets to like eight people and when there’s eight people like the trip will happen um and so that’s what he’s doing which is very similar to your idea but instead of being a hotel it’s more like a a getaway like a like a like i would do a ghetto i would do getaways that i would do getaways at first and then eventually i would acquire a piece of property within an hour of a major uh international airport right you do it in the us yeah like i think you do it in austin probably because austin is becoming like a mini center of like health nerds right um i think that you could maybe do it in california you for sure could do it in like a boulder or florida somewhere in florida yeah i think you could amazing yeah i think that’s a cool idea i think it’s sick especially because the get the getaway is a great mvp for something like that right and it’s easy builds up the momentum and that’s not hard to do um so yeah i feel like that’s that’s pretty great let me tell you one more thing go to manuals so it’s called like manuals like uh like a like a owner’s manual manuals lib lib like library manualslib.com the ultimate manuals library so it’s a website that’s just full of manuals okay but get this oh this is great like i was building some i’m assembling something i don’t have the manual i need to fix something i don’t have the manual it’s just here it’s like here’s my kitchenaid yes this website according to their about page so the way that you find out if a business is interesting is you if you they make money through advertising you scroll down and you click advertise with us and you find out about them yeah they according to their media kit they get at least 16 million monthly uniques of which 90 nearly is from search okay they’ve got a brown 3.8 million uh products on there with 5.2 million manuals 106 000 brands and 3.2 terabytes of data indexed hilarious dude they just have every manual they scan it and they like seo the [  ] out of their like rankings for when people but it gets more interesting it gets more interesting i i was researching this i cannot find anyone on linkedin anyone online who mentions these guys or works there i can’t find a thing about it i’ve looked all over the i found one person who on their linkedin says that they were a freelancer and they’re based out of europe that’s like pretty much all i saw their main competitor is this is where it gets interesting their main competitor is this company called owner iq and they own this website called manualsonline.com and owner iq it’s kind of a weird business but but basically they if you’re going to buy something i don’t know how they do it but it’s kind of like tech target that’s another publicly traded company does that they they they sell data to retail stores or brands that somehow helps them figure out who’s buying their stuff and they i don’t actually don’t know what they do with it but owner iq owns manuals online and they do well over a hundred million in revenue and and manuals online is one of their products is that nutty this is wild also if you look at their like traffic uh you know like they really grew starting in like 2012 um they like shot up the ranks into becoming like one of the top sites now so it’s definitely it was created in 2012 and it just like pretty instantaneously like within the year uh became an ultra popular uh ultra popular site the uh yeah these types of business print money now this was a ad based business so i guess they’re trying to get you to like i’m looking for a manual and i’m like a manual for the thing i bought and then i’m like [  ] i’m gonna buy something else because i i don’t want to deal with this like kind of what’s so there’s this company there’s this company called tech target and they’re publicly traded their market cap is [  ] but they still do like nine figures in revenue it’s called tech target and i believe if i’m not mistaken tech target owns um like websites like cfo.com and a bunch of other websites where if you are a buyer uh if so they own security docs.com they own techguy.com they own things like that and so basically if you’re the cfo of a 5 000 person company and you are the decision maker for buying like this is like an oversimplification but like you’re gonna say our company now needs to use quickbooks instead of this other software that’s a 10 million dollar a year product that we’re gonna have to purchase and so this company called tech target will create cfo.com and create news just hoping that the cfo will read it when deciding between quickbooks and this other website and they’ll figure that out and capture their email and contact information and sell it to quickbooks and then all their competitors right so basically it’s rooted in influencing what you buy yeah that would make sense to me i don’t know what the manual one would because that assumes you’ve already bought the thing so i guess that’s a little bit different but um yeah these are these are great little like kind of secret jam businesses that are um you know like when andrew wilkinson came on we asked him you know what type of business do you want to buy high growth high profits he said i want to buy a new zealand business which is a business that is just independent uh sustainable um does not rely on like one you know like facebook ads or something like some paid channel to like to grow that could change any minute it’s not going to be competed against by google and facebook and amazon they’ll never care to compete against this and that’s a new zealand business that he can you know safely buy these are to me new zealand businesses that you you’ve identified two new zealand businesses here yeah they’re neat i i think they’re cool i think that like tech target that i mentioned they’re based out of newton massachusetts this other one rock auto i think that they’re in sorry they’re in madison wisconsin so where the university of wisconsin is and then manuals lib they’re like in croatia i can’t find a thing about them i can’t find it i feel like there’s there’s a business you can create okay let’s say you wanted to create something like this uh i think you could you’d have to look at okay what’s new what’s a new thing where you need manuals so maybe there’s some new product new types of products that are out there that need something like this like for example could be software things like that but software is not not new enough the other one you could do is any professional search so like well it’s something that only dentists are going to search for that’s like really obscure but really important to them maybe it’s around you know certain tools or the software that they use or like you know manuals for the equipment that they’ve bought uh maybe it’s you know treatment uh or like prescriptions or something like that and some people have tried to create like a separate google for doctors because doctors google the [  ] out of stuff um but like you know i think that’s really hard one another the other way the easier way but less valuable is you figure out how to rank at the top for everything that a doctor would search for and you just become the definitive authority in some profession whether it’s car mechanics or dentists or doctors or insurance agents or whatever real estate agents something that they have a lot of searches for that’s not like already nobody’s created the definitive central repository of information for it that’s a perfect segue for what i’m about to say now listen to this speaking of dentists it’s not even a segway i’m adding to it and i was reading this article about the top creators on youtube this year number three for the most popular creator of youtube shorts is called dental digest and it’s a kid who makes here’s the description of his thing satisfying dental reviews dental education and dental lifestyle content this kid’s got 6.1 million subscribers on youtube only doing dentist stuff is that ridiculous wow i’m looking at one of his right now so and i think it says uh what did he say uh like we are uh like i’m a third year dental student uh his about yeah his about is third year dental student wants to help you discover your best smile it’s satisfying dental reviews dental education and dental lifestyle content how crazy is that he’s represented by knight media which is the the guy reed who we had on who uh he came on podcast and he represents mr beast also designer toothbrush from france 8 million views dude number six on this list is also a dentist dude what’s going on it must be that dental content is just interesting for non-dentists that’s the only explanation for this because like how many dentists are there they’re they’re not even eight million dollars i don’t know but this guy the dental gi just guy is that i don’t think he’s doing like popping videos where you like watch someone pull a tooth i think he’s like he’s reviewing products reviewing yeah he’s doing stuff that is not like anyway it’s kind of interesting uh so i don’t know where we go with this but that was so weird i just watched a video it was so weird it’s weird right the world’s funny i’m sure there’s so much opportunity out there we’ve just identified dentists manuals auto part we’ve talked about so much stuff just a short amount of time what do you want to do uh let’s wrap it up i have some other ideas but let’s save those for the next pod let’s wrap it up with one other topic um which one you want to do uh you tell me you pick do uh i don’t care let’s do okay i’m not really ready to talk about this okay i’ll talk about this okay so here’s um actually i kind of want to hear you talk about this let’s do this work week creator economy thing we never really got to talk about that so i saw that adam uh adam ryan i think is his name he used to be president of the hustle something like that like yeah i led our sales team he worked for me leading sales so he worked for he was kind of like your number two guy basically at the hustle for a period of time he had left he went did a couple things i don’t know exactly he was like yeah you’re a competitor or something like re recourse or recount i don’t remember yeah so he did some education thing i don’t know what happened i guess he left that or it didn’t work out or something like that so he is he came out with a new company recently and uh it’s called work week and so like describe give people like this simple description of what it is and then i want to hear your opinion on it i don’t entirely understand what’s the url workweek.com.com i think it’s dot com i think they got a nice domain there workweek.comworkweek.com and so it looks like so it says workweek.com it says um what’s there i’ll read about it it says a new kind of media company so it’s creating a media company it says you want to follow people not institutions so i think what he’s doing is there’s a bunch of creators that have their own niche so like maybe this dentist guy would have been a fit so it’s like um some guy named jared devchevsky who’s doing the healthcare huddle which would be like i don’t know was it like a sub stack or something like that it was like a newsletter yeah and it’s all about healthcare so he’s like he’s covering the vertical of of healthcare there’s nicole who’s covering the vertical of fintech there’s the skype matthew who’s covering the vertical of cannabis and um i think they were already creating content so they were already content creators he kind of like is scouting them and saying okay uh they have a good newsletter let’s say um and he’s like kind of like bringing them all under one umbrella i think he gets the rights to their content and in exchange for distribution and money is kind of my guess the website’s very nice i like the design of the website very much um but this idea is kind of interesting to me and you’re you’re my go-to on the media side and i know you you like you like adam and you’re not going to like you know say this is a terrible idea or i’m just going to say it’s a great idea if you don’t believe it so i want to know what is your honest opinion of this idea because you know media better than anyone the way okay a few things the way that it’s positioned now it looks like it’s just an ad agency which in itself isn’t like horrible like we represent these creators yes right i think the hard part here is that the creators that they represent are nobodies like maybe there’ll be somebody’s one day right but at the moment this cannabis health yeah i’ve never heard of any of these people the yeah the cannabis thing it looks like the the guy dm me one time he had like 2 000 subscribers like the healthcare guy has 500 followers on twitter so not not a huge fan yeah and and so i think uh the problem i mean it’s not really a problem you’re just building an ad agency i think but in in workweek’s case it’s kind of a challenge because you don’t have any ad inventory to sell yeah you do so that i think it’s gonna be really hard i think it’s gonna be a very hard business i would never raise money for this i think it could be a really cool business that potentially like makes money but from a creator’s point of view i have a few perspectives first of all i i don’t love the language a new kind of media company it’s it doesn’t it’s anyone who possesses themselves that’s basically a big mistake which is positioning yourself only to other media yeah yeah and like they don’t care they’re not your customer anyways right like that’s not who you want i guess this is the landing page for a creator it’s just jargon is what it is but uh whatever that’s that’s a mistake that’s easily fixed um the from a creator’s point of view i think a few things one i think this whole creator economy thing is incredibly over hyped i think that the vast majority of people who are going to be able to make a living from this is um is okay so let’s small let’s do the steel mining thing so it’s so when you say create a economy is over-hyped that means something different to everybody because everybody has their own perspective of like is my opinion overhyped well how do i know so tell me what are people saying about the creator economy that you think is incorrect so people are saying that the creator economy is this like new economy everything’s new um that now anyone with the voice can make a living that’s what that’s yeah i don’t draw banning you strawberry you gave them a loser voice while you said their argument which is hilarious so they say that anyone okay i’m gonna try and actually do it the right way um a lot of people think that like the creator economy it means that uh a variety of different people more than ever before can create stuff that is seen by by people and they can make a living right um that is true in that there are more than ever before but the ratio of people that are going to succeed is still really small and i think it should be small only the best should survive and the best likely don’t necessarily need you um or at least they wouldn’t be silly enough to sell you their ip or their content you know no one would be crazy enough to do that you know that it’s the whole reason why caller daddy bailed and started their own thing um and so it’s kind of like a paradox in that the ones that you can acquire you don’t want to acquire and the ones that you want you cannot acquire because they’re too savvy or you acquire them right you did it all right you bet on them early they did in fact they fail and then when they blow up they’re like i’m gonna leave and you’re like ah but i bet everything on this creator this is a personality and when they leave i have no recourse i have no leverage exactly it’s just like the there’s a reason why none of the um what’s that thing called uh that was on twitch and on youtube what’s it called it was called an mcn a multi-channel network so one big one’s called maker’s studio i think that’s what that’s the one you’re referring to yeah and it actually had a big exit i think yeah they they kind of like lucked i wouldn’t okay luck is a little disparaging but like the business kind of wasn’t working but they had a they got a fantastic exit to disney and then you know and the business fall apart good for them yeah right so they timed it well where disney bought it before the truth actually came out but i think what the truth is now is that maybe these things can work but likely it’s going to be needlessly hard yeah the same thing happened on twitch uh ninja became the number one gaming star in the world when fortnite became the number one game in the world and ninja got picked up by red bull and ninja was getting paid millions of dollars every single month by both fans as well as advertisers the guy was bank making 30 million dollars a year and this team that had bet on him luminosity they were basically like they acquired his rights to the commercial rights to his channel it’s all under contract how much did they spend you know earlier they didn’t spend much right because he had no he had no following at the time so it’s kind of like you know adam going and acquiring health care huddle at 500 followers you know pick up pick up the option on the cheap you say this guy’s really talented he could become something someday so luminosity had him under contract but uh he was like yeah hey luminosity um i’m not sharing any revenue with you and they’re this is my fictional account of what happened but they’re like but the contract he’s like yeah i just i i don’t think that’s fair uh if you want to go try to enforce this you can but you know i will basically drag you through the mud as like trying to bring me down which is like the worst thing you can do for acquiring new players is have everybody know that ninja is so unhappy with you and does not want to deal with you um and ninja feels like you screwed him and so illuminati said to sit quiet and shut up and just like take the l so they you know they weren’t getting paid the full amount or whatever i don’t know all the details but like they weren’t sharing the revenue that they should have shared uh they still got to kind of be branded on him you know be associated with his brand but they they didn’t get the upside of their great bet and then loaded was this talent agency said ninja goes loaded and loaded is like work week and they had all the stars they had all the top streamers on their thing and uh sure enough ninja starts getting a deal with samsung and now these deals are getting big and he’s getting equity deals and this mouse peripherals company accessories company and um guess what ninja’s not with loaded anymore right because uh why do i need loaded like um i can just do this on my own they’re taking too much and you know same thing happened with doctor disrespect he goes and leaves for a different agency that’s going to take less and you know like you’re it’s a race to the bottom as i say where you’re competing with everybody wants these stars to be in their like roster and the next guy will do it for less because hey if i can get the top star like that’s just good for me even if i even if they’re a loss leader even if i don’t make money off them and so the talent basically has ended up ended up what happened to those two companies luminosity and so luminosity and the esports team still exist um they just you know they they didn’t get the it’s like the whole thing was based on we’re gonna acquire this talent we’re gonna train them we’re gonna promote them we’re gonna cross promote all the players with each other and we’re gonna build stars and we’re gonna have this like portfolio of stars that like bring in all this money but like that basically got like torpedoed and anybody who’s smart knows this now there might still be one or two teams that the team brand name is like the yankees um where it ends up becoming valuable like i think faze clan is trying to go public in a spack right now which is like crazy to me um and you know they had the same thing the number one streamer they had this guy tfu he was like uh let me out of my contract i don’t want to be with you guys anymore because he was getting great money he’s like why am i giving 20 30 40 to these guys i don’t want to do that and so he’s like let me out and they’re like no he’s like let me out and it was like free tifu became like the big thing the fans are always going to be on the side of the personality that they fell in love with they’re never going to be on the side of the team and it’s what’s going on in the nba right now so this business i think i think like can can these types of businesses work yes but if you it depends what your goals are if you want to start like a tech company or like a vc thing like maybe i wouldn’t go this route because i think it’d be it’s going to be a huge headache that doesn’t mean it can’t work but i also think that one of my biggest fears is starting something in the prime of my youth when i have the most amount of energy which is for most people in their 30s and 40s they have a lot of energy they’ve got some wisdom and they still got some time to create something and you go down this path and you look back after toiling for five years and you go [  ] that i i we should have done this other thing right and i think there are potentially other opportunities that are even similar to this in that space where i hope that a pivot can be made otherwise that that five year looking back is likely going to happen that’s a good point there’s like a graph that’s like um like energy starts at this high in your 20s and just goes sort of like down over time which is like energy which is like not just like your actual energy but the amount of time you can amount of your energy you’re going to get to put towards your work so like you know oh you got married or you get you’re good you’re getting a relationship a little bit less time you have kids less time you have like you know let’s say other responsibilities come up in your life or you’re just you’re more you get more fatigued you know when i was in my 20s i used to work 15 hours a day that wasn’t i wasn’t super productive but i was throwing 15 hours a day at the problem i remember i slept in the office 200 nights one year when i was like 24 25. and so that was like max energy now i work on average five hours a day and um like so energy goes down but then wisdom goes up judgment goes up skill goes up and so in your 30s the lines like cross it’s like the highest energy you’re gonna have while you have some good wisdom and judgment and then in your 40s your wisdom and judgment goes up but your energy goes down and it’s like you know not the peak anymore that’s at least my my opinion of it yeah and my point with that is we are in this crazy world at the moment where if you want to work in the creator space there’s a few routes that people go a lot of people are creating like little pieces of software that they hope to sell for 5 10 15 a month right like two creators yeah yeah we’re two creators and i’m like i don’t i wouldn’t do that i think that those businesses nine out of 10 times are going to fail 99 of the time they’re going to fail you know you look at the difference between a buffer which is like a five dollar twitter sharing tool it did good or it’s doing i mean it did well but it like plateaued versus like a hubspot or a hootsuite that like scaled way beyond that because they sold the same thing but this two we’re using right now riverside we use this thing to record this you know they charge whatever i don’t know nine or twenty dollars a month or something like that to random ass podcasters like us and uh you know they’re hoping to be you know it’s hard to imagine a world where a business like this gets to like 50 million in revenue right yes it’s very hard and and and so i think of creators and i think of that space i’m like uh man that’s gonna be really hard like have some people done it yeah mailchimp did it but like there’s way less like it’s really challenging and um another way you could go is like do this like ad route and like that could be cool as long as you don’t want to hire a lot of people you just want to make a lot of profit early on but if i was in this i would totally look at the markets and the markets are like all about this dow [  ] if you like use the word dao and web 3 in your memo or your deck like you’re gonna raise money right like it’s pretty crazy it’s all it’s just so i’m just like just go over the go it’s far easier to chase the market or just get in the mix than it is to maybe do what you like strictly or passionate about this brings me to one thought that’s been rolling in my head and i didn’t want to bring it up because it’s like what does this have to do with anything but you actually kind of tied it in that nicely which is there’s a certain luck with your time with the timing of free agency so i thought about this with basketball because um this funny thing happened in basketball where every year the like salary cap changes it goes up or down based on how much revenue is being made and then like every seven years they like renegotiate the overall deal between players and owners and so like there was a time in the like kind of 90 late 90s or whatever where players could it was like they could just get these huge like 200 something million dollar contract seven year eight year there was no like limit to the number of years and then owners got wise that the next negotiation they’re like hey like this guy used to be good in year one of the contract by year eight he was totally washed up and i’m still paying them 50 million dollars so like let’s make the maximum length of the contract five years and the players like okay so like basically whenever you become a free agent which as a player is your time to go negotiate your deal um like it really mattered like magic johnson back in the day i think he signed a deal where he he had a 20-year deal where he made one million dollars flat per year what and like it was like at the time it was the fattest contract because he was magic johnson but like what magic johnson made was nothing he was making one million a year a scrub today and the nba will make more than one million a year so just the timing of like barely over the minimum what’s the minimum half of the money was like yeah like something like that like 500 600 000. and so um you know magic johnson just by being in the 80s which wasn’t that long ago like missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars probably a billion dollars total like a star like that with off-court endorsements would end up making a billion dollars over their career so you know that’s just like luck of timing okay well there’s also a luck of timing in when it comes to business not just in like oh you gotta time the market like oh you know let’s say the market’s going good and my company got acquired because everybody felt all the acquirers were flush with cash versus a recession not even that what i’m actually talking about is like as an entrepreneur the time like the random time when you free up like you quit your job or your company gets acquired or like whatever that thing was there’s so much luck involved in like what’s going on in that moment totally i absolutely we have a friend uh sully who came out he was episode one of the podcast and he says the story which is like you know i was at microsoft i quit my job i went home just to my family’s house in florida and i was just kind of like okay well what the hell am i gonna do now and so he didn’t have a grand plan but he had his what the hell am i going to do now moment at the same exact day that the facebook launched its app platform so he’s like i was doing nothing facebook launched his app platform so i was like okay i want to build a facebook app now whereas if he was just still employed or had a different idea six months earlier and he would have been in the middle of that he would have never built that app which have never led to him come to silicon valley getting acquired and getting his first million dollars and then that turned into so much more and like it’s not to say all of his success was luck obviously he did a lot of good things but there is some luck of just when you’re free and like what’s going on in the market like where are the waves happening like right now we’re doing i’m doing all this stuff like at this e-commerce company if i didn’t have this e-commerce company i would have been all in on web3 i would have been investing more building more maybe started a company in that space because i would have been free to do that at a time when that’s the obvious [  ] thing to do right now is go work on web3 invest in web 3 and build in web3 or ai or whatever there’s like two or three things going on right now where it’s like that’s the that’s definitely the thing to do but if you’re occupied you can’t do it and so yeah and that’s that’s a little bit of my point which is i think that i think that if you create a restaurant that’s really good and like momofuku or milk bar like momofuku or like that cake like it’s not particularly like it’s not really different it maybe is slightly better but like whatever he made it work and he became incredibly wealthy that guy david chang and it’s a cool gig whatever it’s awesome that will work in the 1920s as well as in the 2020s um so you could pull [  ] off no matter what there’s some stuff that you can just make work and if you just give enough time you’ll make that work but then there’s other things where it’s like there’s this tidal wave coming and if you just catch the wave even if you’re shitty it’s gonna be awesome um i think michael acton smith is his name the guy who started calm he told me that he was like i felt like he was like i didn’t know anything about meditation but i was just able to talk to a couple people and i felt like there’s this huge wave coming and if i could just paddle just a little bit and catch that wave success is gonna be incredibly easy right and he told me that and i was like oh that’s so you’re you’re totally right if you just catch the right thing at the right time and it doesn’t seem to be the right thing at the right the right time but kind of around the right time and kind of the right thing it happened with us at the hustle newsletters we our newsletters weren’t this like tidal wave of a business you know our exit wasn’t like a 20 billion dollar like but it was like a nice like oh it just so happened that we caught this little trend at the right ish time well there’s a i think most people would get some of the like so so the one part of what you said which is just like oh this market’s ready to exp like the market is ready so it’s like market timing i think everybody kind of gets market timing oh that’s a thing it’s important but it seems very external it’s like oh i can’t control that and it’s like you hope you get it and sometimes you don’t you try to look out for it but you never what i’m talking about is even the one thing you can control which is your own personal availability timing and so i think this has two things one is like you should recognize that if there’s a if there’s a like a wave going on and you’re occupied with something that’s not ideal like get the [  ] out of there because you just needed to be free right now it doesn’t matter what you go do in that space you don’t even need the idea you just need to be available you need to be single when all the you know when all the the eligible bachelors are walking down the street if you’re not single if you’re not on the street because that’s that’s when the parade was going on you’re not gonna get you’re not gonna get picked up and so it’s like being available at a certain time is really really important and also that what that means is don’t pick up a mediocre project that’s going to occupy you because you just think oh well you know i think this can’t hurt i’ll make some good money i’ll like i’ll meet some people it’s like well it will hurt in this silent invisible way which is you’re going to become occupied and that likely has no longer in the market for good luck to happen to you and that lack of focus is more likely than not what ruins most everyone who tries to do anything interesting i tweeted out this thing to like get to do a little research i i i kind of [  ] up i tweeted out hey um what what is the biggest problem in your work life right now like i don’t care if you’re mega successful or if you’re uh just like a mcdonald’s like employee whatever doesn’t matter who you are everybody’s got like some career challenge that’s on their plate right now what’s yours and i said dm me and so i got a bunch of dms i forgot how did you get what i should have said is i’m not going to help everybody because that wasn’t my intent i actually wanted to do research i wanted to know what problems you had so i could make content that like maybe speak like if i know anything about one of these problems great that i could put it out there if that’s a common problem people have and so comment because some people i didn’t think would be comfortable saying like the issue like what they’re struggling with publicly yet at least 100 i don’t know 100 200 something like that it was a lot and um and one of the most common ones was like you know either some variation of i don’t know what i want to do with my life but i know this ain’t it or i kind of know what i want to do but i’m afraid to go do it like i’m doing this other thing right now and the answer to both of them is sort of the same which is whether you know what you want to do if you don’t know what to do if you know this is not what you want to do the fail the first step is make yourself single get out of the bad relationship right like that is the the app because it is taking up space in a way that you’re not your brain is not going to like properly assess the cost of that because you’re going to just see the small benefits you’re getting from it what you’re not going to see is that actually you know you nothing can fit in here because that’s there um i don’t care if you’re at microsoft or wherever and so that was like the number one and number two like thing but to me they’re the same which is i don’t like what i’m doing now should i go do x or what should i go do it doesn’t really matter the answer to both is the same which is you got to get out of x if you’re if you really like care if you want this to get to that amazing level like if you’re okay with it as is fine you’re okay with it as is but if you want more and this ain’t gonna give you more you gotta get rid of it and that’s the only decision you need to make right now you don’t have to make the other decision yet yeah i completely agree i think that um just like you just gotta get a swing i told this to take enough swings you’ll get you’ll get a hit we have this guy who does uh for our ecommerce show he’s amazing he’s so good at like website optimization and he’s like hey i got i want to talk to you like you know you told me i can use this card one time which is like hey give me some advice so i want to use it which is like i kind of want to go do web like i can’t stop thinking about web3 i’m super interested in it but i don’t know if i’m just like following a hype train and what’s going to happen if the price is gonna crash and if it’s all a bubble and i don’t know all these things uh and i got a good thing going for me and basically i ended up talking him like as i talked to him i didn’t talk him out of it i just let him talk out loud to where it was like blatantly obvious that he needs to throw away a good thing to maybe be working with you amazing which is me i’m one of his clients he’s got a few clients his business is doing gangbusters and he’s very good at it but he’s sort of like unstimulated by just like e-commerce at this point and he’s super curious about this other thing but it’s like how do i let this go this brings in money and it’s like i’m good at it my brand is all my identities tied to this and it’s like well okay i asked him you know like i’ll i’ll read two bits of it because in case this like helps people which is i go do you only talk with your employees via text messages or uh slack well i meant like text format right uh yeah i try to i try not to do like calls i told them how many police do you have can we do a call and i was just type it here let’s see if that works how many employees do you have uh there’s like i don’t know there’s probably like 12 in the main in my main ships of like actually maybe 15 of like between the fund and content and e-commerce 15 people probably associated with it but that’s a combination of virtual assistants all the way up to like ben who’s like you know my right-hand man i called the [  ] out of ben but i just typed everybody else um so okay so he he basically was like here’s what i’m thinking blah blah i told him i go first question how much runway do you have if live if life costs you four thousand dollars a month to pay for it uh just make sure you have enough savings otherwise you can’t really make this decision if you don’t have any money uh yeah he was like i have you know like six months totally liquid and i have another six to twelve months that like i could totally eat into without without feeling bad um i think my when i go whenever i talk to people i say 24 months yeah i i just think that’s a that’s like that’s like safe that’s very safe i think you know you could do it but that’s like 100 we’re talking like a hundred grand yeah but to save up i mean that’s what that means is weight and i think waiting is a very big cost to pay so you got to be sure you’re willing to pay the price of waiting okay so then i said all right uh you presented me with three options but really there’s two you said i can take on more clients and lose all my free time no do not do this you can keep your current clients and have some free time and it’s a pretty safe path you could do that for six more months and then like collect more data if you’re just not sure about something if you don’t if you don’t have conviction or you could quit what you’re doing get rid of all your clients including me and go all in on it it’s the riskiest most radical you should do this if you know what you want to do and it really just comes down to that do you know what you want if so then go for it do not wait do not hedge your bets i said if you don’t know what you want then do path b where you collect information but be really specific about what you’re trying to learn don’t just wait for waiting sake and just hope that you’ll feel more ready later talk to yourself about what is it that you’re actually trying to figure out and then figure that out in the next six months um he’s like he said some other stuff blah blah blah and i was like and at the end by the end of it i was like um you gotta ask yourself these three questions if i wasn’t afraid of failing which which path would i pick because that’s what you really want to do um then i said do you believe that if you put your mind to something you’re going to succeed at it and i only ask him this because i could see he’s a star he’s really good at what he does so i know he is the answer is yes if he puts his mind to it he’ll get good at something and then i said um so if you know that if you weren’t afraid of failing what would you do if you put your mind to it you could succeed you believe that correct yes okay then what should you do he’s like well then the answer is obvious i should go do that thing so i ended up talking myself out of i ended up talking one of my star guys off of my team which kind of sucks but so it happened uh you know if it will soon like you know who knows people get cold feet but like he knows what the answer should be now from his own like i just asked questions they were leading questions yes but at the end of the day they were questions and the answers were very obvious uh to him and it was like you know so why would i not do this you know it all just traced back to some version of like fear and anxiety that’s great i mean we’re just never going to see how this is you know you only want fear and anxiety driving the car they can be in the car yeah they’re a passenger but like they’re not allowed to hold the wheel can we wrap up with one quick thing yeah do you see uh tyrone woodley is now fighting jake paul uh yeah the other guy dropped out or i’m crazy right what do you feel about how you feel about that so let down yeah let down as well yeah woodley’s just the most boring fighter so that just sucks so bored i’m so bored by this i wanted tommy fairy to fight him um dude jake paul though i’m gonna pay money to watch this stuff do you pay money to watch fights yeah i pay when i feel like it’s like somebody i i really care about i want like if it’s a mcgregor fight i’ll pay yeah and i’ll pay because hey i don’t want to hassle with like the bootleg stream like crapping out at the wrong time and also i feel like i’m gonna get my money’s worth whereas if it’s just like two if it’s somebody i don’t really care about then i’ll just watch clips or i’ll stream it or whatever like i’ll figure out another way but i won’t pay the 60 70 80 bucks for that what website uh do you use hey what are we trying to do here is you’re trying to knock me allegedly are you a narc now [Laughter] do you use a good one uh yeah do you have one that you go to all the time i’ll dm you some things that i do uh i used to use this website called project free tv i don’t think it’s around anymore and i would watch all my free tvs tv shows on that now apparently there’s this thing called crack streams which is pretty good may have may have taken a glance at that one yeah but i do the same thing i i buy a lot of them i don’t know because it’s got a z in the name streams with a z i also uh it’s good i also um i pay for youtube tv so i get a lot of stuff there and i pay for espn so i get stuff there so by the way you’ve heard this story in the past about how um remember when dane cook or yeah dane cook got popular did you ever hear the story of how he got popular was it from kazaa yeah do you know what he did genius [  ] distribution hack this is one of the greatest growth hacks ever when kazaa and limewire and all those different like you know torrent type of downloading programs were out there when people used to download music and all that i can’t believe that stuff existed he um he created files that would say like chris rock stand up or it’d be like you know dave chappelle or eddie murphy best stand-up and it would be four minutes of chris rock and eddie murphy and then the next 56 minutes would just transition to dane cook and that’s how he got famous so people were searching for those guys they would download the thing thinking they’re getting an hour special of that guy right it would start with that it’d be like now dame cook and he would just start with a joke and like sure enough people would listen and that’s how he got like his distribution that’s how he got his name out there initially well if you think back to it like of course it didn’t seem the way that this way at the time but the internet was so small that i remember like i would wait for wait for something to get released and i like knew off the titles like and how many seeders were on there i knew i could get that one like i knew all about it like you knew about kazaa limewire you knew which ones to download for which stuff and now looking back i totally could have been um i could i totally could have manipulated it yeah like i wouldn’t have even thought of that but maybe me today would have thought of that back then but i don’t even when i heard that i thought it was genius it’s so genius that i’m like skeptical it’s true but uh but i’ve heard it i bet you that guy made so much money because he made money if you were able to make money when uh cds were 18 that was like the the best time in in uh music and comedy and that because the cds were like 50 or 80 cents or something it was just a little piece of plastic right that basically all went to zero and now it’s just only live shows back then you’ve had live shows plus the cds and stuff plus and then he got into movies he i think he became like the most popular comedian in the world for like two years remember that movie he was in with jessica simpson i love that movie jack shepard checkout or something like that yeah where he like runs like a sam’s warehouse i love that i loved i used to love date cooking he’s like he’s like dave or coldplay you’re like embarrassed to talk about it yeah except for me i’m like what this is good music what’s the problem um all right that’s the episode you